Yet another out of state landlord and its manager learned the hard way Jackson Environmental Court Judge Jeff Reynolds does not play when it comes to abandoned properties. Despite all the finger-pointing, Judge Reynolds sentenced Chapel Ridge Apartments Manager Larry Jackson to serve one year in jail if he does not demolish the property by December 9 after finding him guilty of four environmental code violations.
Jackson Code Enforcement issued four citations on March 9 to Larry Jackson, the manager of Chapel Ridge Apartments on Raymond Road for an unsafe/burned structure, sanitation issues, overgrown vegetation, and unsecured vacant structures.
Chapel Ridge Apts., LLC in New York owns the property. However, X-Caliber Funding foreclosed on the property in October 2025. The company kept Larry Jackson as "asset manager."
Jackson tried to avoid service of process at his New Orleans home but was served anyway. Judge Reynolds held Jackon's trial on September 10.
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Code Enforcement Officer Harvey Beasley testified the apartments had burn marks on exteriors and were surrounded by "trash, debris, and weeds." One building had a burned and collapsed roof with exposed rafters while tries and trash decorated the property.
Unfortunately for Jackson, the past was not dead that morning. Judge Kevin Bass declared the property a "menage" at a March 10 hearing. Jackson promised to "remediate" the code violations, stating "It's my responsibility." Judge Bass ordered him to take those measures but Jackson blew off the Court after promising to do so.
The defendant tried to weasel his way out of the charges by blaming Mississippi Home Corporation:
Defendant testified that, while they intended to renovate the Property, an issue arose with Mississippi Home Corporation (""MHC""), which Defendant alleged has an ownership interest in the Property. (The trial exhibits reflect that MHC is the beneficiary of a recorded Declaration of Land Use Restrictive Covenants for Housing Tax Credits, rather than a fee ownership interest, arising from low-income housing tax credits originally awarded in connection with the Property's development.) Defendant claimed, with no proof, that a ""Land Use Agreement""-apparently a reference to that Declaration of Land Use Restrictive Covenants, dated August 14, 2003, executed in connection with low-income housing tax credits originally awarded to the Property's developer, Jackson Housing Associates of Mississippi LP-prohibited any Property renovations and that, when he tried to renovate, he was met with ""roadblocks."
Despite it all, Judge Reynolds call Chapel Ridge Apartments a "danger" the the residents of Jackson, stating it in was "deplorable condition" due to major roof damage, trash, charring of buildins, and holes in walls. Jackson did not dispute the property needed major repairs. The property has been in such a condition for over 18 months. The defendant admitted it needed repair but continued to come up with excuses for doing nothing. (It is quite hard to see how MHC would have put up a "roadblock" to cutting the grass.).
Jackson argued he could not be found guilty because he was not the owner of the property. However, Mississippi law states the owner's "authorized agent" can be held criminally responsible.
After finding Jackson guilty of all charges, Judge Reynolds sentenced him to pay a $250 fine for each violation and serve 90 days in jail for each violation. The jail sentences are to be served consecutively. Judge Reynolds suspended the sentences if Jackson cleaned up the property in 30 days and applied for a demolition permit within 14 days. The property should be demolished by December 9.
If Larry Jackson thinks of appealing the sentence, he better whip out the checkbook. Judge Reynolds set his cost bond at $2,500 and his appearance bond at $2 million.
25 comments:
Has he cleaned up the property yet?
How can he? If he kicks out everyone they come right back. The city needs to help keep them out.
Can the Judge order the Zoo to close. It is an environmental disaster.
Good question
Fixer-upper.
Judge Jeff Reynolds, if you can hear me, please allow me to drive you around and let’s make a list of the abandoned buildings that will never be filled again that we should demolish. Let’s start with the Arby’s on High Street! Thank you sir.
That's a nearly-new and well-designed complex. The hapless Landlord may be a baddie: I don't know. But it's "The People of Jackson", who probably made the situation hopeless. It takes extraordinary (and, often extralegal) measures, and tenant-editing skills and efforts, to successfully run an apartment complex, in Jackson. It's a constant battle. Such battles cannot be fought from afar.
It's certainly "The People of Jackson", who wrecked the place. As a former landlord, I speak from experience. (as government interference increased, we - just in the nick of time - concluded that the old models no longer applied)
Apologies if the answer is staring me in the face, but where is the money for this supposed to come from? Is that on the property manager to figure out? It's not like he just let the grass get overgrown. There will have to be real money spent to get that place cleaned up and secured.
