“Housing is a human right”

Teshia Spencer’s 14-year-old daughter was experiencing shortness of breath. Spencer assumed allergies were the cause until a doctor diagnosed her daughter with asthma. The trigger, according to Spencer, was months of mold exposure in a house they rented in Springfield from January to July of this year.

Spencer is one of several tenants who told Illinois Times that they or their loved ones experienced adverse health conditions after living in buildings owned by Aplomb Properties LLC, managed by Springfield resident Shravan Gunda. 

Organizers with the Faith Coalition for the Common Good said that stories like these are all too common in Springfield – but that a landlord registration, licensing and inspection program could go a long way toward helping renters avoid these situations.

“Housing is a human right. When housing is doing well, the economy flourishes, our health is better, the city is better,” said Tyshianna Bankhead, executive director of the Faith Coalition, a Springfield-based nonprofit. “We’re not trying to penalize any landlord. We want to make sure that the whole of Springfield is healthier.”

The Faith Coalition and several partner organizations recently delivered a petition to the Springfield City Clerk’s office calling for a referendum on the measure to be placed on the ballot this November. They needed 3,508 signatures, or 8% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election in Springfield, according to the Sangamon County Clerk’s office. The petition delivered Aug. 3 had more than 5,000 signatures.

Organizers started working on the petition last year after the Springfield City Council voted in November 2025 not to move forward with a landlord registry. It was the second time in less than three years that the council had rejected a landlord registry, although the details of the ordinances varied.

The council first shot down an ordinance in May 2023, sponsored by Ward 3 Ald. Roy Williams, that would have established a registry for owners of single buildings with 50 or more units or multiple properties with 10 or more units. 

The issue came up again in November 2025, when a 5-4 vote in favor of bringing the registry to a ballot referendum failed to move forward due to a rule that a majority of the 10-member council must vote yes for a measure to pass. Sponsors Williams and Ward 6 Ald. Jennifer Notariano voted yes, as did Ward 2 Ald. Shawn Gregory, Ward 4 Ald. Larry Rockford and Ward 8 Ald. Erin Conley. Ward 1 Ald. Jeff Cox, Ward 7 Ald. Brad Carlson, Ward 9 Ald. Jim Donelan and Ward 10 Ald. Ralph Hanauer voted against putting the measure to a public vote. Ward 5 Ald. Lakeisha Purchase recused herself from the vote, citing a conflict of interest since she is a landlord, although she voted no on the 2023 attempt to advance a landlord registry. 

The current measure is an advisory referendum, meaning it does not have binding power should the City Council choose not to act on it, but organizers are optimistic that it will send a strong message.

“Once we get it on the ballot, and they see a unanimous vote that says, ‘We want a landlord registry,’ then that’s ammunition to say, ‘Look, the people want this,’” said Williams when asked whether he thought the referendum would force city leadership to take action on the measure. “This isn’t a small group of people just yelling.” 

The referendum will ask: “Shall the city of Springfield adopt a landlord registry, inspection, and licensing program similar to other Illinois cities?”

Among Illinois’ 10 largest cities, Springfield and Naperville are the only two with no mandatory registration for rental properties. Champaign was the latest holdout but mandated a rental property registry in April.

Anne Logue, a board member and housing ambassador for the Faith Coalition, said these registries are about streamlining the enforcement of housing codes.

“The main issue is that we need an address and an email that’s accessible to the city officials, not necessarily to the public,” she said. “But I think that we’d like to see the violations made public so that there would be a user-friendly website where tenants could look up landlords or properties to see the history of violations so that at least they know who they’re dealing with.” 

Springfield’s current housing inspection program is reactive, meaning inspectors visit properties when complaints are made alleging a code violation. Usually, these inspections occur after tenants or neighbors make a complaint or as a result of a zone manager noticing a possible code violation on the outside of a property. 

The inspection program that will be put forth on the November ballot would institute proactive inspections on a routine cycle – yet to be determined – that aims to catch violations early to minimize risks to tenants. 

The Bel Aire Drive house

Spencer said her daughter’s health problems were not the only consequence of living in a house owned by Aplomb Properties. Even after moving out of the house on Bel Aire Drive in July, she said she still suffers from cluster headaches and shortness of breath, which her doctor told her likely developed as a result of exposure to the mold.

Spencer’s list of concerns with the property was extensive: no air conditioning, a pool with standing water in the backyard, no backdoor egress and mold growing on the walls in the basement and one of the bathrooms.

