Broken promises: A plan for housing in Charlotte left tenants scrambling for help

When Natasha Perry learned of Vermelle’s Place, it felt like a place she could call home and focus on recovering from homelessness and health problems — all at a price she could afford.

She had been living in her car and homeless shelters for over a year.

Vermelle’s Place was billed as temporary supportive housing at a renovated former hotel that cost $650 monthly and included, among other things, on-site health services, counselors and a housing specialist.

But that’s not what Perry found after she moved in to the hotel near I-85 in northwest Charlotte.

Instead, Perry and five other residents who spoke with the Charlotte Observer discovered their rooms had poor plumbing, leaking ceilings, cockroaches and water they didn’t feel comfortable drinking.

Their rent was $975 per month, not $650, and none of the programs they expected were available.

When they raised concerns, they received confusing answers from the people in charge. The tenants were left wondering who they were supposed to pay rent to each month, where else they might go and, perhaps most importantly, what happened?

Months later, residents are still looking for answers and desperate to get out of the hotel they once viewed as an escape from homelessness. But most are without options.

“I just need stability,” said Perry, who had just undergone surgery when she spoke with the Observer from her room in May. “I need to know that I have somewhere that I can rest after I get off from work.”

Some of their hopes stemmed from an article published by an LGBTQ news website in Charlotte.

The QNotes Carolinas article published in early December 2023 describes the opening of a supportive housing program run by a nonprofit called Quality Comprehensive Health Center and the services that would be available to tenants. An official with the nonprofit was quoted in the story saying it would be transitional housing that would also provide mental health services and help with medical treatment.

But a Charlotte Observer investigation found that the nonprofit never actually started Vermelle’s Place, instead ending its plan over financial concerns and the hotel’s condition.

Despite these concerns, the nonprofit’s former CEO, Lisa Wigfall, who left in January, pushed forward with moving tenants into the Lamplighter Inn on Eddleman Road starting that same month. She said she did so via her for-profit company, 4C, and with the help of an employee. This summer, when 4C’s relationship with the hotel came to an end, tenants were left to deal with the hotel’s owner.

The tenants’ predicament illustrates how people in Charlotte who might be on the cusp of homelessness can struggle to find a decent place to live.

A plan for low-cost housing that promised help

Wigfall founded the nonprofit Quality Comprehensive Health Center in Charlotte about 20 years ago, its website says. That’s the nonprofit that came up with the plan for Vermelle’s Place.

An archived page on the nonprofit’s website from December lists what it hoped to achieve at the Lamplighter Inn with Vermelle’s Place:

“Vermelle’s Place stands as a beacon of hope in Charlotte, NC, offering a safe haven for individuals in need of transitional housing. With its 50 well-appointed units, this facility aims to bridge the gap between homelessness and permanent housing, providing residents with the stability and support necessary to rebuild their lives.”

It listed offerings like a 90-bed transitional housing program, case management services, group activities, financial management and career coaching groups.

It also said that Wigfall was inspired by her mother, Vermelle Matthews, and decided to name the program after her.

Wigfall’s company 4C is based in Concord. The company provides in-home health care services, its website says. 4C is the company that placed tenants this year after the nonprofit opted not to move forward.

Wigfall declined to be interviewed for this story but provided a statement through her Matthews attorney, Doug Banks, and also provided information to the Observer in two text messages.

“Certainly 4C regrets that there were some issues in the transitional housing which did not meet the expectations of either the residents or 4C,” the statement said. “While 4C made numerous requests for these issues to be addressed and expended its own funds in order to make some repairs, a number of issues remained at the time 4C’s relationship with the hotel ended.”

But some of the tenants say they never understood what was going on. They thought they were moving into a transitional housing facility with services, getting information either from the QNotes article or from a counselor who referred them. And living conditions got bad, they said.

Ellen Miller and Eveco Haggins, a married couple, spoke with the Observer on a rainy day in May from their two king-sized beds about their experiences at the hotel since moving in in March.

