Canadian family in Jacksonville for child's cancer treatment has issues with rental

CLARIFICATION: We reported in an earlier online version that Payton Rogers had been fined by the city of Jacksonville for one of his rental properties. That was inaccurate. While city records show Rogers had previously been cited by the city for code violations, he was never fined.

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A family traveled from another country to seek treatment for their child, who is suffering from brain cancer.

When they got here, they said the house that they found online through Airbnb, but paid for outside the site via PayPal, was not how it appeared in person.

Jaxon, 4, has rare form of brain cancer called atypical neurocytoma.

"Very rare, our doctors haven't even seen it before," his mother Krissy Fredericks said.

That’s why his family decided to pack up and travel more than 2,000 miles from Canada to Jacksonville for proton radiation therapy.

Fredericks said she turned to Airbnb to find a nice place for her family to stay, but she said it has been anything but that.

"Nobody would want to live in that kind of conditions, it was very dirty," Fredericks said.

For six days, she said she was juggled between three properties, all owned by Payton Rogers.

She said a door was broken and another door was even boarded up with a no trespassing sign.

"Garbage everywhere outside both houses," Fredericks said.

Action News Jax reached out to the city to see if there were any problems with the three properties within the past year, and there has been a complaint of an overgrown yard, but zero violations.

Action News Jax spoke with Rogers over the phone to get his side of the story.

“I can tell you they're remodeled to code and that my current tenants in all three homes, and my tenants in the past have not raised any issues," Rogers said.

This isn’t the first time we reported about issues people have had with Rogers. In February, Action News Jax told you about several violations against him by the city. He was in violation of running a bed and breakfast establishment through the Airbnb site in an area not zoned for that.

"A video chat would have gone a long way in this situation," Fredericks said.

The family found a new place to rent out for the time they will be here for treatment.

Fredericks said she had to go through PayPal to get her money back.

Action News Jax spoke with public relations for Airbnb and was told that making arrangements to rent a property found on Airbnb must go through the site.

Cox Media Group