Then the first time it rained, she said the basement flooded.

When asked if she ever notified the owner, Spencer said she never learned the owner’s name. Instead, her primary contact was Diane Shaw, who said she worked as a property manager for Gunda for two years before they parted ways earlier this year.

Shaw herself was a tenant at the Bel Aire house beginning in June 2025 prior to subletting it to Spencer in January 2026. Most recently, she rented a property from MyHomes USA LLC, another Gunda-managed company, but was evicted in September for unpaid rent. Shaw said that she had a barter agreement with Gunda such that she did not owe rent, which Gunda denied ever having agreed to.  

In a statement to IT, Gunda said, “We do not have, and have never had, any barter or exchange relationship with Ms. (Diane) Shaw. Our relationship with her was strictly based on the lease agreement for the property.”

The IT reviewed emails from MyHomes USA LLC to Shaw with instructions for posting rent and eviction notices, CashApp records of payments to Shaw from MyHomes USA LLC, instructions for meeting Section 8 inspectors at various properties and other evidence that Shaw worked as a property manager for Gunda beginning as far back as April 2025.

Both Gunda and Shaw claim that each other’s actions – the eviction filed against Shaw and Shaw’s statements to IT about Gunda – are retaliatory. Given the complicated nature of their disputes, the IT has worked to verify any statements made by either party whenever possible. 

Gunda also said he didn’t learn of any problems in the Bel Aire property until he regained possession from Spencer in July. 

In the meantime, Spencer said she realized she would need to escalate her complaints if she wanted to see any of the problems addressed.  

She resorted to filing a housing complaint with the Office of Public Works for the repeated flooding that she thought was causing the mold. Records of the resultant July inspection alleged four housing code violations, including a “black substance from moisture being trapped” on the basement walls, “paint chipping and large cracks in basement walls” that were “allowing water to get in,” and “gutters visible from front of house drain directly over foundation adding to the water problem.” 

Gunda said the property was in “like-new” condition prior to being rented out and provided photos of its condition prior to Shaw taking over the lease and subletting it to Spencer. The photos show what appears to be a freshly painted house with a clean, unfinished basement.

Spencer provided photos and videos from June, shortly before she and her family moved out, that show a flooded basement, what appears to be water damage to the walls in a bathroom and a dark substance on the walls in the basement. 

At one point, a video taken by Spencer’s son zooms in on a basement wall where water is clearly flowing out of several cracks or holes. 

“Look at this. There’s just water coming out of the wall,” he can be heard saying.

The North Hill Street house

Tracy Kampmann’s account of living in a house owned by Aplomb Properties in the 500 block of North Hill Street parallels Spencer’s. Kampmann moved into the property in March 2024 with five other members of her family, including her newborn grandson.

Kampmann said she began to notice water damage and mold growth not long after moving in and alerted the property owner directly. 

She said Gunda took some actions to address the mold and leaking in response to her complaints, including installing a sump pump for the basement flooding and spraying for mold. 

“He had some guy come out and spray some stuff that made it look better but didn’t actually take care of it,” Kampmann said.

In the meantime, she said her family had developed various respiratory problems, which they assumed were due to allergies. She said they only gradually connected the dots, realizing the mold they were seeing might be causing their symptoms.

In March 2025, Shaw, the property manager, was brought in to document the house’s condition.

Screenshots of text messages sent from Shaw to Gunda from that visit show photos and videos of Kampmann pointing out problems in the house. They include videos of what appears to be water damage to the walls in a bathroom and water accumulating in the basement that Kampmann said was due to a leaky kitchen faucet. In one video, Kampmann alleged that “he” sprayed a white substance – visible in the video – on places where mold was growing. 

In response to questions about the condition of the North Hill house, Gunda said, “At no time were we informed of any mold problems or other significant issues with the property during the tenancy.”

Gunda bought the North Hill Street property for $53,000 in July 2023. Since September 2023, the property has been cited for five environmental and 13 housing violations. A July inspection found leaks in the plumbing, windows and doors that were not weather-tight, and cracks in the house’s foundation causing further leaking. 

Inspection reports from the North Hill Street house never mentioned mold by name. According to Amanda Brown, the city of Springfield’s director of communications, housing inspectors are not authorized to test for mold and thus cannot say whether something is or is not mold when conducting inspections.

“Any interior surface that does not appear to be in sound or sanitary condition can be enforced through citing sections of the code. For example: IPMC 305.3,” she said. 

