JEFFERSONVILLE, Ind. (WDRB) -- Marcella Feign sat on her walker Wednesday and watched her washed out car towed away from her home.
The 66-year old-woman lives in one of the 18 bottom-floor units at the M Fine apartments on Spring street in Jeffersonville. She was evacuated Tuesday for the fourth time in a year.
"We said if it happens again we're out of here. I just can't keep losing stuff," Feign said. "This was home, and now it's like you don't feel safe."
It's all senior and disabled residents in the complex, and cellphone video shows how the water poured in through windows and doors.
"It's horrible," said Debbie McMann, who lives on an upper floor of the M Fine complex. "One lady — she's had several strokes, and she can barely walk, and we helped her up to the third floor."
The complex opened in 2018. New Hope services received $11 million in tax credits for the project. Previously, it was a haunted house, and Feign said living there now is scary.Â
"You are afraid you are going to wake up, and your apartment is going to be flooded," she said. "Or you lay there and listen with one ear and one eye open when it's raining to see if it's getting deep."Â
The flooding is the center of a legal fight between the city and developer over who's to blame for the problem.
"I hate the fact that these residents are put out, but the situation is caused by the city's lack of maintenance of the drainage system," said James Bosley, who runs New Hope Services, the developer of the complex.
Bosley has pictures of one of Jeffersonville's nearby clogged drains that he said was taken after the latest flood, but the city's not taking the blame.
"We have a developer that's trying to cover his behind, because he developed a property prone to flood and put elderly people in a basement that floods,"Â Jeffersonville City Attorney Les Merkely said.
M Fine apartments earned approval across the board from Jeffersonville planning and zoning, the building commission and city council.
"Why was this job approved?" WDRB News asked.
"Unless it's in a flood plain, we have no ability not to approve it," Merkley said.
Jeffersonville's Building Commission Larry Wallace said he feared, warned and questioned New Hope Services about flooding throughout the build but admitted the developer's designs met building codes. However, Merkley and Wallace both believe changes to the structure caused the flooding problem.
"Why was concrete block removed in a building that was prone to flooding and that concrete block was replaced with windows that open and shut?" Merkley asked. "And then he's shocked there's water in the basement?"
Both sides are making changes. New Hope is placing residents in nearby properties it owns, with no plans to send the elderly and disabled back for a potential fifth flood.
"We're going to find a permanent fix or they're not going to go back in there," Bosley said.
The city of Jeffersonville is trying to purchase land around the complex and install large underground storm basins.Â
"It may flood again, so we're all frustrated," Feign said. "We all feel like the city doesn't give a squat, and Bosley has gone back on his word."
New Hope Services filed a lawsuit against the city of Jeffersonville over the flooding problem.
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