Felony Landlords: How Jacksonville’s Rental Market Is the Wild West

Inside Jacksonville’s broken rental market, where the worst landlords operate unchecked and tenants are left to fend for themselves.

Words by Carmen Macri

In Jacksonville, a handful of landlords are driving an outsized share of the city’s eviction crisis — and they’re doing it with near-total impunity. Just 100 buildings account for a third of all eviction filings in the city, a startling concentration that’s turning housing into a revolving door for thousands of renters. Duval County now holds the grim title of Florida’s eviction capital, and behind the numbers are corporate landlords, many operating from out of state, quietly raking in profits while tenants face mold, broken appliances and rent hikes they can’t afford. With no tenant bill of rights and no real accountability, the system isn’t just broken — it’s working exactly as designed.

Landlords aren’t just kicking tenants out legally under no-cause evictions — they’re doing it while letting their properties rot. We’re talking sagging floors, black mold, broken appliances, rodent infestations, constant break-ins — the kind of conditions that would make most people walk out, if they had anywhere else to go. Tenants file complaints, over and over, and nothing changes — except the rent, which somehow keeps going up.

Jacksonville’s Worst Kept Housing Secret

Evictions might be the headline, and we’ll get to that, but first, let’s talk about some of the worst rental properties in Jacksonville. These places aren’t just rundown—they’re actively neglected, while landlords keep cashing rent checks and turning a blind eye.

Cascade Apartments (formerly Kings Ridge) – Grand Park

Key Issues: Since October 2021, city inspectors have made 149 visits to the property, uncovering 86 code violations—everything from mold and collapsing staircases to rodent infestations. And yet, just $750 in fines have been issued. Meanwhile, tenants are still dealing with rats, roaches and constant water leaks.

How They Avoid Accountability: The fines are laughable — nowhere near enough to force real change. HUD might monitor affordability, but when it comes to basic livability? They’re missing in action. Landlords keep collecting rent while the buildings fall apart, and no one’s holding them to it.

Tree House Apartments – Arlington

Key Issues: Tenants say maintenance is a joke — plumbing problems, busted appliances and no-show repairs are the norm. On top of that, there are constant safety concerns, from car break-ins to unresponsive staff who treat renters more like a problem than people.

How They Avoid Accountability: Work orders get closed without anything actually getting fixed. It’s a pattern: stall, ignore, then pretend it never happened. The goal isn’t to solve the issue — it’s to wear tenants down until they stop asking.

Oaks at Normandy – Westside

Key Issues: Piles of trash, crumbling staircases, pest problems — you name it. Tenants also call out bait-and-switch leasing tactics, outdated appliances that barely work, nonstop maintenance issues like broken ACs and mold, and a serious lack of security. Cameras don’t work, cars get stolen, and management doesn’t seem to care.

How They Avoid Accountability: It’s all a façade. They show off flashy renovated units that no one can actually rent, while the real apartments fall apart. It’s window dressing — meant to impress on tours, not to improve anyone’s living conditions.

Blanchard Apartments – Love Grove

Key Issues: Raw sewage, black mold, rodent infestations — the kind of stuff that makes a place unlivable. That’s exactly what happened here. By October 2022, it got so bad the city condemned the property, and residents were told to pack up and get out within days.

How They Avoid Accountability: Fear is the strategy. With eviction notices flying, tenants stay quiet because speaking up could cost them their homes. So nothing gets fixed. The problems pile up, the rent keeps coming in, and the people in charge keep pretending everything’s fine.

Franklin Arms Apartments – Eastside

Key Issues: Mold, leaking roofs, and rats running wild. Back in July 2018, city inspectors finally stepped in, found multiple units unfit for living, and gave residents just one week to get out.

How They Avoid Accountability: It’s a rinse-and-repeat routine — flip the ownership, slap on a new LLC, throw on a coat of paint, and start the cycle all over again. There’s no serious follow-up, no teeth in enforcement, and definitely, no one lining up to hold these landlords accountable for the damage they leave behind.

This is just a fraction of what the rental market looks like in Jacksonville. These landlords and property managers aren’t in the business of housing people — they’re in the business of squeezing profit out of whoever’s desperate enough to sign a lease. They don’t care if the ceiling leaks, if the AC’s been broken for months, or if your kid’s getting sick from mold in the walls. Complaints pile up, and nothing happens. Tenants are treated like numbers, not people — easy to replace, easy to ignore. As long as the rent payment clears, the rest is just background noise.

Evicted and Ignored

Princeton’s Eviction Lab tracking system released new data about which landlords file the most evictions in Jacksonville. And while the data doesn’t spell out exactly why each tenant gets the boot, in Jacksonville, the usual suspects are at play — missed rent, lease violations or no-cause evictions, which don’t require a reason at all. Florida law makes it easy: three days if you’re behind on rent, seven for breaking a rule, or just 15 days’ notice if you’re month-to-month and the landlord wants you out. It’s all perfectly legal, which is exactly how landlords manage to cycle through tenants so fast in the same handful of buildings.

When the Eviction Lab built its national eviction database, researchers noticed something disturbing: certain landlords kept filing for eviction against the same tenants at the same addresses, month after month, sometimes even for years. This practice, known as “serial eviction filings,” is just another tactic landlords use to squeeze money out of renters through the court system.

Out of the 100 properties driving the bulk of evictions, here are the top 10 with the highest rates. These buildings are mostly clustered in neighborhoods like Arlington and the Westside, areas where corporate-owned rental units dominate the landscape.

Tree House Apartments: 117 filings