Condemned building leaves tenants homeless
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YAKIMA, Wash.-- Today marked the end of the line for a troubled apartment complex here in Yakima. Authorities shut it down and gave the tenants very little warning they had to leave. Code enforcement says it's unsafe.
Pine Street Apartments is now plastered with "danger" signs. Yakima code enforcement officers condemned the building after an inspection Thursday. Tenants of the 17 units had 16 hours to leave.
"They wanted to shut us down yesterday and a lot of the neighbors were like 'look, we need some time to be able to get our stuff together and pack up, find us a place to go,'" said Joshua Joe who has lived in Pine Street Apartments for 9 months.
"We found water coming through ceilings, water integrating with electrical fixtures," Said Joe Caruso, the Fire Marshall for Yakima. "It's been happening for a while. Also, there was a lot of illegal electrical components put in here. "
Yakima police almost shut down the complex six months ago because it fell under the "chronic nuisance ordinance." The landlord got a warning that it was time to fix things, but time ran out.
"I think we've been lucky so far that nothing has happened," he said.
The landlord has a week to get all tenants relocation money. Every pet that lived here will have to be surrendered to the humane society because of the living conditions. A tenant with 11 cats watched as animal control officers took them away.
The building can reopen if the landlord fixes all the problems. For now, tenants can go back during the day to get personal belongings. People who can't prove they live there will be arrested.
Pine Street Apartments is now plastered with "danger" signs. Yakima code enforcement officers condemned the building after an inspection Thursday. Tenants of the 17 units had 16 hours to leave.
"They wanted to shut us down yesterday and a lot of the neighbors were like 'look, we need some time to be able to get our stuff together and pack up, find us a place to go,'" said Joshua Joe who has lived in Pine Street Apartments for 9 months.
"We found water coming through ceilings, water integrating with electrical fixtures," Said Joe Caruso, the Fire Marshall for Yakima. "It's been happening for a while. Also, there was a lot of illegal electrical components put in here. "
Yakima police almost shut down the complex six months ago because it fell under the "chronic nuisance ordinance." The landlord got a warning that it was time to fix things, but time ran out.
"I think we've been lucky so far that nothing has happened," he said.
The landlord has a week to get all tenants relocation money. Every pet that lived here will have to be surrendered to the humane society because of the living conditions. A tenant with 11 cats watched as animal control officers took them away.
The building can reopen if the landlord fixes all the problems. For now, tenants can go back during the day to get personal belongings. People who can't prove they live there will be arrested.
you all missed the boat here this was to many that lived there HOME despite all the issues.. giving them hours is not right.. they need several days to find another place to go if i was the inspectors i would of gave them 7 days to move out rather than what they did.. kind of selfish after all they have been living there for a while.. with these existing conditions.. sometimes it dont make good sense to do an emergency move all due to codes policy violations.. if the building was litterely falling down then that would be different.. but to be as unfair as possible the city should be the one that bears the relocation cost due to the time given .. come on this was uncalled for there needs to be compassion for the displaced...
Why don't you say who owns these apartments?
I was living there when they shut it down, glad we left before they could take our animals though, we love them too much to have the humane society take them from us. We couldn't believe it all happened so quick, they stopped by on wednesday and started inspecting and 3 pm thursday said we all had to leave that evening. After one of our neighbors started yelling at the inspectors after they told us that it wasn't their problem that we had nowhere to go. "Go to the mission!" is what he finally yelled to our neighbor and she yelled back "YOU TRY AND LIVE AT THE MISSION!!!!!" They didn't have any advice for us on where to go or what to do other than that, and didn't seem to have much sympathy at all for most of us.Â
And yes, the place was really gross, and quite a bit of a hazard, but they didn't even give us any warning. The only reason why we had until 10 am the next morning was due to quite a few of the tenants being on the balcony looking upset and crying (myself included) because we had nowhere to go. In fact Josh, the one in the story, was my neighbor and he wouldn't have known about it until the next day if not for a note I'd left on his door letting him know what had happened since he worked during the afternoon.
I wonder if the landlord owns other properties in town.
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 @Paul Tabayoyon Why wasn't the landlord named in the story. Slumlords are the dearth of society and there are plenty in this town.
They should have closed that drug dealing apartment building 10 years ago, and should have sent the slumlord to jail, been that way since the 90's. Seems like the 4 block area around the police station is the least patrolled area. My grazed by a car at the intersection of walnut and 3rd, called the cops, took them a half hour to out into the street in front of the building. They need to start walking the streets, bring back the beat cop, I'll do it if they would hire me.
the roaches alone should have done them in. i mean , like the movie creep show . i have never seen anything like it . its like going to a 3rd world country . that place has been a crap hole since the early 80's . it is a miracle it lasted so long . burn it down and watch the billions of bugs crawl out . it is gross beyond belief.