Mother and daughter say they are being evicted from apartment for complaining about conditions

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- A mother and daughter are taking a stand in Central Fresno. Their apartment complex is crawling with rats and roaches, the walls are covered in mold, and they claim, they're getting kicked out of their home for complaining about it.

It took two years for Sara Alameda and her mom Sara Salgado to clean up their apartment on Patterson, near Olive and Blackstone in Central Fresno.

"There was rats, poop, and there was pee in the bathroom, and there was mold," said Alameda.

They complained to the property owner, JD Home Rentals, but nothing was done. So they took the complaints to the city in December. Alameda said, after that, pest control was sent in to spray and a few months later her mom received a 60 day notice to vacate the apartment.

"To me, it's not fair that they're kicking us out just because of, that, we are complaining too much."

Management sent Action News a statement saying they're not being evicted because of the maintenance complaints and gave us a list of other possible reasons for eviction. JDHR said it handles 70 service requests a day and was even working on empty apartments while we were at the complex.

Faviola Felix, Alameda's neighbor, said it's odd because she's been waiting for her window to be fixed since last year, her paint is peeling, and there is mold building up on her ceiling. She said she came here for the rent, it was cheap-- but that's no reason to keep us living like this.

Michael Salcedo, who lives next door, said this is all he can afford as well and his apartment came with roaches and bed bugs.

"I was sleeping in the bed, waking up with bed bug bites, with roach bites-- it was nasty," said Salcedo.

And next door to Salcedo, Juana Meza showed us her porch which looked more like a place the rats like to be.

Alameda translated for Meza who explained, "She hears the rats from the bottom, and it goes all the way into the walls."

Alameda said her apartment was just as bad until her mom spoke up, but now that it's clean they're fighting to keep it.

Alamade and her mom said they're not leaving. They'd like to hire an attorney to help them but at this point, they can't afford it.