A Chicago tenant has described the horrifying moment he was woken up at 3 a.m. by rats in his apartment “chewing on his face”.
Herivierto Hernandez told Fox32 he been fighting an infestation at his building in the city’s Rogers Park neighborhood for months.
“I was sleeping at night. I work in the city and I was really tired. I went to sleep and they attacked me around 3 a.m. I felt them on my face and threw them off of my face,” he said in a translated interview.
Hernandez has shared pictures via the All Chicago Tenant Alliance showing his eye swollen and a series of red marks on his forehead.
The tenant said he had to seek medical treatment, including a rabies shot and antibiotics, and is still experiencing irritation in one of his eyes. He is now seeking compensation.
“There are a lot of rats,” he told Fox32. “I already killed so many. They wake you up in the middle of the night. They’re dirty. They get on the bed, on the kitchen table, and they pee everywhere.”
Hernandez is a member of the Fuerzas Activas de la Damen (FAD) union, a group of more than 60 tenants in dispute with the building’s owners over rent increases and evictions.
“Recently a tenant in the building awoke to a nightmare situation: rats in the unit had bitten him on the face in his sleep,” FAD said in an Instagram post earlier this month.
“What would you do if your landlord wanted to raise your rent by hundreds of dollars while you have to sleep every night afraid of rat bites?
Imran Khan of landlords ARK Management told The Independent that it takes allegations regarding tenant health and safety “extremely seriously”.
The company added that Hernandez was currently in eviction proceedings and has been “delinquent in rent,” with the tenant telling Fox32 he is withholding payment “until they fix everything.”
“We have made multiple offers to relocate him into one of our newly renovated apartments within the building at our expense, but he has declined those offers and has remained in his current unit,” ARK said in a statement.
Khan stressed the company has invested more than $1.5 million into capital improvements and have “fully rehabilitated” more than 20 apartment units. He said his goal is to “make substantial improvements to the property and surrounding neighborhood”, adding “we respectfully disagree with many of the allegations being made.”
ARK Management told Fox 32: “The greatest challenge we have faced in accomplishing that goal has been our inability to communicate and work directly with certain tenants.
“In our experience, a third-party tenant union has inserted itself between management and residents, insisting that communications, repair requests, and negotiations be routed through the union and its attorney rather than directly between management and tenants.
“We believe this has created unnecessary delays, misunderstandings, and obstacles to resolving maintenance issues promptly.”
