'There is mold': 27 Wilmington apartments owned by the same landlord deemed uninhabitable

WILMINGTON, Delaware (WPVI) -- Most of an entire block in Wilmington, Delaware has been deemed uninhabitable after a partial wall collapse led to further inspections of apartment buildings all owned by the same landlord.

The landlord responsible for the buildings, AJ Pokorny, said the city's decision to condemn his apartment buildings goes way too far.

"I think they over-shot this thing. Twenty-seven apartments?" he said.

Pokorny said after the collapse occurred Sunday night, he had a wall brace installed at the instruction of the local Department of Licenses and Inspections.

"The next morning I thought they were going to come out and say, 'You did the right thing, OK.' And oh, geez, there are five L&I cars. Like five people died or something," he said.

Jeff Starkey, the commissioner of Wilmington's L&I department, said there is a good reason for the decision.

After assessing the initial structure's shabby condition, inspectors took it upon themselves to check out the rest of Pokorny's buildings.

Starkey says what they found was alarming.

"There is mold, there are leaks, there are all kinds of things. Deterioration, bowing walls in the back in different areas," Starkey said.

The result was dozens of people from 27 apartments suddenly without a place to live.

That includes Tevona Jordan and her two-year-old daughter.

"Me and my child I'll be on the street because of the choices that he decided to make all these years. He has never put in the effort to repair these places," Jordan said.

L&I has since given the landlord a laundry list of repairs and renovations to complete before his apartment buildings can reopen.

There was no immediate word on how long that might take.