Amid a housing crisis, renters challenge firms they say are being exploitative

The Bronx apartment building stands a day after a fire swept through the complex where 8 of the 17 people who died were children.

Spencer Platt / Spencer Platt

Kathleen Hernandez, her fiancée and his family, moved into what they thought was their dream rental home in June 2020 in Las Vegas. Their nightmare began a month later.

“The downstairs bathroom overflowed, twice,” Hernandez says. A few weeks later, she adds, “I noticed this foul and dirty water was flowing onto our front yard. It was waste water. You could see toilet paper coming out of the pipe.”

She says her landlord is Progress Residential LLC, but Pretium Partners LLC is also listed in the property’s records as a having an ownership stake. Hernandez didn’t know that. “No wonder I didn’t know who to contact,” she says.