When the ceiling fell in on their granddaughter’s bedroom, Richard and Martha Chandler of Corvallis had to wait a week for their landlord to fix it.

Natasha Funk of Sweet Home waited more than a month for her landlord to repair a kitchen faucet so gunked up it wouldn’t flow, and a water heater that filled the bathtub with floating chunks of crud.

Paul Yost and Jennah Litecky started to move into a rental house in Brownsville, then tried to pull out of the deal after the previous tenants trashed the place and they discovered questionable electrical wiring, but the landlord refused to give them a refund.

Three different stories linked by a common thread: Kip Schoning, the “red-door landlord.”

Over the past 15 years or so, Schoning has built a portfolio of rental properties across the mid-valley, buying up older houses at bargain prices, painting the front door a cheery red and planting a For Rent sign in the front yard. Cash for Your House signs drive more potential sellers his way.

Today his property management company, Bula Enterprises, has more than 150 rentals in Linn, Benton and Marion counties, plus a scattering of others in more distant markets.

Schoning’s success has bought him a half-million-dollar house in an upscale Corvallis neighborhood. But he has left behind a string of disgruntled tenants and stacks of complaints in government offices from Sweet Home to Salem.

“He wants your money,” Martha Chandler said, “but he sure don’t want to fix nothing up.”

Schoning did not respond to repeated attempts to contact him at his home and office phones.

But dozens of interviews with current and former tenants, ex-employees, housing advocates and public officials reveal a pattern of dilapidated properties, foot-dragging on repairs and a willingness to rent to anyone — as long as they pay the rent on time.

Deferred maintenance

Kip Schoning specializes in the bottom end of the housing market.

His renters tend to be lower-income families or college students. Former employees say he rarely bothers with background checks and has no compunction about renting to people with bad credit, poor rental histories or other problems. All it takes to move in is enough cash for the first month’s rent, a security deposit and a $200 lock change fee.

“He preys on the people who don’t have enough money to rent something decent,” said Eric Harrison, who worked as the office manager for Bula Enterprises from December 2006 to March 2007. “You come in with money, you’ve got a driver’s license and you want to rent from him, you’re in.”

State law requires landlords to maintain their rentals in “habitable condition” and provide essential services, including functional electrical and plumbing systems, a safe water supply, adequate heating facilities and effective weatherproofing.

Most rental property owners consider regular upkeep a cost of doing business and a way of protecting their investment. Routine maintenance is performed as a matter of course, and needed repairs are done promptly.

Former tenants and employees say Schoning keeps his expenses down by doing little or no regular maintenance and putting off repairs as long as possible.

“You got people who would call over and over and over again for the same problem,” Harrison said. “And I’d have to tell the tenant, ‘I don’t know why it’s not done.’”

Harrison said he was not empowered to authorize repairs but always relayed tenants’ requests to Schoning, who usually works from his home office and rarely has direct contact with his renters. But he said Schoning would ignore all but the most persistent repair requests.

Justin Comfort, Schoning’s office manager from November 2007 to May 2008, had a similar experience.

“The only way to get something fixed in Bula Enterprises was to literally call every day,” Comfort said. “And a lot of times that didn’t even work.”

Fighting for their rights

The law gives property owners a lot of time to make repairs.

Most renters faced with a plugged-up faucet, sagging ceiling or burned-out electrical outlet react by picking up the phone and calling their landlord. Mid-valley property managers interviewed for this story said they almost always respond to repair calls within 24 hours.

But the law only requires landlords to respond to written repair requests. Even then they have up to seven days to fix most problems unless they pose “an imminent and serious threat to the tenant’s health, safety or property,” in which case they must act within 48 hours.

The biggest problem with the state Landlord-Tenant Act, housing advocates say, is that there are no state employees assigned to enforce it. Faced with an uncooperative landlord, most tenants have two choices: move out or go to court.

“When push comes to shove, the only way to get something like this resolved is to go to court,” said Bob Loewen of the Corvallis Housing Division, who has fielded complaints from Bula Enterprises renters over the years.

“There’s no mechanism for enforcing the state housing law other than court.”

And for most of Schoning’s tenants, that’s just not a realistic option.

“Our clients aren’t in the strongest position to challenge a landlord’s action or inaction because they’re often behind on the rent,” said Fay Stetz-Waters, a staff attorney with Linn-Benton Legal Aid who recently represented a tenant in a case against Schoning.

“He gets out of making repairs because people don’t hang in long enough.”

Retaliatory evictions

Tenants who do hang in sometimes wind up paying a price.

Comfort said he saw Schoning issue at least three retaliatory evictions in his time with Bula Enterprises.

“One I remember is some people who had some electrical issues,” Comfort said.

“They kept begging Kip. He wouldn’t fix it, so finally they ended up calling the city. Kip got (angry) and sent them a 30-day notice.”

A similar scenario played out several years ago with some tenants receiving government rent assistance through the Linn-Benton Housing Authority.

In two cases, the agency cut off the assistance payments after Schoning failed to make repairs specified in an inspection. Both times, according to Housing Authority director James Hackett, Schoning responded by trying to evict the tenants.