The beds and the dressers that came with the room took up the majority of their space. Their belongings were stacked along the walls around them in an attempt to carve out a path between the front door, their beds, and the bathroom and sink at the back of the room.

For Miller, who needs assistance getting up and moving around, the room and bathroom can prove treacherous.

Haggins, who is Miller’s caretaker, has to help her when using the toilet or bath. But the spaces are so tight that she and Miller are anxious about the potential for serious injury from a fall.

“If I fall I’m really screwed,” Miller said. “I have a spinal cord stimulator and if that gets hit right, I’m dead.”

Like Natasha Perry, Miller and Haggins thought they found their break at Vermelle’s Place. The couple had been living at a housing unit meant for those experiencing chronic homelessness.

While there, Miller and Haggins said they sometimes felt unsafe, experienced conflicts with the managers who ran the site, and lived near neighbors who used drugs. They began looking for a new place to live.

In February, Haggins began meeting with a counselor at Pivotal Health Center in Charlotte. During that meeting, Haggins said she told her counselor that she and her wife were looking for a place to live that could accommodate Miller’s needs.

By coincidence, Haggins said, her counselor had recently learned of a new supportive housing program. Reading about Vermelle’s Place’s services and low cost, Haggins was convinced it was exactly what they were looking for. With the help of her counselor, she applied and was approved the same day.

When they received a link containing information about moving in, they were confused. Rent would cost them $975 per month, instead of $650. And they needed to pay $150 for the application fee, Haggins said, and $975 to move in.

The couple was desperate to find another place to live and decided to pay the deposit. However, Miller said, things immediately seemed off.

Despite Miller’s lack of mobility, a man named Bradley Wallace tried to put them in a room on the second floor. Miller and Haggins said Wallace introduced himself as someone they could come to for help. They thought he worked for the hotel, but he works for Wigfall’s for-profit company, 4C.

They objected to the room, pointing to Miller’s health concerns, and were moved into a first-floor room. But that room had cracked and leaking ceilings. So they were moved into a different first-floor room, Miller said, that had low water pressure and faulty electricity.

In early March, Miller reached out to Wigfall directly on Facebook, according to screenshots shared with the Observer. She expressed her concerns with the conditions of the hotel and its owner, and the safety of the area.

“Unfortunately, we are unable to control the owner’s behavior and demeanor. It is certainly not us,” Wigfall replied in a Facebook message to Miller, referring to the hotel owner. “We will continue to advocate for the hotel’s guests. I appreciate your message.”

Communication with Wallace became infrequent, the couple said, and he appeared at the property less over time. Wallace declined to comment on the couple’s allegations.

Not sure of what else they could do, Miller and Haggins turned to the city for help and made a report of the alleged violations to the Code Enforcement office.

On May 14, when they first spoke with the Observer, a Code Enforcement worker came out to view their shower. Miller said she was concerned that it wasn’t properly grouted, and that if she pressed too hard on it while trying to get up, it would break apart and she’d end up injured.

Now, Miller said, she and her wife can’t help but feel they got scammed.

“I stay out of this room for a reason”

Dajah Foster, 21, was looking for a place to live with her boyfriend and newborn son when she learned about Vermelle’s Place.

Her boyfriend’s mother learned through a Facebook friend that there was a former hotel where people could rent rooms at an affordable monthly rate. That family friend was mutual friends with Wallace, Foster said, and saw a post he made early this year about Vermelle’s Place on Facebook.

And when the couple asked Wallace about it, it seemed like a good solution.

“All he said was, ‘Hey, me and this lady we went in on a place … We have a certain amount of rooms and the first people that come in can come in and take the rooms. Everything’s fine, it’s newly renovated. Everything’s clean,’” Foster said.

They applied and moved in the next day, in January of this year, with their son who was less than a week old at the time, Foster said. The young family was the first to move in, she said.

