Karen Brown has been sleeping in her living room for nearly a month, trying to escape the heat radiating through the rest of her apartment at Valencia Way in Jacksonville's Westside neighborhood. She says the temperature inside has climbed to about 120 degrees since a generator installed in her building on July 3 blew out every air conditioning unit inside.
Valencia Way is a HUD-subsidized housing complex managed by Millennia Jacksonville, according to Action News Jax, which first reported on the outage. Brown lives in building 23, where she says the generator knocked out cooling for the entire building on July 3, and the power in her unit also went out at one point later that month.
A Complaint Filed, a Worker Who Never Showed
Brown filed a complaint with the City of Jacksonville on July 16 after first reporting the outage to the leasing office, and city inspectors later visited the complex twice, she said. Management placed a repair notice on her door and told her AC parts had been ordered and repairs were expected within days, but an AC repair worker failed to appear on the day the fix was scheduled, according to Brown.
Maintenance eventually delivered 12 window units to Brown's building - one for each apartment - but Brown said her unit remained hot even with the mini AC running.
City Issues Two Warnings as Complaints Pile Up
The City of Jacksonville issued Millennia Jacksonville two warnings last Monday, one of which concerned a failure to maintain facilities; on-site management acknowledged the citation, according to the city's response. Jacksonville's Municipal Code Compliance Division currently has 23 active code enforcement cases tied to Valencia Way, about seven of which involve air-conditioning concerns, per the city's response.
The division has conducted more than 400 inspection visits at the complex since 2024, and most of those were initiated by tenant complaints, the city said. City records reflect recurring maintenance complaints involving electrical systems, HVAC, plumbing and other property conditions, according to that same response.
Property Manager Says Repairs Are Coming, but Accounts Diverge
Valencia Way's management says the complex is currently operating on generator power while crews work to restore normal electrical service and complete repairs to the affected central systems. Window units have been distributed to any apartment whose central air isn't working, management said, and those units will stay in place as needed until repairs are finished.
Property management disputes part of Brown's account, saying building 23 has not been without air conditioning for the past month - a claim that conflicts with what Brown described to the outlet about her weeks without working cooling. Millennia Jacksonville has not responded to a request for comment on the discrepancy, and neither has HUD.
A Property With a Troubled Paper Trail
The AC complaints land atop years of federal scrutiny for Millennia. HUD issued a five-year debarment order against Millennia Housing Management and CEO Frank Sinito in March 2024, barring the company from new federal housing contracts through March 2029, after HUD cited nearly $4.9 million in missing or improperly moved funds across subsidized properties, according to WKYC. Federal agents from HUD and the U.S. Department of Agriculture later searched Sinito's Ohio home in October 2024 as part of an ongoing investigation; his legal counsel said at the time that no arrests or charges had been filed.
Separately, federal court filings in 2025 showed HUD had lodged 16 administrative complaints against Millennia-related entities seeking more than $7 million in civil money penalties tied to unauthorized distributions and property maintenance issues, according to the Mid-South Peace & Justice Center. In Jacksonville specifically, the city's Public Nuisance Abatement Board served Millennia with a formal complaint over Valencia Way in January 2024 after repeated violent crime, including homicides and shootings, at the property, mandating remedial safety measures, per News4JAX.
From Eureka Gardens to Valencia Way
Millennia acquired the complex, then known as Eureka Gardens, in 2018 and rebranded it Valencia Way following a ribbon-cutting in August 2021 celebrating a $94 million overhaul across four Jacksonville affordable housing developments, according to The Millennia Companies. That renovation converted 768 total subsidized apartments across the four properties.
The complex's infrastructure troubles predate this summer. In 2019, severe gas pipeline leaks left residents without hot water and forced the installation of temporary shower trailers, prompting city officials to push for revamped low-income housing inspection protocols, News4JAX reported at the time.
What Florida Law Says About AC Repairs
Florida law does not require landlords to install air conditioning, but once it's included in a lease or already exists at move-in, landlords are legally required to keep it working under Florida Statute § 83.51, according to True Patriot Property Management. Under Florida Statute § 83.56, landlords must make a reasonable effort to fix broken AC within seven days of receiving formal written notice from a tenant, per True North Managed - after that window, tenants can pursue proportional rent reductions, withhold rent under strict court procedures, or terminate their lease.
Because Valencia Way is federally subsidized housing, those state and local rules overlap with HUD oversight standards, adding another layer of regulatory scrutiny on top of city code enforcement, per Jacksonville Area Legal Aid, which also notes that Jacksonville's municipal code requires landlords to maintain all existing HVAC systems in safe working condition.
The Heat Makes It Worse
The outages have come during dangerous summer heat that hit Jacksonville in late July, prompting citywide advisories and sending residents without working cooling systems to public libraries for relief, as Hoodline reported in a piece on residents scrambling for library AC. For tenants like Brown, that combination of extreme heat and unresolved repairs has turned a maintenance dispute into an ongoing habitability concern with no clear end date in sight.
