SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- The ABC57 newsroom has been inundated with complaints for years about ongoing issues at Karl King Tower in South Bend, coming to a head this frigid winter when many residents were left without heat.
The city acted, issuing some fines, while the township got the attention of the Indiana Attorney General's Office. But throughout her reporting, ABC57 Investigative Reporter Annie Kate uncovers how much bigger the problems really are, and why more isn't being done to fix them.
Located on the St. Joseph River on the outskirts of downtown South Bend, Karl King Tower at 515 east Monroe St. was built in 1978. It's government-subsidized housing for the elderly and disabled.
Tenants get a government-issued housing voucher from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, said 68-year-old Dorothy Underwood, and it covered two thirds of her rent when she lived there in 2025.
"I thought it was going to be laid back, you know, and relaxing," Underwood said, "but there's so much violence and drugs and stuff going on there."
So much violence, she says, it came to her door. A man she says didn't live in the building just "snapped" one day while she was socializing with a neighbor. Underwood said the man picked her up and threw her onto her back, breaking her ribs.
She never went back to Karl King Tower.
"Oh, that messed me up," Underwood said. "I couldn't believe it, you know, mentally, I was like, 'Whoa. Wait a minute. Why'd this happen to me?'"
She lives with her niece now.
Because she got out, she doesn't fear retaliation from management at Karl King for speaking to the media, but says the residents still there are threatened with eviction if they talk to anyone.
Portage Township Trustee Jason Critchlow said he's also heard about these threats.
"They will tell me all kinds of things about what's going on there, including how they're treated by the property managers. And inevitably, every single time without me asking. They say, Jason, I'd rather you kept my name out of this... I've never seen that so badly anywhere else. This is by far the worst that I've seen," said Critchlow.
Rodney Gadson started the South Bend Tenant Association in 2019 and says it feels like an uphill battle advocating for tenants' rights in South Bend.
"Isn't it illegal to evict somebody because they told me how bad their apartment is on the news?" Annie Kate asked, to which Gadson replied, "It would be, but the problem being is you have to prove that... You have to have documentation to show that it's harm to you. You're harming the tenant. That's a very hard thing to do. That means you got to go around like a reporter. You got to have camera. You have to have recording. You have to have almost they have to be you."
ABC57's Annie Kate tried to go right to the management on-site, but the news cameras quickly got her kicked out. ABC57 soon returned to verify what's being heard from residents.
While both elevators were working during her visit, she consistently heard from residents how often at least one elevator is broken, and how that often leaves disabled adults on higher floors stuck in their units.
"The elevator situation is deplorable," Critchlow said.
"Oh, I lived on the 11th floor, and I wasn't about to walk up and down the steps. I just stayed in my apartment [when the elevators were broken]," Underwood said.
Residents showed her the overflowing trash chute as well as filthy hallways, walls, and stairwells.
"It was a spur of the moment move, so I had no idea what I was moving into," said one anonymous tenant. "If I had known this is what I was moving into, I would've never came this way."
This tenant, who let ABC57 into his unit, but does not want his name or face used in the report, said he moved in in 2024.
"It reminds me of where I grew up at, I grew up at Cabrini Green. So, this one building reminds me of the whole neighborhood," he said, referring to the notorious and since-demolished Chicago public housing complex.
He said he wants more than anything to leave Karl King, but considering he's on a HUD-issued housing voucher, he must be approved for a transition, and spots are few and far between.
"You got all the riff raff running through the building, and they just ain't keeping it up, their part, to me," he said.
Annie Kate also observed a side door to the building propped open by a toilet bowl plunger. The same day, she met someone who claimed to be hired to fix the open door. However, one day prior to this story airing, the door was once again propped open. Of all the concerns and complaints out of Karl King Tower that ABC57 News has been inundated with, the security of the building was one of the most discussed.
"There's no safety there for elderly and disabled," Underwood said.
"Illegal activity is in that building every day, night or day, but definitely the night," Gadson said. "After four o'clock, Lord help them."
On June 29, 2025, residents were horrified to find Clarence Harris, fallen to his death from a high floor at the tower.
On October 14, 2025, there was an officer-involved shooting on the second floor of the tower, after 55-year-old Christopher Chester stabbed the woman he was staying with and charged at officers with a hammer.
In total, there were 907 South Bend Police calls for service to Karl King Tower between January 1, 2025 and January 28, 2026, all listed in data obtained from SBPD after a public records request.
The most common, 206 of those calls, or one in five, was to report an "unwanted person."
"It's not livable at all," Underwood said.
So, where are the property owners in all this? It turns out they are located on the East Coast.
"...areas like ours are preyed upon," Critchlow said. "You have outside, outside corporate management, corporate owners that will come in here and buy buildings, not invest in those buildings and just collect those subsidized rent checks every month."
