City ordered inspections of rental when kids were living alone
- The townhome had been ticketed by Pontiac in 2020 for being an unregistered rental.
- Registering the rental would have required inspections to make sure the home was safe.
(This story has been updated with new information from the city of Pontiac and to correct the title of the city spokesman.)
At least twice, records indicate, Pontiac officials ordered inspections for a townhome in the city where three children were allegedly abandoned by their mother, raising questions as to whether the kids could have been found and rescued sooner from their miserable living conditions.
The two instances — one in 2022 and another last summer — happened in the time frame prosecutors allege Kelli Bryant caused “serious mental harm” to her three children by leaving them to live alone in what officials have called “horrifying” conditions.
Last summer, a city building inspector visited the home to check out a newly installed front porch, city records reviewed by the Detroit Free Press show. And in 2022, another inspector reported a “reinspection” at the townhouse at 660 Lydia Lane after it was cited for being an unregistered rental in 2020.
The flagging of the property in 2022 did not involve inspectors going out to the property, Jacob Jefferson, a spokesperson for the city of Pontiac, said Friday. It entailed a letter being sent informing the owner the rental needed to be registered, he said.
“The property was flagged solely by identifying the property as not having a principal residential tax exemption on it. No city employees visited the home inside or outside,” Jefferson said.
And the June porch inspection would not have entailed “any interior inspection of the home or any communication with residents there,” Jefferson said.
Registering the rental would have triggered additional reviews of the home to ensure it was habitable for occupants, including a safety inspection.
After inquiries from the Free Press, Jefferson said the city is “investigating whether any current city employees may have been responsible for not following up on this property when it was flagged as an unregistered rental years ago. If so, they will be held accountable.”
Authorities have not given a specific date that they believe Bryant abandoned her kids.
Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard has said it was between the spring and summer of 2020 — during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. But prosecutors listed Jan. 1 2021, in documents charging Bryant, 34, with three counts of first-degree child abuse. Bryant indicated in court records she moved to the condo in October 2019.
Records show five other city “inspections” and “reinspections” in 2020 related to the condo being an unregistered rental.
Jefferson did not answer earlier this week when asked by the Free Press whether inspectors entered the home in 2020 and 2022, but after initial publication of this article online Friday he said none of those earlier issues involved stops at the home.
Pontiac Councilmember Mikal Goodman, who has pushed policies to curb negligent landlords, said the city has been able to register the overwhelming majority of its rentals since the implementation of changes over the past two years, including the addition of building inspectors and a rent abatement option for tenants.
Why the property on Lydia was not registered as a rental, Goodman said, “is honestly a good question.”
“In Pontiac, there’s always this shifting class of landlords and property managers that for a long time made it difficult to clamp down on (things) like this,” Goodman said. While the city has made strides, he conceded, “stuff is still falling through the cracks.”
Oakland County sheriff’s deputies discovered the children — ages 12, 13 and 15 — last week after Bouchard said the landlord called the department, having not received rent since October or hearing from the children’s mother since December.
The property’s owner is listed as Ana Madaleno of Waterford. Luis Madaleno, who court records show is also connected to the address, said Ana was the landlord in a phone call with the Free Press on Wednesday, but that he was the one who tipped authorities, because “I wanted (them) to be there before I went inside.”
Deputies found the toilet wasn’t working and feces throughout the house. Some rooms had garbage piled as high as 4 feet. And two of the children slept on pizza boxes.
Madaleno told the Free Press his wife was out of the country receiving medical treatment and declined to immediately answer additional questions.
Pontiac building inspectors cited the property five times between April and December of 2020 over its lack of rental certification, according to the city records available on BS&A Online, an online repository of city data. After the initial ticket, four reinspections for the issue resulted in a finding of “no change” or “violations.”
Another “reinspection” connected to the lack of rental certification occurred in April 2022 and lists a result of “not complied.”
Before the children’s discovery last week, an inspector last visited the property in June to approve the new front porch, for which the landlord had obtained a permit, the records show.
Under the city’s rental housing ordinance, landlords who fail to register their properties are subject to escalating fines that begin at $100. Goodman said a lack of compliance is often discovered when tenants complain or inspectors see that a property lacks a tax exemption indicating the property is owner-occupied.
The 2020 and 2022 violations for a lack of rental certification carried no monetary penalty, the BS&A records show and the city confirmed. It’s unclear whether the landlord knew of the issue; the owner address to which a violation notice would have been sent was listed as the same as the rental being cited — 660 Lydia Lane.
City building inspectors cited Ana Madaleno with two additional violations this week, including one for a failure to register the unit as a rental and another for “miscellaneous violations.”
“Did interior inspection of human feces, garbage. Unlivable conditions,” notes on the citation issued Tuesday say.
Goodman and Steve Tomkowiak, executive director of the Fair Housing Center of Metropolitan Detroit, a nonprofit that works with Pontiac and other municipalities on rental compliance and other housing issues, said that roughly 7,000 of the city’s 8,000 rental units have been registered in the past three years.
Tomkowiak called the compliance rate “remarkable,” but said that the children slipping through the cracks on Lydia Lane is “just awful.”
While Pontiac has largely “been successful, on the other side, there are some deplorable properties, complexes that are just awful,” he said. “That’s a problem, and Pontiac has some of those.”
Staff writers Gina Kaufman and Tresa Baldas contributed to this report.
Violet Ikonomova is an investigative reporter at the Detroit Free Press covering government and police accountability. Contact her at [email protected].
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