Attorneys representing at least 25 current or former residents of Bankhead Towers have filed suit against the owners and management of the federally subsidized apartment building, alleging negligence and breach of contract and asking for monetary damages.

The lawsuit was filed May 2 in Jefferson County Circuit Court against Bankhead LLC, the former management company Millennia Housing companies of Cleveland, Ohio, and owner Nuveen Services, an asset manager based in Chicago that purchased Bankhead in 2016.

Bankhead Towers is a privately owned building that has provided federally subsidized housing for the elderly and disabled.

“We’ve got to hold absentee landlords and management accountable,” said Martin Weinberg, an attorney for the plaintiffs.

Weinberg said attorneys for residents are asking for up to $74,000 for each of the residents they represent, more than $1.85 million, plus attorney’s fees.

Weinberg said that some residents have begun moving back into Bankhead Towers after living elsewhere following city condemnation of the building on Sept. 26 and a forced evacuation on Oct. 10.

“Within the last 10 days, they started letting folks move back in there,” Weinberg said. “A lot of folks didn’t want to move back in there.”

Weinberg said the ownership and management have taken advantage of vulnerable residents to make a profit, while residents endured bed bugs, mold, broken elevators, lack of hot water and sprinklers malfunctioning.

“It’s hard for them to make complaints because they’re not mobile,” he said. “It’s a very vulnerable population. They are elderly and disabled. Everybody got displaced. They’re entitled to compensation.”

Ownership and management did not meet its contractual obligations to stay up to code and create a safe living environment, he said.

“They weren’t repairing anything,” Weinberg said. “They weren’t up to code. This has been going on for several years.”

The lawsuit accuses owners and management of negligence, breach of contract and unjust enrichment by cutting corners on maintenance and repairs to maximize profits.

“They have a standard they’re supposed to adhere to, in terms of code,” Weinberg said. “They breached the contract.”

Some former residents of Bankhead Towers said their $50 a day meal expense checks bounced after they were forced to evacuate and take up residence elsewhere, mainly in area hotels.

Nuveen hired Paths Management to replace Millennia as managers of the property in October after the condemnation.

Paths Management took over for the previous management, The Millennia Companies, whose CEO was raided by federal agents on Oct. 23 in Cleveland, according to news reports there.

Efforts to reach Nuveen, Millennia or Paths Management for comment were not immediately successful.

Bankhead Towers, at 2300 Fifth Ave. North, was built in 1923 as a hotel. It was later converted to apartments with an additional adjacent building.

In 2001, tenants sued the owner at that time, saying the building was plagued with garbage, non-working heating and air-conditioning and faulty elevators. In 2004, Lawler-Wood LLC of Knoxville did $3 million in improvements.

Bankhead Towers was once a 15-story hotel where baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson once lived as a minor leaguer and where legendary Coach Bear Bryant’s Crimson Tide football team used to stay on weekends when the team played games at Legion Field.

Paths Management previously said that after residents moved out in October, renovations began that included installing a new fire alarm system, purchasing new fire doors, modernizing the fire suppression systems, installing a new roof, installing new flooring for all building hallways, rehabilitation of all apartments for re-occupancy and treatment of the building by an exterminator before residents could move back in.