Portage Township Trustee Jason Critchlow got involved when South Bend's winter temperatures were plunging, and the building's boiler system was failing.
"Because this wasn't an accident, this was intentional, and it's intentional by a lack of investment and negligence on the part of the ownership. They simply didn't care," he said. "That's a 12-boiler system,10 out of 12 boilers do not fail all at once. That's a cry for help. That means that this has been broken, or it was being neglected. So, either they knew about it, didn't do anything about it, or they didn't know about it, but either way, it's unacceptable."
Critchlow had jurisdiction because this was a utility issue.
"The utilities are included in the rent for every one of the residents that are living in this building," he said, "so they're not receiving the services they are paying for."
ABC57 confirmed this by obtaining a copy of tenant's lease.
Critchlow formally complained to Indiana's Attorney General's Office, which opened its own investigation in January.
And--- he sent demands to the property owners, Karl King Holdings LLC, and to the property managers, New Jersey-based Treetop Companies.
ABC57 also tried contacting both and never got a reply from the email found for Karl King Holdings, [email protected]. There is also no real website for Aspen Cos, despite a link, aspencos.com, being listed on flyer at the building itself.
A 2014 post on multihousingnews.com quotes two Aspen Cos principals: Adam Mermelstein and Azi Mandel.
These two men are also the listed principals of Treetop Companies.
Treetop repeatedly ignored or declined ABC57's requests for an interview, but eventually sent Annie Kate a statement saying a new $200,000 boiler system was installed and operational by mid-January.
So, this shows local government can step in to fix the heat, but what can it do to fix all the other issues going on?
Critchlow said not much.
"There are only so many things that we can change. We can't change the overall condition of the building. I can't make the owners actually care. I can't provide more tenants' rights to people because we need the State of Indiana to help with that."
The City of South Bend has code enforcement and its building inspection program, but all interview requests with a city representative on this topic were denied. A spokesperson shared with ABC57 that the city issued 28 fines to Karl King's owners since December, totaling $7,000.
"A smack on the wrist and a small fine?" Gadson said. "They can almost write that off."
Gadson says Indiana needs better tenants' laws.
"We need to have more teeth in the law," he said. "There needs to be an escrow account, basically, but that gets voted out every time you go down to Indianapolis."
An escrow account law would mean rent would be withheld from the landlord until certain issues are resolved.
"It's a non-starter in our state house," Critchlow said. "And yeah, I think it's lobbyists. I think it's we have too many legislators that have been there for too long. They got their heads up their asses, and they don't know what the real problems are. They don't really care what the real problems are."
Some have tried recently. State Rep. Maureen Bauer authored a tenants' rights bill last year that went nowhere, and this legislative session, a tenants' rights bill authored by State Sen. David Niezgodski didn't even get assigned to a committee and is already a dead bill.
"There's nothing to protect the people, nothing," Gadson said.
ABC57 went to the state's top office, Gov. Mike Braun, to ask what should be done.
"So, you got to be careful that an overreaction to something, you don't do something that's going to have an unintentional consequence," he said in an interview with ABC57.
Braun would consider himself against big government and regulation, and said he doesn't want one bad landlord to ruin it for the rest.
"Landlords and multi-family investors who supply that kind of housing need to pay attention, or there will always be a push for government to do more," he said.
Meanwhile Gadson thinks government should do more, and said he gets hundreds of complaints a month from residents all around South Bend.
"I would say, if you have a problem, first of all, document," Gadson said. "Time, date, place, person. What's the result of the complaint? Did you do it?"
Without the protection of the law, Gadson says the only solution is to document, document, document.
"If you want to stop predatory landlord stuff, you have to arm yourself to know how to play the game," he said.
Meanwhile, some think there's only one solution.
"They need to take the people out of that building, put them somewhere else, and shut that place down and bulldoze it," Dorothy Underwood said. "I'm not playing."
Treetop Companies, in a statement, claim they've made upgrades and transitioned to a new security firm at Karl King Tower that "better aligns with our expectations for crime prevention and resident support."
They did not respond to Annie Kate's follow-up questions, asking when that transition took place and what security firm was hired. Residents, however, tell ABC57 there is another security staffer, but still, nothing is stopping the ongoing security and safety issues.
One day prior to this piece airing, Treetop Companies sent Annie Kate another response:
"We have absolutely no knowledge whatsoever of any threats or retaliation against residents at Karl King Towers, and we vigorously deny this claim. Management does not threaten residents with eviction for raising concerns or speaking with the media. Such conduct would be entirely inconsistent with both our policies and our obligations under applicable housing regulations."
This contradicts what residents have been telling ABC57 for months.
Meanwhile, the Indiana AG Office's Homeowner Protection Unit is still investigating Karl King Tower.