The July report cites International Property Maintenance Code 305.3: “All interior surfaces, including windows and doors, shall be maintained in good, clean and sanitary condition.”

The inspector’s accompanying description calls for the drywall to be repaired and bathroom tile to be replaced. 

When Kampmann and her family moved out at the end of June, Gunda alleged that they left the property in disrepair. He provided IT with photos of trash and possessions piled throughout the house. 

Kampmann tells a different story: She said that when Gunda saw that mold had ruined many of her family’s belongings, he told her to leave them behind. 

“Almost every single thing, when I took it out of the apartment, was infested with mold,” she said. “The mold made me have to trash a lot of it.”

The Douglas Street apartment

A third property owned by Aplomb Properties in the 100 block of South Douglas has become a source of frustration for the people who live nearby.

Dan Atteberry has lived on South Douglas Avenue, across the street from a four-unit apartment building now owned by Aplomb, for 40 years. He said it used to be a nice place to live. The couple who previously owned it often hired him to cut the grass or clean the carpets and repaint the walls between tenants. 

Then various LLCs took ownership. Atteberry said the problems really started when it was owned by R. Douglas Enterprises LLC, which is registered under manager Rickey Douglas, Jr. 

“The cops were over there every week. There were shootings, drugs, fights, trash, just everything,” Atteberry said. 

Between February 2023 and October 2025, the apartment building received nine code violations from inspectors about tires abandoned on the property, overflowing dumpsters, and overgrown grass and weeds. On return visits, inspectors found that seven violations had not been abated. 

Then in November 2025, Aplomb Properties bought the building for $143,000, according to Sangamon County tax records. 

Atteberry said he was reassured when a man claiming to be the owner came to his house to promise him he would take good care of the property. 

But his optimism turned to disappointment when trash once again started to accumulate in the front yard and the grass became overgrown. Then when a tree fell down during a storm in mid-June – knocking over a section of a neighbor’s fence – no one came to remove it for two months, which delayed repairs to the fence.

IT visited the property in July and documented the fallen tree, broken fence, overgrown grass and weeds, an overflowing dumpster, several broken and missing windows, and what appeared to be mold on several door frames inside the apartment’s entryway.

Gunda told an IT reporter that he had the fallen branches removed and damage to the roof repaired “in a timely manner.” According to Atteberry, the tree was finally removed in late August.

Gunda also told IT that a tenant involved in eviction proceedings complained about mold in her unit. 

“Because the matter was already involved in an eviction proceeding, I did not personally enter the property to investigate or verify the alleged mold condition. I made this decision out of concern for my personal safety and to avoid entering the property while the eviction matter was pending,” he said.

Weighing the solution

According to Maureen Lichtveld, professor of environmental and occupational health and dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, addressing mold exposure is not always simple.

“Mold is specific because it stays there for a long time. And when you have mold behind a wall, it’s not enough to treat the wall,” said Lichtveld. “That’s why when you take action, you want to take holistic action, and not only remove the areas where mold or some other asthma trigger can be hiding.”

Lichtveld said a comprehensive infrastructure to prevent health impacts from mold exposure should involve environmental assessments in homes; skin testing for mold exposure in individuals, especially in kids, who are particularly vulnerable; reducing triggers, such as with HEPA filters; and connecting families to community health workers who, for example, specialize in asthma counseling.

Bankhead, of the Faith Coalition, said that inspections of rental properties could be a first step in helping ensure that renters live in safe housing free of environmental hazards such as mold.

The details of how the registration, licensing and inspection program would function are up to the City Council with the input of groups such as the Faith Coalition and local landlords. Bankhead said she hopes these details include protections against the conditions that lead to mold growth.

“We’re looking forward to seeing what the ordinance will look like as the City Council comes together on this, but once the inspection is done, the city will approve the landlords to receive a license to conduct a business. I mean, this is a business for landlords,” Bankhead said. “At the same time, we want to reward the landlords who are doing what’s right, and that means less frequent inspections.”

Jill Steiner, the president of Independent Coalition for our Neighborhoods, which has also campaigned for the registry, said ICON has had informal conversations with City Council members about how to implement closer landlord monitoring, but no official meetings have taken place. She said she hopes putting the referendum on the ballot will force those conversations to happen. 

“Everybody says, ‘Well, we can’t do that. We can’t afford it.’ And I’m like, ‘What are we saying no to?’” said Steiner. “Please, somebody quantify the downside to this. Then when we understand (that) … we can look at solutions.”

