Fayetteville apartment complex files lawsuit against homeowners providing housing to homeless

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (KNWA/KFTA) — A Fayetteville couple who has housed people experiencing homelessness on their property are now facing a lawsuit.

Richard and Gladys Tiffany have battled with the city of Fayetteville for multiple years after being denied a conditional use permit to operate a campsite on their property.

Now the Tiffanys are being sued by SZ Fayetteville Apartments LLC, which owns Alight Fayetteville on South School Avenue.

According to documents, the lawsuit comes after the Tiffanys “encouraged the operation of their property as a campsite for persons experiencing substance abuse challenges and/or homelessness.”

It also reads that they “allowed countless numbers of such persons, sometimes dozens at a time, on their property as well as inside the … building without adequate sanitation, food, clean drinking water, heating, cooling, electricity, code-compliant plumbing, an adequate sewage system; a functioning ventilation system, or waste collection,” for more than five years.

SZ Fayetteville Apartments LLC alleges that the living conditions and abundance of people at the property caused a nuisance for residents at Alight.

The “campsite and building have become a haven for disorderly conduct and scourge of the neighborhood, as individuals who inhabit the … property have committed multiple crimes against nearby residents and property owners, including trespass, vandalism, robbery, and harassment,” the suit states.

Emma Martin is a senior at the University of Arkansas. She says during her sophomore year, she had to find a place to live last minute, and Alight was the only complex that still had openings.

“I ended up moving there just purely because I had to. I had no other place to live,” Martin said.

She says it quickly became apparent to her why there were so many open spots.

“One time I got woken up at 3 a.m. just from a woman screaming just right outside my window… I used to call my mom crying because I was like, ‘I don’t want to live here anymore,'” Martin said.

Just across from her old apartment unit the home owned by Richard and Gladys Tiffany. Richard Tiffany says they have owned the four-plex since 2002, even living there for eight years. During that time, an encounter with a homeless veteran made Tiffany sympathetic to their situation.

“A guy that moved in soon after we left asked me, ‘Is it all right if I let a homeless person sleep on the front porch?’ And I said ‘Well, as long as they’re not bothering people,'” said Richard Tiffany. “He was a disabled Vietnam vet and for the next nine years, almost every night there was one or two homeless people camped on the porch.”

Richard Tiffany says that one person quickly turned into 10 or 12 looking for a place to sleep, a plan that the city was not happy about. On May 2, 2023, the city of Fayetteville passed an ordinance that would require Tiffany to apply for a conditional use permit. However, they denied his permit, forcing him to close the campground.

“The last tent went down in 2023,” said Richard Tiffany. He says there has been no camping at the site since.

Richard Tiffany also says that despite the lawsuit containing various reports of criminal activity, he does not believe the people on the property are criminals, but rather just people trying the best they can.

“When somebody flees, they run across the street. But that doesn’t mean that anybody at my place is involved in the illegal activity. It just means that we live across the street. There’s some people assume that people are homeless because they’re criminals and drug users. Most people that are homeless that I run into have mental health issues or physical disabilities and are struggling to get by and are good people trying to do the best they can,” said Richard Tiffany.

He says when the campsite was running, a couple of the people who lived at the property were schizophrenic women who just need to be looked after.

“The last couple of years there, there were three Schizophrenic women that were living there, and the homeless community there looked after three Schizophrenic women. Looking after one is a huge job. Three is unimaginable for most people, and they did a good job looking after these women… I really think that the homeless people there, when there was a homeless camp, were some of the most loving, caring people I’ve met in my life,” said Richard Tiffany.

According to the suit, Fayetteville police responded to the home 230 times between April 2021 and June 2024. However, Tiffany claims that most of the accusations have no evidence, and he believes that the court will see as well.

“I think we’ll be found innocent of all of the charges. It’s going to be a pain to have to deal with. Finding an attorney isn’t cheap, and making up stuff about your neighbors so that they have to pay legal expenses is not the way to deal with the kind of problems that we’re having there,” said Richard Tiffany.

In the meantime, Martin says she’s glad the apartment is finally taking action, but she’s not sure she’d consider living there again.

“I’m grateful that they’re actually able to recognize the fact that there is an issue,” said Martin.

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