But none of it was like they expected. Foster said she expected Wi-Fi and clean, renovated rooms, but that wasn’t the case.

“I was supposed to start working from home,” Foster said. “I already had a job set up and everything but they don’t have Wi-Fi and I can’t get my own Wi-Fi here because they said that they don’t want anybody messing with the power lines,” she said.

Speaking with the Observer in late May, Foster sat with her son, at that point a few months old, on the single king mattress they shared with her boyfriend. The curtains were drawn and the lights off. Her A/C unit was running, but was hardly pushing out any air.

Holding her son close while he watched kids shows on their TV, Foster said she felt frustrated with what she viewed as broken promises.

“I stay out of this room for a reason. Me and my child’s father, we have two cars now. When he’s gone, I’m out of here. It’s nasty in here,” Foster said.

During the interview, she spotted a cockroach crawling on her dresser and crushed it with her sandal. “It doesn’t matter how much I clean. It’s always disgusting.”

The water pressure in her room is poor, she said. The bathtub takes a long time to fill up, and then a long time to drain. At one point, the tub stopped working for a while, so she was forced to use a small tub she got from the hospital to wash her and her son.

Things in her room either took a long time to get fixed, like leaky pipes, Foster said, or don’t get fixed at all. She said the room didn’t have carbon monoxide detectors.

She said she finally reached out to the city about the problems. But, like Miller and Haggins, that’s when the dynamic shifted with the people running the hotel and with Wallace, she said.

Wallace “was like ‘You’re gonna make me lose my job. Y’all weren’t the only ones that don’t want to pay but I really need the money from y’all so I can go pay them for the room,’” Foster said. “And I’m like, ‘You’re not understanding. Y’all have us in a terrible situation. I have a child in here, y’all aren’t fixing anything.”

Wallace declined to comment on Foster’s allegations.

Another tenant who spoke to the Observer said he took it upon himself to fix his own tub and toilet because the room was so bad. He questioned why it would cost $975 a month.

The rent collector blamed the hotel owner

Wallace, an employee at 4C — Wigfall’s company — agreed to be interviewed for this story in June. He backed out after Beverly Smothers, the company’s operations manager, said a lawyer would need to be present. It was Wigfall’s policy that no media interviews take place without a lawyer, Smothers said.

Perry — the woman who had been living in her car — and other residents said Wallace helped them with the application process and collected rent.

Many paid with cash, but Wallace also accepted payments with apps like CashApp.

About a month after moving in, Perry said, she asked him when the programs and services were going to get started, and he told her he was in contact with people to get them started soon.

Wallace told Perry “there’s going to be a doctor on call, a nurse on call, a housing specialist. You can get help with Medicare, all this stuff,” she said. “Well, here it is. I’ve been here five months and there hasn’t been no service.”

Perry, because of her surgery, was out of work and unable to pay rent for June. When she asked Wallace for a receipt or document with her rent and address so she could find a way to get help with the payment, he told her he couldn’t because the owner didn’t feel comfortable providing that paperwork.

Perry needs another surgery soon but said she’s been delaying it because she wants to make sure she has a place to recover.

Perry said she told Wallace: “So you’re telling me I moved here for nothing?” He was like, ‘Well, you moved here because you were homeless. And I gave you a place to stay.’”

Tenants said they were left even more confused when they received the message around late April telling them services weren’t going to be happening.

“I know you guys been going through a lot at the hotel and I’m deeply apologetic to it all! I brought you guys over thinking we would be having a safe and secure place! It started off great until we lost half the hotel and it went down hill,” part of the text message from Wallace said. “Sad to say Vermelle’s Place it is no longer!”

He told them they should continue paying rent to him.

On his personal Facebook page, Wallace made several posts between January and April about Vermelle’s Place that show he was eventually unhappy with the hotel owner who had partnered with 4C to move tenants in.

In January, Wallace made three posts about the opening.