Why keep letting him off
10:19am:
Beyond disaster, the zoo is a serious health hazard to the neighborhood and the public. It would take millions to bring it up to USDA and APHIS standards for exotic animal care and display. It's faster and cheaper for The Horhn to bulldoze and transform it into "Community Vegetable Gardens" with 75% volunteer labor. Community residents, Public HighSchool Botany Classes and even Restaurants could buy into Gardens. BTW, painting pictures of animals on concrete block walls is only a zoo for the psychotropically deranged.
11:33am:
Isn't a timely demolition permit an option? Some things cannot be fixed.
Could the city offer doe type of grant to help pay some of it?
I agree! The city could help.
Can and will usda close the zoo?
12:27 Its private property.
The city collected property taxes from the owners
Hmmm, it's almost like there are monied interests influencing our legislators to make sure these issues go basically unpunished whilst citizens suffer, absolutely shocking.
Could someone with actual experience in these matters (maybe as an investment counselor, or a tax attorney?), please tell the rest of us, how a likely business model would work, where apartment complexes in Jackson are concerned?
I've asked this, before. But I'll ask, again. Are the landlords naive youngsters squandering inheritances (investments eat-up more inherited money, by-far, than do riotous partying and travel)? Are these landlords otherwise-savvy investors who don't understand the dynamics of the locale? Are they working some sort of US residency scheme? Are they using losses as a way of dodging taxes? Are they after insurance payouts or government grants?
Coffee & Covid, on Substack, a few days back, covered newly-declassified archives, naming and describing a whole hidden world of government grants, which only insiders were able to access (or even know about). Grants would actually make sense. One is basically given money to do something heroic - or which can be DESCRIBED as heroic or useful or needed or...
Screw all the what-ifs! This guy was served in New Orleans and will never be seen nor heard from again, US Marshalls or no US Marshalls.
Damn, he will get more jail time than people who murder people in Jackson.
There’s no money in it. Expend resources to build a project and have your tenants literally destroy what you create and have no money to fix it. HUD doesn’t pay near enough. That’s why squalor housing exists in jackson and abandoned buildings. There’s no money in trying to alter it.
10:18 AM, “the city” (Jackson) is controlled by pro-crime, pro-criminal, catch & release, revolving door Democrats….so “the city” is not going to “help keep them out.”
According to 2 different landlords (African American landlords, since this will matter to some), when a tenant is evicted in Jackson they can move right back in as soon as the eviction is completed….and the Jackson Police will not come to help you with the now thieves that have stolen possession of your property.
It’s all part of the Democrat pro-crime pro-criminal tactic that’s been used for decades to take over, destroy, and control cities like Jackson, MS, forever.
You can thank the white liberals (like then Mayor Kane Ditto in the 1990’s) Malcom X warned us about. And now today, with the clear evidence of what happens just south of the county line, Gene F. McGee and Gerald Steen have traded Madison County to Democrats.
9:40, you know that, and I know that. And surely, most-anybody with any wherewithal knows that. SO WHY DOES ANYBODY BUY THESE PROPERTIES?
So, is this a matter of cluelessness? Or are these landlords working angles we don't know about? Or, are they working angles which worked elsewhere, but which don't work in Jackson (since Jackson is rather exceptional, in the ways which you have described, very well).
People were evicted but living there cause it’s FREE. Disgusting
Agreed, 8:57, but you do point to an OPPORTUNITY. If there were a way for the hapless Landlord to convey ownership to an entity which would SHELTER (mainly by absolving various other entities of liability) the current living arrangement, then that would be a good thing. (particularly if there are no nearby NARCAN vending machines)
There are an awful lot of hopeless people in hopeless situations: people who have to be SOMEWHERE. Why not there? As they say, "The worst thing about substandard housing, is that there's not enough of it."
I know a family in Greenville, who had trouble giving-away their subdivision's rental homes. I knew a professional landlord in Jackson (had been the family business, for generations), who tried to GIVE us his Jackson properties.
In that second instance, his go-to was to remove the exterior doors, during evictions. But then, the city came to be dominated by various agencies run by criminals. The "authorities" were actively, and rather blatantly, protecting the criminals occupying the rental homes.
They'd seize the properties, under the pretext of illegal activities happening there, then allow those illegal activities to continue. Basically, the City was taking the properties away from the Landlord, and giving them to the criminal Tenants. This was over thirty years ago. Jackson's problems predate the city's Black mayors.
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