A notorious bug house in Valparaiso, Indiana is being demolished.
A family concerned about their son’s living conditions at a downtown hotel claim the location is plagued by rodents, insects, maintenance issues and safety concerns.
The Smallwood Hotel is located at 1255 Commerce Avenue in downtown Longview, nestled between The Pet Works store and Bigfoot Screens printer. A single obscure glass door is the only visible evidence that the store exists.
After a bout of homelessness, Andrew Casciato, 36, was sent to the Smallwood Hotel by his case manager.
Andrew says he served in the army and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and other issues. His six-month stay in Smallwood has exacerbated his mental health problems. “This place deepened my depression,” Casciato said.
Since his arrival, he has been locked outside his room, locked in his room, spotted cockroaches and rodents in the common areas, and suffered from bug bites on his arms and legs.
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“A few days after moving in, I started getting bed bugs. Later I started seeing cockroaches… I’m afraid [I’m] I’m going to get a disease or something,” Andrew said.
The shared shower at the Smallwood Hotel is missing some tiles.
Matthew Esnaira
On May 8, Andrew’s sister, Rebecca, emailed the Cowlitz County Health Department, saying, “There’s mold and rust everywhere! The walls are falling apart!” and that “a bug problem has arisen since my brother”.
The apartment is more like a dormitory, consisting of a bed, a television and various objects. Kitchen, bathroom and shower are shared with other tenants.
A small gray space heater, the size of a toaster oven, is Andrew’s only source of heat. There were times when his mother had to quickly bring a blanket to him because of the low temperatures. Because of the bad conditions in the kitchen, he cooks in his room with an air fryer.
As he’s been vocal in his criticism, he believes he’s “been getting more bullshit” from hotel management.
One of the hotel’s earliest appearances in The Daily News was a 2009 article that described the hotel as “a derelict tenement building,” that the building is falling apart, and that the facility lacks proper heating and water, and fire safety measures.
The hotel has been owned by the Reid family since 1998. In 2009, the city closed the hotel on the grounds that the home was “imminently dangerous to the health, safety, morale and general welfare of residents,” Longview’s director of community development, John Brickey, was quoted as saying.
Donna Elam, 59, Andrew’s mother, told The Daily News that if she brought up the bed bug problem with Chris, he would blame Andrew: “That [bedbugs] going on since Andrew moved in.”
Christopher Reid told The Daily News: “Yes, we’ve had a few [bedbugs]but we go through the rooms and take care of it.”
Reid said: “We have machines that take care of that. That heats up the room, 150 degrees, 140 degrees. So, we get [them] occasionally, but it is not infested. [If] that’s what you want to know.”
Donna was once a truck driver but is now disabled and has described the hotel as “inhuman”.
Former Smallwood owner Christopher Reid, who once owned and operated the Pit Shop, pleaded guilty in 2013 to selling meth on two separate occasions to a whistleblower working on behalf of federal police.
Reid told the Daily News he transferred ownership of the hotel to his children “years ago” and he is the hotel’s “maintenance man.”
Federal prosecutors found that Reid rented rooms to drug addicts while also selling narcotics to users.
The Daily News reported that Reid was selling meth for Jesus Antonio Madrigal-Ceja, a major drug trafficker who worked primarily in the Pacific Northwest.
According to the US Attorney’s Office press release dated February 22, 2013. Reid’s hotel “had a reputation in the community for hosting drug addicts, … Given Reid’s drug dealings, the fact that he ran a hotel for drug addicts is an aggravating factor that court should.” into account in sentencing Reid.”
Despite calls for the hotel to close by city officials, complaints from tenants about health issues, and one owner being sentenced to federal prison as a drug dealer, the hotel remains active and open.
The Daily News received a 2021 temporary accommodation inspection report from the Washington State Department of Health and Human Services that lists Samuel Reid as the hotel’s owner.
The inspector wrote that he observed a “mold-like substance” in the shared kitchen, bathroom and shower. He looked at “Damage [the] wall next to it [the] Toilet in upstairs shared bathroom” and reported damage to the drywall of the kitchen.
Noting that the hotel’s fire extinguishers were last inspected in March 2017, the inspector wrote, “This is a CRITICAL INJURY.”
Reid said the extinguishers were “brand new” and had been installed “a few months ago.”
The assessment by the assessor did not include any residents’ rooms, as these were occupied during the assessment.
Andrew’s father, Jay Casciato, 63, said: “There is an ongoing problem with infestations by bedbugs, cockroaches and more recently rats.”
Jay Casciato has described both Reids as slumlords. He said his son and other residents “are living in appalling conditions” and feel “this [owners] and managers take full advantage of and [don’t] worrying about nothing but collecting the rent!” said Casciato.
“If I get a complaint, I address it immediately,” Reid said. Jay Casciato and Elam said they reported the hotel to state and local authorities, but “it’s been a few months and still nothing [has] done,” said Casciato.
Reid doesn’t hire an exterminator because “I get into it more than they do” and “the whole town is infested with them… They’re all over Longview. They’re in almost every hotel, you know, they come and they go.”
Mr Reid said authorities inspected the hotel a month and a half ago. However, Washington State Department of Health spokesman Shelby Anderson told the Daily News that the DOH received a complaint against the Smallwood Hotel, but the “inspector has not yet had access to the facility.”
Anderson said that “DOH is also attempting to conduct a follow-up inspection to document fixes after the last inspection in 2021.”
DOH inspections are not pass-fail assessments, but under state law, the Department of Health and Human Services has the power to revoke, suspend, and even deny a license.
The Smallwood Hotel’s current owner, Samuel Reid, has been contacted for comment but has yet to respond to the request.
When asked if anything would change, Andrew replied with a confident “no”, saying he plans to move out of the hotel as soon as possible.
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