from mold to a roach infestation tenants of a housing complex in Camden are fed up with disgusting living conditions that they say have been neglected for too long All American Gardens Apartments is owned by Nationwide housing management its founder Joe Caruso denies any wrongdoing and says he blames the city and tenants so who's responsible for providing a safe living environment for these residents Ted Goldberg reports I don't deserve this my children don't deserve this the people of this community does not deserve anything that's going on Desiree Vega has lived in All-American Gardens for about five years she says because of her landlord life there is a nightmare my wall has caved in and you hear a faucet behind my wall I have no um socket inside my fuse I have holes from the mouses eating through the wall and my landlord is telling me to put brillo pads inside other tenants have made similar complaints about Nationwide housing management mint a Camden county-based company in charge of these 86 units the mole got so vicious that I don't know what was going on in here they were breaking out they were coughing they were having trouble sleeping catching their breath when they're waking up like upper respiratory like crazy that zida Kellum says at one point a mushroom was growing into her apartment and that she's dealt with mice and roaches for years they were coming out of the sink Falls it's the tub faucet they were coming up in the in the toilet it's to the point that I'm sleeping in the bed with my two children and I'm scared because even though we're sleeping in the same bed together we still having stuff crawling on us it's been hell I don't have company at all period I'm on a constant cleaning like this is a major job every single day City officials toured the building on Wednesday and tell me they're in the process of issuing fines over the past week one resident has been moved to another Nationwide property because the infestation was so bad the crawl space was infested with the roaches and the Exterminator was there but he was overwhelmed there was a lot of infrastructure damage there uh I would say most of what we saw there was uh the owner I don't care how he tries to spend this he's not doing what he's supposed to do and we're going to make sure he steps up to fix the Myriad of problems that he has he is Joe Caruso the founder of Nationwide this is what I got to deal with as a landlord in the city of Camden okay and this is where we get zero help from the health department and the mayor and everybody else that comes here and says that I'm a slum Lord while the city blames him he blames the city and residents for these issues Caruso showed us an apartment belonging to someone in the middle of eviction proceedings This Is How They Live he says it's become difficult to evict tenants that don't take care of their property when we have tenants that are dirty they can cite the tenant and say clean up your unit if they're hoarding if they're dirty that affects everybody in the building Caruso says there are other issues at play like the previous owner of these buildings we've certainly inherited some issues here okay we've only owned this building for a few years okay it was owned by the Altman group for 35 years prior to that a lot of roof leaks a lot of plumbing leaks and which we've been going through and fixing replacing valves replacing pipes we've done a lot of underground work Caruso says Nationwide has spent more than a million dollars in improvements across these buildings but if these fines rack up he could face more financial problems while residents deal with these damages and live with them in Camden I'm Ted Goldberg NJ Spotlight News