JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Tenants at several Jacksonville apartment complexes say they’re living in dangerous, deteriorating conditions while paying rising rents to one of the city’s largest landlords.
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The News4JAX I-TEAM has been investigating Jarek Tadla, a Polish-born real estate investor, podcaster, and social media personality who calls himself a successful entrepreneur. On Instagram and YouTube, he showcases a luxury lifestyle and his real estate ventures. But court records and tenant accounts tell a starkly different story.
According to the JAX Rental Housing Project (JHRP), Tadla owns more apartment complexes than anyone else in Jacksonville. Records show at least 14 apartment complexes, along with dozens of LLCs tied to his company, People’s Choice Apartments.
“I could say a lot about Jarek Tadla and the other properties that he owns. His properties tend to have a lot of building code violations, complaints to the code inspector, and also a lot of evictions,” Katie Renzi said, a researcher with the JRHP.
“Entrepreneurs of neglect”
Despite the conditions, renters said they’re still being charged more than $900 a month to live at Tadla’s properties.
“Now $960 for this one, which is not worth it,” one resident told us. “But I don’t have the extra money for moving out. I’m 62. I’m just trying to keep living here until I retire.”
Housing advocate David Jaffee with the JRHP said Tadla’s ownership is part of a troubling pattern.
“This is not an isolated case,” Jaffee said. “There is a kind of investor landlord business model. It involves acquiring properties like this, which Jarek Tadla has done, raising rents, adding fees, but significantly neglecting maintenance. That’s simply a way to reduce costs as much as possible and to extract as much income as they can.”
While tenants report their rents continually rising, housing experts say the money isn’t going back into upkeep.
“They pay $900 a month, and the landlord assumes that they’re essentially doing these tenants a favor, and therefore there’s no reason why they should even expect to be living in conditions that are habitable,” Jaffee said. “To call these people entrepreneurs is kind of a misnomer. We call them entrepreneurs of neglect because essentially, that’s what they’re doing. They’re acquiring properties, they’re neglecting them, and they’re extracting income.”
Mounting lawsuits
Court records show Tadla’s companies face multiple foreclosure lawsuits in Jacksonville. At the Villas at Woodlands, the suit alleges Tadla’s company failed to make mortgage payments starting in February and racked up 10 municipal code enforcement actions — what the lawsuit calls a “property condition default.” Tadla formally denied the allegations in a recent court filing.
There are a dozen open foreclosure lawsuits in Duval County linked to Tadla and his properties.
Earlier this year, Waste Management sued People’s Choice Apartments for nearly $447,000 in unpaid trash bills, though the case was later settled confidentially.
Residents speak out
At the Villas at Woodlands, in a Southeast Jacksonville neighborhood, residents showed the I-TEAM broken mailboxes, overgrown grass, and rotting wood inside their units. Some tenants, who asked not to be identified, said they’ve been without working air conditioning, living with water damage and mildew.
One resident told us her ceiling fan fell through the roof on Labor Day weekend. It took two days for maintenance to come out and fix the issue.
“I was so scared because the electric things, I don’t know how to cut it off. I don’t know anything,” she said. “So I held on until I could get it down, because it was dangling.”
Others say they’ve had to cover cabinets with duct tape to hold rotting wood together and pay hundreds of dollars out of pocket for repairs.
At Virginia Arms on Jacksonville’s Westside, residents told the I-TEAM they face similar problems. The apartment on Jammes Road is also tied to one of Tadla’s LLCs and People’s Choice Apartments.
“They’re quick to put an eviction notice on your door, but they don’t want to come fix nothing,” one tenant said. “If you go in my bathroom, you can smell mildew. My apartment done been broke here. They don’t care.”
Many of the people we spoke with are on Section 8 vouchers, elderly, or disabled, renters with few options in Jacksonville’s tight housing market.
“People are desperate for housing affordability,” Jaffee said. “They settle for whatever they can find that’s affordable, even if it’s unsafe. And that’s the pattern in Jacksonville. We have an investor landlord, slumlord problem.”
What’s next
The I-TEAM submitted a public records request for city code enforcement actions against the Villas at Woodlands. The city returned more than 300 pages of violations dating back to 2019, the year Tadla purchased the property.
The report details repeated code violations and citations, many of which have gone unpaid.
Advocates say stronger code enforcement, a public landlord registry, and more tenant protections are needed to stop the cycle.
News4JAX has repeatedly attempted to contact Tadla and People’s Choice Apartments for comment. We have also visited management offices for his properties, but were met with little or no response from staff.
We will continue tracking these cases and have asked city officials why they allowed these issues to continue for so long.