Stinky Situation for Palm Desert Shoe Repair

A stinky situation has made for quite a sticky situation for Palm Desert Shoe Repair. The owner says she’s been wrongly evicted, while her landlord says he’s tried to clear the air, but now it’s time to leave.

Saida Schneider has been in the shoe repair business in Palm Desert, for 24 years. She moved from her old location by Pete Carlson’s off of Hwy 111, to this new location, on Las Palmas Avenue, July first. Now, she says after complaining about the smell coming from the shop, her landlord Ira Boiko, of Boiko Realty and Property Management took her to court and now she has to leave. Boiko tells us, “The smell has been just brutal, being in the office here. Your eyes hurt. You get a headache. It’s just toxic.”

Schneider disagrees. She says, “I’ve never become sick. My clients have never become sick. No one has ever complained except this gentleman right here who has it fixed in his head that this is toxic for him.”

But he’s not the only one complaining. Another tenant, a few doors down says the smell has actually made her sick. Schneider says, “She says she was walking by to pay her rent as she crossed my path here, she developed a severe headache and abdominal pain..unbelievable.”

We went to ask the owner of Powerful Pest Management more, but she declined to go on camera. She did confirm that she testified in court that the smell made her sick. She also told us that Boiko had given Schneider 30 days to fix the ventilation system, but it was never done, resulting in the court date. We asked Scnneider about the ventilation system and she says, “Okay, very well. I agree, he did give me a written notice, however 2 weeks after giving me the written notice and I went to talk to him about my plans on installing a ventilation system he said you know what this just isn’t going to work out. He led me to believe despite if I’d gone to the cost of doing that, in actuality he wasn’t going to compromise that way.”

Boiko responded and says, “If I didn’t want her to correct it, I never would have given her a 30-day correction notice. I would have given her a 72-hour per the lease and I know you can’t do anything in 72 hours, so I stretched it for a few days, so they had plenty of time to fix the problem if they wanted to.”

Schneider says, “There is no reason to minimize the smell. If we can barely smell it now, imagine if we were next door, even much less.

Boiko says now Palm Desert Shoe Repair has 2 weeks either vacate or be locked out.