Friday, May 08, 2009

Tenants Forced Out By Raw Sewage In Condemned Omaha Apartment Building In Foreclosure; Landlord Unavailable For Comment

In Omaha, Nebraska, KETV Channel 7 reports:
  • There’s an apartment complex in Omaha that the city’s chief housing inspector calls deplorable and the landlord is nowhere to be found. In fact, one building has raw sewage flowing throughout it.

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  • All my stuff is ruined,” said tenant Kimberly Wright. “I don’t have a place to stay. I lived here with my three children. I’ve lost everything.” Wright was displaced when city inspectors recently condemned the building. She showed I-Team investigators the raw sewage that backed up into her toilet and bath tub. It flooded her ground-level apartment and sent a terrible stench through the building. The city’s chief housing inspector, Kevin Denker, said the conditions inside the building are about as bad as they get. “This looks like an issue of the sewer line going out to the street being blocked and every time anybody runs their sink or flushes their toilet above this unit, it empties into this unit,” Denker said.

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  • KETV NewsWatch 7 tried contacting the company by phone, but two business lines, a cell phone and a tenant hot line had been disconnected. The current mortgage holder for the apartment complex confirmed the property is in foreclosure.

  • The director of the Fair Housing Center [of Nebraska], Jill Fenner, said her agency will help Wright and other tenants bring legal action against the landlord. “She can sue for three times the rent, plus liquidated damages and reasonable attorney’s fees,” Fenner said. But any legal action will take time.

For more, see City Condemns 'Deplorable' Apartment Building (Tenant Loses Everything After Raw Sewage Backs Up In Her Unit). RentSigmaSkimming