The situation came to a head in 2003, when the authority decided to bar Schoning from the housing assistance program.

“We decided we would not renew any of his existing contracts and we would not enter into any new contracts for 10 years,” Hackett said.

Track record

In several communities where he does business, Schoning has racked up a number of complaints over the years. There are six on file in Albany, 10 in Benton County, 33 in Salem, 36 in Sweet Home and 83 in Corvallis.

The complaints range from overgrown yards and uncollected garbage to faulty electrical circuits and backed-up sewer lines.

“He’s got a track record,” said Butch Skoien, a code compliance officer for Linn County. “It’s not a good one.”

In Albany, city inspectors were called out to a Schoning property at 335 15th St. S.E. in July. They found numerous problems, most notably a substandard electrical panel and the overuse of extension cords by the tenants in response to a shortage of functioning electrical outlets.

“There is certainly cause for concern,” said Melanie Adams, part of the city’s Code Enforcement Team.

The city of Sweet Home tried for years to get Schoning and his wife, Michelle, to police tenants who let junk pile up in their yards, drawing frequent complaints from the neighbors.

“Typically, our response from the Schonings was, ‘It’s not our problem — we’re not doing anything about it,’” said Carol Lewis, the city’s development director. “Until -. we cited them into court.”

That was last year. Since then, Lewis said, Schoning has been much more responsive.

“(Landlords) need to take responsibility for their properties and their tenants so the neighbors don’t have to suffer from their business,” Lewis said. “We expect that of them and we try to hold them to that as best we can.”

There are a few other examples of Schoning being penalized for problems with his properties. In 1998 and 2000, the city of Corvallis used dangerous building declarations to get Schoning to clean up properties with backed-up sewer lines.

In a Lebanon case from 2001, the Oregon Building Codes Division fined Schoning $3,000 for having electrical work done by an unlicensed contractor and without a permit. And according to Andrea Simmons, a spokeswoman for the state agency, there’s an open investigation into similar allegations involving two Schoning properties in Corvallis.

Some communities lack the legal tools to go after landlords who let their properties deteriorate.

“We’re very limited in addressing properties that other people would look at and say, ‘How can you let people live there?’” said Marilyn Smith, a spokeswoman for the city of Albany. “They’re not technically uninhabitable under city code.”

Others have laws on the books that don’t always solve the problems they were meant to address. The Corvallis rental housing code, for instance, gives landlords up to 24 days to make repairs. An effort is under way to tighten the timeline for restoring essential services.

‘It’s not acceptable’

Longtime mid-valley property managers interviewed for this story say they’re appalled at the way Schoning does business.

“It’s not acceptable. He’s given professional property management a black eye,” said Larry Kampfer of Kampfer Enterprises, which manages about 300 rental units in Linn, Benton and Polk counties.

“It’s been going on way too long,” agreed Jerry Duerksen of Duerksen & Associates, which has close to 800 rental units under management in the Corvallis and Albany areas. “We’re tired of it.”

Both said regular maintenance was essential to preserve the value of the properties they manage. That includes regular inspections, prompt attention to repair requests and the use of licensed and bonded contractors to do the work.

Dolf deVos of Investors Property Management Group agreed.

“You can argue about whose responsibility it is after you get it fixed,” said deVos, whose firm manages about 2,500 units from Keizer to Eugene. “If you don’t understand you’re in the customer-service business, it’s going to come back and bite you over the long term.”

Schoning’s actions, these property managers say, do them all a disservice because it fuels the perception that all landlords are looking to take advantage of renters. And that makes them mad.

“He gives the whole profession a bad reputation,” Kampfer said. “He’s the rotten apple in our barrel.”

At the same time, there’s no question that there are also tenants who take advantage of landlords. Most major property managers conduct full credit and criminal history checks on all applicants and won’t rent to people with a sketchy record.

Those are often the people who find themselves renting from landlords such as Kip Schoning — the people with nowhere else to go.

But housing advocates argue that everyone deserves a decent place to live.

“There are landlords all over the state who are willing to take a chance on people,” said Ed Johnson, an attorney with the Oregon Law Center’s housing task force.

“But a lot of them make an effort to provide decent, affordable housing options.”

Red door stories

Richard and Martha Chandler: 857 N.W. Tyler Ave., Corvallis

Richard and Martha Chandler were desperate when they moved to Corvallis from the coast in April. Martha had just been diagnosed with cancer and needed to be near Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center for chemotherapy.

The retired couple took the first apartment they could get, one of six units in a converted house managed by Kip Schoning. Now they’re trapped in a housing nightmare they don’t know how to escape.

The Chandlers pay $599 a month plus utilities for their cramped three-bedroom apartment, which they share with their son Scott and his 4-year-old daughter, Lai Lynn.

In June, the ceiling in Lai Lynn’s room caved in, dumping a soggy mass of rotten sheet rock and moldy insulation all over her bed. (The girl was staying with her mother at the time.)

Despite repeated calls to the Bula Enterprises office, no repairs were done for a week — after city inspectors and the newspaper began looking into the situation.

