Whilst Trevor is over there in Yankee Land bringing home the Benjamins, his proud mother resides in Joburg.

She doesn’t just reside, mind you, she is also an estate agent who owns multiple flats in the Hillbrow and CBD areas. Following a two month investigation, she now stands accused of ‘being a slumlord and taking advantage of the poor’.

Let’s run through those allegations with the help of IOL:

Residents have accused her of allowing them to run into a state of disrepair, not paying the city the electricity they have paid for, and getting court orders to execute the properties, often buying them herself when they go on auction.

The residents have opened police cases, gone to court and complained to the city. The City of Joburg’s Virgil James confirmed that complaints had been received about Noah.

“She at some point acted as administrator of a building and the allegation was that she was acting in bad faith,” he said.

A large group of residents in Sunnyridge, Hillbrow, fear that if they don’t have Noah removed as the building administrator, they may eventually lose their homes.

Oh dear.

Now those residents are coming forward in their droves, and some of their stories just ain’t cricket:

“I stay alone and work all day, yet I keep getting an electricity bill of R1 500. It doesn’t make sense to me,” said one resident.

A special levy of R5 400 a unit was introduced to fix the lifts.

“But we can’t see anything that was done. Only one lift works,” said another.

Last year, they received an electricity bill for the building saying they owed more than R1 million to the municipality.

“We wondered where all our money had been going. It was then we decided to stop paying Noah and put our money into paying a good lawyer to get her to leave,” a resident said.

The windows in the building are broken, an electricity wire was used as a washline and parents are terrified their children will fall down the open lift-shaft.

They say Noah built a staircase from the basement to a roof.

“She didn’t get an engineer. She just cut a hole in the concrete. Now the pillars holding up the building are cracking. We are worried the whole building will fall down,” another resident said.

Noah is fighting fire with fire, taking 28 units to the high court in May over non-payment. Amongst her demands were that electricity to said units be cut, as well as the properties declared executable.

A quick run-through of all the properties she owned:

Sunnyridge: 6 units out of 63

Sedgefield: 25 units in the name Patricia Noah and 3 units in her company name, Isacchar

Properties cc, out of 77 units in the building.

Los Angeles: 3 units out of 49

Cornice: 4 units out of 6

Hermanna Court: 5 units out of 50

The units in her name were bought for various prices ranging from six units, which were bought for R100 each to one bought for R150 000. Noah also owns 13 properties in Highlands North.

There’s a full story on that house she bought for R100 and it’s pretty heartbreaking – you can check it out HERE.

So how did she respond when confronted about the irregular happenings?

When contacted for comment, Noah put The Star on hold for four minutes before putting the phone down.

She then sent an email with the subject line “What in the world? Exploring the role of the media in selecting and spinning stories.”

If this whole ‘slumlord’ thing doesn’t work out, she may just have a career in politics.

[source:iol]