Earlier this month, about a dozen tenants were locked out of their apartments in Holyoke, Massachusetts, unable to access the multi-story building since it was condemned by the city.
Inspectors deemed the structure “uninhabitable.” Now, the tenants and Holyoke officials are looking for answers.
Sitting just a few lots down from the on- and off-ramps of I-391, is 811 High Street, near the city’s downtown and canals. It’s where Moyosore Kumapayi called home for the past few months – until about a week or so ago.
“Basically, I got home one day and I guess my landlord didn't … like basically his health codes… he didn't get codes - nothing,” he recalled. “He didn't get the building checked - he just … moved tenants like me in there and, now we have nowhere to go, because the building got shut down by the city.”
Kumapayi said he knew something was up within a month of moving in, about six months ago. He found himself killing mice and cockroaches within weeks. He also now carries both ointment and prescription pills with him, for what he believes is a fungal infection contracted while living in the building.
“I have a fungi growing on my stomach,” he told WAMC outside of the Western Housing Court building in Springfield Thursday. “I've been going to the hospital … getting the pills and drugs and everything: I have everything on me - it's crazy.”
“I was telling him about it - he wasn't listening. He doesn't care. He actually told me to leave - if I don't like it, just leave,” he continued. “I told him ‘Can I get my deposit back?’ He told me he's not giving that to me, [that] I'm breaking my lease. So, it was just a whole bunch of crazy stuff. I was trapped - I had to stay there again, until this happened…”
Just what happened: over a week ago, Kumapayi and about 10 other tenants found city officials had installed locks and signage, declaring the property “Dangerous and Unsafe.”
Gas leaks, a lack of carbon monoxide and fire alarms, and a sprinkler system that was installed, but not hooked up were among the violations recorded by the Department of Codes and Inspections.
Also: the building’s certificate of occupancy did not account for four additional units that appeared to have been added sometime over the past few years.
The property is owned and managed by “Archer Built,” a limited liability company based in Wayland, Massachusetts, on the other side of the state. The LLC is overseen by Karan and Pooja Verma – Karan being the landlord, Kumapayi says.
Contacting the landlord has been its own issue, says tenant Jordan Corriveau.
“A few weeks after I moved in, I started noticing some of the rodents and the vermin, and … I was trying to contact the landlord about it, and nobody was doing anything,” said Corriveau, recalling his first few months in the building after settling in around October 2025. “…then I noticed that the hallway started to get dirtier and dirtier, and … nobody was coming to clean anything, nobody was maintaining the property, no one was shoveling snow or even laying down just some salt for ice – just really, really unmaintained.”
All of this, Corriveau and Kumapayi say, while paying for small units that cost them $1,650 a month each. Corriveau described his own studio apartment as a “shoebox.”
For the past week, the High Street tenants and others have been staying in a hotel covered by the local nonprofits, Enlace de Familias and Arise for Social Justice. They’re also seeking justice via housing court, resulting in an emergency order being granted Tuesday, with a judge directing their landlord to find them accommodations, as established by state law.
An attorney representing the Vermas took part in mediation, with several thousand dollars offered to each tenant at one point. But as of Tuesday morning, none of the tenants attending court were interested in settling.
Speaking with WAMC ahead of Tuesday’s court date, Bonnie Inserra of the housing advocacy group Springfield No One Leaves said there are real concerns over the property owners and their alleged record.
“This property owner owns 21 other properties - they have, from other tenants, several TRO’s filed with similar issues in Western Mass., and they definitely are not poverty-stricken,” Inserra said. “The crappiest thing is when the tenants bring up the problems, that they're having in the apartments, they're told to fix it themselves or pay somebody, that they are not fixing it.”
Inserra's organization is also assisting the tenants as their court actions continue.
WAMC has reached out to an attorney representing the property owners for comment, in addition to learning how the conditions of the property got to their current state.
In a lengthy statement sent to WAMC, Holyoke Building Commissioner Leslie Ward said whoever completed work on the buildings did not call for required inspections. Doing so would have allowed the city to see that multiple egresses were eliminated during work on the upper-floor units – and other issues that “created a fire trap for the occupants of those units.”
“All of the code violations combined created an extremely dangerous building for those who occupied it,” Ward said, emphasizing that “every citizen in our community deserves safe, clean and affordable housing at all levels.”
Further mediation and an additional court date are expected. As of this report, all parties involved were still going in and out of court Tuesday.