Corey Conklin, a Springfield-area landlord who operates Marshall Properties, said he thinks the registration and inspections would burden landlords and tenants who are happy with their situations.

“Why should we obligate not only landlords, but tenants – who are currently very happy with their housing situation – into having some random person in their house at a frequency determined by a bureaucrat or an elected official who they don’t know and don’t care to know and don’t want a part of their life?” Conklin said.

Williams said the inspections are a way to protect landlords as well as tenants, especially if they implement what he calls an “inspect in, inspect out” program, where the condition of the property is documented before tenants move in and after they move out.

“I believe tenants can tear up your property and I believe you can have bad landlords, but anything would be better than how we do it now,” he said.

Conklin’s biggest concern, however, is the cost of administering the program, which he said will be passed onto landlords and, ultimately, tenants.

“The city can’t eat the cost, and money just doesn’t come out of nowhere,” he said. 

Tony Nudo, the president of the Springfield Area Landlord Association, echoed these sentiments when he spoke at the Sept. 1 City Council meeting.

“It even amuses me that some of the people pushing for it will not have to pay a special tax to rent a home,” he said. 

Bankhead said the registration fees paid by landlords could be used to pay the costs of implementing the program, as has been the case in other cities with similar programs.

The Faith Coalition is suggesting fees of $20 for registering a single property and an additional $20 annual fee per unit. Any subsequent inspections would cost $75, with other fees for reinstating permits or late payments. Other Illinois cities, such as Peoria, Joliet and Elgin, charge fees between $75 for registration up to over $200 for the licensing and inspection of a single unit. 

Springfield currently has six housing inspectors, which Bankhead said is not enough to cover existing inspection needs, much less additional inspections that would need to occur as part of a landlord registry.  

“The city needs to hire more inspectors now, so maybe this would give the city the opportunity to be more intentional in its staffing,” she said. 

Elgin, which is similar in size to Springfield, and Joliet, which has around 40,000 more people, have 10 inspectors each. Both cities have mandatory landlord inspections. Peoria, which is slightly smaller with a complaint-based inspection program much like Springfield’s, has 12 inspectors.

Bankhead also said that the cost of demolishing residential properties that have been neglected costs the city, and taxpayers, far more, pointing to the appropriation of more than $500,000 for the demolition of several buildings at the Olde Town apartments on Jefferson Street last year.

Cited properties

Despite the lack of a landlord registry, the city has taken some actions to attempt to address derelict properties.

In June 2024, Mayor Misty Buscher’s administration created a “cited property dashboard” for properties with three or more valid housing, zoning or environmental complaints over the previous 24 months. 

At the time, IT reported that nearly half of the properties on the dashboard were located in Ward 2. According to the latest American Community Survey data, the two poorest census tracts in Sangamon County almost entirely overlap with Ward 2, and more than 50% of the population in those neighborhoods is Black.

The dashboard displays a list of the 30 property owners with the most violations. To find specific property owners outside of those 30, you must first search by address, before clicking on a link to the Sangamon County tax parcel viewer to find out who owns the property. 

Looking up a cited property

Search by address: If that property has three or more violations in the previous 24 months, a window will pop up with the number and type of complaint.

Tax parcel viewer: That same window includes a link to the Sangamon County tax parcel viewer, where clicking on “Parcel Links” will take you to a page with more information about the property, such as its sale and ownership history.

Business entity database: If the property owner is an LLC, however, you will need to go to the Illinois Secretary of State’s business entity database to find out the names of the managers of that LLC by looking at the company’s articles of organization. Importantly, depending on the structure of the LLC, members without management rights do not need to be disclosed. Furthermore, if the LLC is registered in another state, you will need to go to that state’s business entity database for more information, and different states require varying levels of disclosure.

The dashboard is not the city’s only attempt to penalize repeatedly cited properties. In August 2025, the City Council passed an ordinance to establish a registry for properties with three or more violations over a 12-month period. The registry entails a fine and an administrative court hearing for properties found to be in violation.

According to Ward 7 Ald. Brad Carlson, the cited property registry already performs the function of a landlord registry.

Referring to his past vote against establishing a landlord registry, Carlson said, “I did not feel the landlord registration was going to necessarily make any more difference than what we already have on the books.”

Ward 2 Ald. Shawn Gregory disagreed. 

