RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) – A Richmond woman has gone viral on social media after speaking out about the conditions she experienced while living in her Richmond apartment.
Molly Bish said a black “sludge” substance would frequently come up from the sinks inside her apartment unit in the River Lofts at Tobacco Row located in Shockoe Bottom.
Bish said more than 12 times over the two years she lived there, her kitchen and bathroom sinks would get backed up with black sludge which smelled like raw sewage.
“It got the worst than [it] had ever been in August of 2023, which is right around the time I posted the TikTok [in] early September,” Bish said. “Starting in August, I probably didn’t even count all [of] the times because there were days where it was like four or five days of ongoing backups.”
Bish said she tried emailing, calling and going in person to get help from property management, which was all met with no luck and hardly any communication.
“Friends and other tenants in the units would help me with the backups. We all own snakes and tools. I’m not the tools girl,” Bish said. “I didn’t know really what I should be doing in those situations.”
According to Bish, there were only three times where emergency maintenance responded during an active backup in her apartment.
Bish decided to take her frustrations to TikTok and make a video with the hope of raising awareness about what she was going through. As of Dec. 29, the video has gotten close to 400,000 views, resulting in many other River Lofts residents to comment about their own experiences.
Bish said she was able to move out of the unit about 5 days after posting the video.
“Life has been a lot better since I’ve been sludge-free. But the weight of hearing what other tenants are still going through, that definitely still weighs on me. I got really lucky and I got to leave. And I just hope that other people who are experiencing the neglect, they get to do the same,” Bish said.
In a statement sent to 8News, a spokesperson from Brookfield Properties, the corporate office for the River Lofts, said the issue in Bish’s unit was resolved in September — around the time that she moved out.
The backups in the apartment unit were believed to be caused by pieces of plastic obstructing the drains, according to the spokesperson for Brookfield Properties.
The spokesperson for Brooksfield Properties also said, “we take any reported tenant issue very seriously and work to resolve them as quickly as possible.”
