Last year, a small Northeast Baltimore school flew into panic mode as a nearby apartment complex threatened to double the rents.

The move at Dutch Village could have displaced as many as 120 Yorkwood Elementary students, school administrators learned, cutting into the 329-student enrollment by more than a third.

Behind the scenes, the owner of the apartment community tussled with his lender over mounting financial troubles. Mendel Steiner, whose Dutch Perring Owner LLC business had purchased two communities near Morgan State University, had failed to comply with the terms of a loan from the Bank of Montreal, attorneys for the bank wrote last year in court filings. The bank asked to strip Steiner of the properties.

Then, in January, the bank in legal filings reported a new development in the case: Steiner was dead.

Steiner, 33, died at the beginning of January after years of being “unwell,” according to Boro Park 24, a Brooklyn-based news source. The Real Deal, a real estate-focused publication, reported last month that court-assigned receivers had been appointed to take over his multifamily units in Cleveland. He is believed to have owned apartment units across the country.

There are about 800 homes spread among the Baltimore apartment complexes, Dutch Village and Pleasantview, according to legal filings. The properties were once owned by the real estate company of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, which paid millions to settle a lawsuit over tenant mistreatment throughout Maryland.

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For a while, the bank’s and Steiner’s attorneys appeared to have reached detente. But in January, the bank said that Steiner had failed to get back on track, and the properties risked becoming even more unstable if the court did not intervene.

“With his passing, there is an increased risk of mismanagement and deterioration of the properties,” attorneys for the Bank of Montreal wrote in court records, noting that Steiner was their main point of contact and the supervisor of the apartments’ management company, Aven Realty Management. Without a receiver, they said, the properties would further decline.

Attorneys who represented Steiner in the receivership case have not responded to requests for comment.

From the start, the bank alleged that Steiner had misled them. Steiner stated in loan documents that he bought the two properties for $173 million instead of the $115 million he actually paid, the bank’s attorneys wrote in court filings. Steiner’s attorneys faulted the bank for approving the loan in the first place and said they were not giving him enough time to fulfill his promises.

In February, the court appointed The Casey Group, Ltd. to serve as the receiver for the properties. Brian Casey, the group’s president, declined to comment.

Casey reported to the court last month that he has spent more than $90,000 on operational costs at both Dutch Village and Pleasantview and received a little less than $60,000 in payments over a one-month period.

It’s not clear how many residents continue to live there. Only about $5,000 was spent maintaining Pleasantview, the records show.

It’s also not clear how many families were able to keep their children at Yorkwood Elementary School amid the turmoil. Spokespeople from the Baltimore City Public Schools System reported that Yorkwood’s enrollment changed only modestly over the last year — from 329 students in September 2023 to 314 last September, according to figures from the Maryland State Department of Education. City schools representatives declined to answer additional questions about the impact of the apartment complexes’ changes on the school community.

Last year, Yorkwood Principal Tonya Combs-Redd, aware of the region’s housing affordability challenges, had taken the threat to tenants seriously, emails obtained by The Banner show.

She knew an enrollment plunge from families moving out of the complex could devastate the school and, eventually, reduce its funding, according to her emails. An exodus had already started, with some households accepting cash payments to break their leases early.

She and her staff at Yorkwood Elementary School sprang into action, surveying families about their plans. Combs-Redd also paid a visit to the Dutch Village property manager, who confirmed that rents would rise to upwards of $2,200 a month.

Combs-Redd acknowledged in emails that the fate of her school was on the line.

“We have begun to hear from families sharing the hardship and asking for virtual options to finish out the school year,” Combs-Redd wrote in a May 2024 email. The property manager, she noted, had offered that residents could move back in once renovations were complete — if they could afford it.

Baltimore Banner reporter Liz Bowie contributed to this article.