“My boss lady has let me over see a 50 room hotel,” Wallace’s post on Jan. 12 said in part. “For starters it’s between $750-$1000/ monthly! Medicaid recipients can also receive home health care through the agency! These rooms has been remodeled and don’t let the area fool ya!”

By March, Wallace wrote on Facebook that the hotel had been filled and that he was being offered the opportunity to fill another one.

But on April 27, Wallace made a post in which he said things had broken down between him and the hotel’s owner.

“He’s not fixing anything and it has gotten to the point we gotta pull out! I will not place people in an unsafe place,” the post said.

The hotel owner says he does a good job

The hotel is currently owned by Comodo Care LLC, which is owned by Chandresh Patel. He agreed to partner with Wigfall and her company 4C to move in tenants.

Patel spoke with the Observer this month about his property. He denied most of the charges the tenants have made about the condition of their rooms, and said others were greatly exaggerating the problems.

“I have multiple hotels, so I have almost 15 years of experience of running the hotel, so it’s not like I’m brand new buying this hotel,” he said.

He said people staying at the hotel will call the county to report things, the county will come out and investigate, and then renters will stop paying rent.

The challenges are usually minor, he said, like a leaking toilet or replacing a smoke detector, and it usually gets done within a day. He disputed that any room would be missing something like smoke and carbon monoxide detectors because he keeps them stocked at the hotel, he said.

For things like air conditioning problems, he said, he works as quickly as he can, but it can take time to fix since it depends on things like getting replacement parts covered by warranty.

Since purchasing the hotel, he said he has invested more than $400,000 in upgrades. That’s included new floors, toilets and furniture, Patel said.

Tenants give reasons for not wanting to pay rent, he said. If they were unhappy with their rooms he would have been willing to work with them, he said. They could request to move into a new one, he said, or find a different place to live.

“This hotel is a very nice hotel,” he said. “Open the door, you go inside, and you will realize this is not a junk hotel.”

Patel purchased the hotel for $1.2 million in 2020, according to property records.

City Code Enforcement documents between 2020 and 2024 show a history of problems at the hotel.

An inspector documented in 2021 that many rooms had no hot water, had signs of pests and infestations, and plumbing problems. Some were missing carbon monoxide detectors. Another was missing a toilet, while another had no functioning sink.

But by the summer of 2023, every room inspected was found to be in compliance, and code violations were corrected.

However, several tenants living in the hotel have described similar conditions to the Observer this year as those described in documents from 2021. Some who filed complaints with the city and were sent code enforcement hearing dates.

As they tried to make their problems known to the city, their relationship with Patel got worse, the six tenants who spoke to the Observer said.

Wigfall’s former nonprofit distances itself from her

Wigfall acknowledges she had a history with the Lamplighter Inn.

Ra’Shawn Flournoy is currently the executive director of the nonprofit Quality Comprehensive Health Center, where he last year worked under Wigfall when she was CEO to come up with the plan for Vermelle’s Place. He said he was surprised to hear Wigfall continued the plan on her own because the nonprofit hadn’t moved forward.

The nonprofit did place five people at the hotel last year who needed substance-abuse treatment, with its staff on site to help them, Flournoy said. But that was a separate program.

It came about last year after someone recommended the Lamplighter Inn to Wigfall, he said. The nonprofit signed a lease with Patel in August.

But on Oct. 9, 2023, Flournoy emailed Patel with concerns about bugs, poor water drainage, and lack of security. The nonprofit ended its lease Dec. 29 and moved the five people into different housing, helping them with rent, Flournoy said.

What happened at the hotel after that was Wigfall’s doing, Flournoy said. He said that since leaving in January, she has not been involved with the nonprofit, which receives millions in grant money. (The nonprofit’s offices remain in a building Wigfall owns, however, and she has offices there too).

He said he found it disheartening to hear about the tenants’ experiences and the confusion around Vermelle’s Place.

