Officials inspect apartment complex

Some residents of the Hamptons apartment complex have learned to live with a few inconveniences, like cockroaches crawling on their walls, garbage disposals leaking filthy water and occasionally having their hot water shut off.

"I think it's gross," said Stephanie Miramontes, who has lived at the apartment complex on Nellis Boulevard near Sahara Avenue since August.

The Hamptons was at the center of a county inspection effort on Tuesday morning because of problems at the 452-unit complex, authorities said.

About 70 Las Vegas police officers, county fire and health inspectors and code enforcement officers walked through the 24-acre complex and into units, where they checked for code violations.

Known as the Community Multi-Agency Response Team, the collection of officials meets about once a month to conduct inspections at properties in the county.

On Tuesday morning, the team went through the Hamptons apartments, talking to residents and listing problems that included dirty air conditioning filters, dog feces on the ground and water damage inside apartments.

"This is one of the worst big apartment complexes" in the area, Las Vegas police Sgt. Anthony Longo said.

Besides the code violations, Longo said, the apartment complex has been a headache for police. Since the start of March 2006, Las Vegas police received 846 calls from people about burglaries, robberies, domestic violence situations and other complaints at the Hamptons.

Longo said the three neighboring apartment complexes combined did not have as many police calls as the Hamptons.

Miramontes did not have any problems with crime, but she did have complaints about the condition of her $760-a-month, two-bedroom apartment that she shares with her five children.

Cockroaches and water damage top her list of problems. A leaking upstairs apartment had damaged the walls and floor of her children's room, leaving the carpet soggy and a distinct smell of mold inside.

At least a dozen cockroaches were crawling on the walls and kitchen floor of her apartment Tuesday morning while health inspectors from the county examined Miramontes' apartment.

"If you give me a paper towel, I'll kill it (the cockroach), compliments of the Clark County Health District," said one inspector as she bent down to look at one of the critters crawling over a couch. Moments later, the inspector followed through.

Miramontes showed inspectors that her apartment did not have a smoke alarm. She said the complex's staff took the smoke alarm away a week and a half ago after it malfunctioned. They never returned with another.

Two managers at the Hamptons would not comment Tuesday on the conditions of the apartment complex.

The apartment is owned by the Hampton Apartments, Inc., based in Los Angeles, according to the Clark County assessor's site. The owners could not be located.

Robert Urzi, environmental health supervisor with the county health district, said some of the violations found, such as the lack of hot water in one unit, needed to be fixed within 24 hours. Other violations needed to be taken care of within seven days, or the county could take further action such as meeting with the owners, he said.

But he said that the violations were not so severe that units needed to be closed.

Urzi also said that compared with some complexes he had seen, the Hamptons wasn't too bad.

"The issues we came across weren't very major; we didn't have any closures," he said. "We've seen far worse."