“I don’t see it working. I don’t even know how many we’ve got on there,” he told IT. “I bet you if I asked, I won’t be impressed with the list.” 

As of mid-August, only five properties had been through the city’s administrative court process and found to be “cited properties,” according to Brown.

A vicious cycle

When Amanda Bryant and her husband, three children and mother-in-law moved into a house in the 400 block of West Mason Street in June 2025, the backyard was overgrown and full of garbage, but she said the management company at the time was responsive in taking care of the issues. 

Once a new property management company started overseeing the property early in 2026, problems began to stack up, she said. 

The floor had gradually become more sloped over time, with the slope worsening noticeably in the spring.

“If you were to set a round object on my floor, it rolls from one end of the house to the other,” Bryant said. 

She said the company eventually sent a general contractor, but after the contractor told her husband the problems were beyond his ability, she stopped hearing back from the management company. Bryant then contacted the city.

The housing complaint filed in July by a city inspector reported that the subfloor was soaked due to a severe leak and would need to be “replaced/supported.” It also listed several other problems that Bryant said she had not realized were code violations: damage to the ceiling from a leak, missing siding, damage to the wood around the windows, missing flashing and clusters of wires outside of conduit or junction boxes, and a missing breaker box cover. 

Bryant said the problems from the leak and missing siding were causing accumulating damage to the house. 

“If they don’t fix them, it’s going to quickly become unsafe to live in,” she said.

Similar issues had been reported before. An April 2025 complaint shows that a city inspector visited the property after receiving reports of “leaks, floor issues and other things” but never completed the inspection because the tenant was not home. Bryant’s family moved in just two months later.

At the time of that 2025 visit, tax records show that Wilmarth Renewals LLC, registered under Neil W. Wilmarth, owned the property. Wilmarth told IT he was aware of the floor issue and completed repairs to the roof and interior to address it. However, problems with the Mason house’s floors reemerged after Landing Pad Ventures LLC, registered under Krayton Reincke, bought it and another single-family residence from Wilmarth in August 2025 for $180,000. 

Bryant said she never learned who owned the property and did not know it had changed hands. She also said no repairs have taken place as of late September, despite orders for the repairs to be completed by Aug. 10.

Both Wilmarth Renewals and Landing Pad Ventures are named on the cited property dashboard among the top 30 offenders. Wilmarth is at the top of the list, with 145 valid complaints spread among 37 properties. 

“I probably have 300 doors now,” Wilmarth said. “I’ll buy 20 houses at a time. And of course, there’s going to be issues with those houses because I do buy them as is. I don’t do inspections on them, so I inherit a lot of issues. I know I am cited a lot, but that comes with the territory of purchasing such a large volume in a short amount of time with the deferred maintenance on a lot of these units.” 

R. Douglas Enterprises, former owner of the Douglas apartment building, also previously owned Bryant’s house in the 400 block of West Mason. R. Douglas Enterprises is on the cited property dashboard’s top 30. The company also owns one of the five properties that have gone through the administrative court process for the cited property registry. 

Neither Aplomb Properties LLC nor any of the other LLCs Gunda manages appear on either list. 

In a statement to IT, Gunda wrote, “In our capacity as property owners and investors, one of our company’s goals is to acquire distressed or neglected properties, renovate them and restore them to a safe, clean and well-maintained condition. We believe that improving individual properties can contribute to improving the surrounding neighborhood as a whole.”

Spencer said that her life has become a lot less stressful since moving out of the Bel Aire house. She recently went to the doctor for sustained shortness of breath and chest tightness, however, and is waiting on the results of chest imaging to tell her whether she, like her daughter, has asthma.

Kampmann’s family’s health has improved besides her grandson’s continued breathing problems, which still occasionally require an inhaler and breathing machine. When asked if landlord registration, licensing and inspection would have helped her avoid the situation, Kampmann said yes. 

“We wouldn’t have ever moved into our house with a landlord who wasn’t going to do what he needed to do,” she said. “We didn’t have money to move, so we just stayed. When you don’t have money, you’re kind of stuck in a situation you don’t want to be in.”  

Molly A. Wallace recently received her master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications. While in school, she was a fellow in the Medill Illinois News Bureau, working in partnership with Capitol News Illinois, and lived in Springfield while completing an internship with Illinois Times. She is now back in Chicago, applying for jobs and hoping to find a position that will allow her to use her investigative reporting skills.

This article appears in October 1-7, 2026.