A.G. Gancarski
In an email this week to Pastor Mark Griffin, Richard Hamlet, whose company runs the blighted Section 8 complex Eureka Gardens in Jacksonville, took the press to task for reporting issues with a similarly blighted property his company owns in Memphis.
Hamlet, head of Global Ministries Foundation, lamented that “unfortunately the media in Memphis has been active for a while now magnifying our challenges on a few Hud assisted properties here. There is much work to be done. Our hand is to the plow. In Media reporting, many times the facts are left behind, the context is ignored, and stories are reported with incorrect information for the viewers. I can’t control that.”
He has been described as a “slumlord failing in the ‘mission God has given‘.”
Elsewhere in the email, he blamed the tenants for many of the issues reported in Jacksonville: “Many of these issues observed in the physical walk thru of the units related to housekeeping matters.”
The issues at Eureka Gardens have been noted by residents for years before getting media coverage and governmental redress (of a sort) in 2015. Whether the gas leaks reported on or the lead poisoning inflicted upon tenants are their fault is not addressed in the email.