Now the ceiling in the Chandlers’ bedroom is sagging, too.

“I’ve called about that, but I can’t get anybody to come out,” Richard Chandler said.

The couple would like to move but say Corvallis has little affordable rental housing. Even if they could find something in their price range, they can’t save enough to pay the deposit on a new place — monthly medical and living expenses eat up their whole Social Security check.

As much as they’d like to get away from Schoning, Richard Chandler says, for now they have no other choice.

“You’re stuck,” he said. “You can’t go ahead and you can’t go backwards.”

Natasha Funk: 708 Eighth Ave., Sweet Home

Natasha Funk didn’t like the idea of renting a house sight-unseen, but she needed to relocate her family from Elkton to Sweet Home. The Bula Enterprises employee she talked to said two or three other people were interested in the three-bedroom house she wanted and the only way to hold it was to pay up front, so Funk deposited $1,000 to the bank account number the employee gave her.

In June, when Funk started to move in with her husband and three sons, she immediately noticed problems with the water supply.

“I had absolutely no running water in the kitchen. You’d turn the faucet on, and no water came out,” she said.

The water worked in the bathroom, but Funk almost wished it didn’t.

“You got chunks of white stuff that floated in the water.”

She called Bula Enterprises and said she wanted her $1,000 back but was told that wasn’t an option.

“The lady in the office said I was more than welcome to put in a 30-day notice,” Funk recalled, “and I said, ‘I haven’t even signed a rental agreement!’”

Her landlord, Kip Schoning, did send someone from his maintenance crew to look at the situation. But “he didn’t fix anything,” Funk said.

After calling the office repeatedly to no avail, she put her repair request in writing on June 16, but still nothing was fixed. When the rent came due July 1, Funk decided not to pay.

On July 9, someone came out and replaced the kitchen faucet, but it clogged up again within days, Funk said — and the repairman did nothing about the crud in the bathwater. A week later, she got a 72-hour notice demanding $650 for the July rent, plus a $100 late fee and a $50 notice fee.

All this time, she was buying bottled water at the store or hauling water from her sister’s place in five-gallon jugs.

Fed up, Funk approached Linn-Benton Legal Aid, which agreed to take her case. On July 29, she went to court to force Schoning to repair the water system and get some money knocked off her rent.

She got a split decision.

The judge ordered a $450 rent reduction, but he also ruled that Funk and her family would have to pay all back rent, fees and court costs if they wanted to stay in the house.

They decided to move out, even though the water problem was finally cleared up in August when Schoning paid a licensed plumber to replace their water heater.

Their final bill from Schoning was for $2,526.73 — half rent and half fees.

Funk still can’t believe what happened to her.

“I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life,” she said. “It’s not like I expected a mansion. I just expected adequate living conditions.”

Paul Yost and Jennah Litecky: 1022 Oak St., Brownsville

Paul Yost and Jennah Litecky moved to Oregon to get an education. Now they’re learning a hard lesson in landlord-tenant relations.

Yost is taking classes at Lane Community College and Litecky starts at Oregon State University in January, so they wanted a place midway between Corvallis and Eugene.

They thought they’d found what they were looking for last month in a three-bedroom house with a hot tub in Brownsville. It looked OK at first glance, so they called the Bula Enterprises office and were told that other potential renters were interested.

On Sept. 11, they signed the rental agreement, paid $1,625 in rent, fees and deposits, and picked up the keys.

On Sept. 12, they began to think they’d made a huge mistake.

The interior had apparently been deliberately trashed by the previous tenants, Yost said, with chocolate syrup sprayed all over the walls and carpets. The couple rented a steam cleaner but still couldn’t get all the slime out of the rug.

At that point, Yost said, he began to notice problems with the electrical wiring. The relay panel for the hot tub was mounted on a post in the yard, exposed to the elements. And the wiring for both the hot tub and the third “bedroom” — actually a converted shed on the property — was buried in the ground with no protective conduit.

Yost and Litecky decided to go on staying with friends until they could find another rental rather than move into the Brownsville house.

On Sept. 15 they went back to the Bula Enterprises office in Corvallis to discuss the situation. Owner Kip Schoning wasn’t in, but they were able to reach him by phone from the office, Yost recalled.

“I told him, ‘Hey, this place isn’t safe. I don’t feel comfortable putting my things here, I don’t feel comfortable sleeping here — I want my money back,’” Yost said. “He laughed and said, ‘You can do whatever you want, man.’”

Schoning said if they wanted to terminate the month-to-month rental agreement, they’d have to give 30 days’ notice. Two days later, the couple dropped off their written notice at the office.

In the meantime, however, they hired an electrician to inspect the wiring and document their safety concerns. They’ve also retained an attorney and say they’re prepared to go to court to get their money back.

“We are going through the hell that is Kip Schoning right now,” Yost said.

“We never moved our stuff in, never spent a night there, and we’ve been fighting with him ever since. -. We just don’t want anyone else to have to go through this.”

Bennett Hall can be reached at 758-9529 or bennett.hall@lee.net.