“I had absolutely no idea about that, because I can assure you that none of the people that are … tenants with them are clients of ours,” Flournoy said. “Quality [the nonprofit] stepped away from that process or that program back in the end of December.”

After the nonprofit lease ended in December, Patel said, Wigfall approached him about trying to run a new program there with tenants. He said he wanted to help house vulnerable people and was open to the partnership, but he and Wigfall never had a contract.

Wigfall and Wallace brought about 10 people in, he said.

But as Patel waited each month to receive the rent money from Wallace, he was never given the full amount, he said. And eventually, he said, the payments stopped coming and Wallace and Wigfall stopped answering his calls and messages.

Since then, his business has suffered, he said. Because the tenants are not paying rent, and because he can’t rent those rooms out, it’s difficult to pay utility bills and Internet for the hotel.

He said he’s become a “victim” because tenants fight with him and report his hotel to code inspectors. He said he’ll allow them to miss a month or two of rent but he can’t let people stay for free.

Smothers, Wigfall’s employee at 4C, said in late June that Wigfall couldn’t do an interview because she was living in the Caribbean.

The statement Wigfall provided for this story said the Lamplighter Inn was chosen because of its location, price and the limited number of hotels open to partnering.

According to the statement, Wigfall’s company, 4C, agreed to leasing 10 rooms. The company would pay $550 a month, and residents $975. Over time, the goal was to fill 16 rooms.

Wigfall said Patel’s statement about her company failing to pay him in full was false.

“Perhaps naive,” Wigfall said in a text message to the Observer. “But I truly thought I could help my/our unhoused neighbors.”

Asked about the hotel owner’s comments, Wallace told the Observer in a text message that the focus shouldn’t be on 4C, but rather on the hotel owner. He and Wigfall, he said, made an effort to help people and tried to make Vermelle’s Place work. But the owner wouldn’t fix things, and pushed them out of the partnership, he said.

“Nobody was forced into anything they came to us for somewhere to stay and I explained it all to them to the best of my ability,” Wallace wrote. “I hate how this (ended) up because we poured into that place to help everyone that’s there.”

Wigfall’s statement responded to many of the claims tenants made, saying they could have received a copy of their lease agreements if they requested them. It also said Vermelle’s Place never “promised specific services” to tenants moving in, but tenants were advised on where and how to get services.

“Certainly to the extent any of the residents read the article in Qnotes and assumed 4C would offer services similar to those which Quality [the nonprofit] hoped to offer, 4C regrets that it did not prepare or circulate a similar news release which explained the manner in which 4C intended to operate the transitional housing community,” the statement said.

Wallace did not receive any money from rent collected, the statement said. His pay and benefits came from Wigfall’s company. He and Wigfall also used their personal funds to buy food, televisions and linens for people they placed at the Lamplighter, Wigfall’s statement said.

The company incurred losses this year during its time at the hotel, Wigfall’s statement said, and she said her company never received any grants or federal funding for Vermelle’s Place. Rent money the company collected went toward furnishing rooms, making minor repairs, or paying for exterminating services.

In May, Patel ended the relationship with 4C, the statement said, and told six remaining residents placed by Wigfall to pay rent directly to him.

An uncertain future for tenants

Miller and Haggins, the couple whose counselor referred them to Vermelle’s Place, may not have to live in the hotel much longer. Miller found another affordable housing program. She is going through the process and is expecting to move into a new apartment with Haggins soon.

But for the other tenants, the path forward is unclear.

For some, despite the cockroaches and leaking ceilings, the hotel is preferable to the alternative: being homeless. The opportunity to escape housing insecurity is what drew Perry in, she said. But now, she said, she feels like she and others were taken advantage of for $975 per month.

“I was in such a desperate situation that I gave it to them. Because I had nowhere else to go.”

Do you have information about housing in Charlotte? Email reporter Jeff A. Chamer at jchamer@charlotteobserver.com

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