Some 500 refugees were packing a few days worth of clothes and relocating from their north Omaha apartment complex late Thursday in the wake of a massive, daylong city code inspection that uncovered multiple gas leaks and unsanitary conditions.
City officials said they had to evacuate each of the 100 units at the Yale Park Apartments at 34th and Lake Streets because of myriad problems, from unsafe electrical circuits to natural gas leaks to the presence of mice, bedbugs, lice and maggots.
“We don’t want them to think that this is what living in America is like and they’re just going to have to put up with the rats and the roaches and the bed bugs, because it’s not,” Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert said.
The property owner denied that the conditions were as bad as the city described and said he was helping the tenants by keeping rents low.
The tenants are refugees from Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.
Officials described the inspection, which involved at least 100 workers, as a humanitarian effort, with multiple agencies working to place the tenants in temporary housing at two city community centers — 120 people at Adams Park and 50 at Columbus Park. The rest made arrangements with family or friends.
An estimated 175 kids enrolled in the Omaha Pubic Schools live at the complex, and OPS staff scrambled to make sure parents and children arriving home from school were reunited before heading off to temporary quarters. Then there are dozens of toddlers and babies.
The Mayor’s Office said schoolchildren will be privately bused back to the apartment grounds Friday so they can take their normal OPS bus route. No children have been separated from parents or normal caregivers.
The residents can sleep, shower and eat at city community centers and will get help finding long-term housing, said Joanie Poore, vice president of Heartland Family Service. She anticipated that they’ll stay in the centers for a week or less, then move to other rental housing with help from the philanthropic community.
It’s not unusual for the city to close housing as unfit for human habitation. But the scale of Thursday’s action was unprecedented in recent Omaha history. No one could recall a similar event. Dave Fanslau, the city’s planning director, said nothing close to it had happened in his 29 years of working for the city.
“We’re doing humanitarian work, but the fact of the matter is, this is a tragedy,” said City Council President Ben Gray. He lamented that complaints only recently brought city enforcement to the complex, which he said has been a “rattrap and an eyesore” for years. City officials said they can’t inspect unless a formal complaint has been filed.
“It is fortunate that we have people that could come together very quickly to put a plan together and make that plan work,” Gray said.
[[Read more: Government workers, agencies and volunteers responded to troubled apartment complex]]
Scott Lane, the city’s chief housing inspector, said inspectors found “astronomical” amounts of unsanitary conditions in more than 90 percent of the units. They found 27 electrical circuits in such bad shape they needed to be powered off. The Omaha Public Power District shut off power at five of the complex’s 13 buildings due to unsafe electricity.
Lane said next steps include the city giving the owner, Kay Anderson, a list of violations. He’ll have 30 days to make repairs.
“We don’t anticipate that can happen in 30 days,” Lane said.
The inspection was prompted by more than 90 formal complaints filed with the city since Sept. 14 by the tenants, with assistance from Restoring Dignity, a volunteer group that helps the refugee community. City officials didn’t know the extent of the problems until they started inspecting the units about 10 a.m. Thursday.
“What we have found is what we suspected,” Fanslau said. He added that “no one wanted to do this. But this action (removing tenants) is necessary.”
Lay Moo, 27, lives in one of the units with her husband Moo Gay, 33, and their three children, ages 4 to 1. Lay Moo told The World-Herald through an interpreter that her family has told the landlord “so many times” about problems. When it’s raining, she said, “there is leaking everywhere in the house.”
“We kept telling the landlord so many times, (hoping) maybe he would reply back one time,” she said. “It looks like he doesn’t care.”
Anderson, who is also the on-site landlord, acknowledged that some units needed repairs but said he believes the units are safe. He responds when tenants have problems but believes most are content. Anderson was on-site Thursday, answering questions from the news media and taking to a portable lectern after city officials offered official updates.
“It’s a serious overreaction,” he said.
He said, for example, reports of gas leaks are more likely unlit pilot lights because many tenants have never used a stove and prefer to cook outside.
Anderson said he charges $550 to $595 for two- and three-bedroom apartments, which he characterized as a bargain.
[[Read more: Yale Park landlord says he’s done a community service by charging low rents to refugees]]
The mood at the complex was generally relaxed among tenants when inspectors started their work. An interpreter said tenants probably knew ahead of time about Thursday’s effort. As inspectors and other personnel made their way through units, tenants sat on their front stoops. People held children, tended to gardens or watched officials work.
Khu Ter, 28, lives in an apartment with her three boys, two of whom attend Fontenelle Elementary. She ticked off a list of ongoing problems: bedbugs that bite 3-year-old Harry, water that leaks in through the roof, collapsed flooring in the kitchen.
“When I call the landlord, the landlord says ‘tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow,’ ” she said.
City officials and social services and advocacy groups said the complex’s residents are not inclined to confrontation. That, coupled with language barriers and a lack of knowledge about how to navigate the bureaucracy of City Hall, may have kept more residents from making noise about their living conditions.
“I think there’s a fear factor there, that if they started to say things they would be let go,” Fanslau said. “They would be gone.”
Residents also had built a community, relying on one another for child care and transportation.
“The Karen people are so generous and so patient,” said interpreter Shuma Hinds, who is Karen. Even if fixes aren’t made quickly, “they give the landlord the benefit of the doubt.”
Franklin Thompson, the city’s human rights and relations director, said that in his estimation, “the refugee families here are being taken advantage of.”
The unit where Lay Moo and her family live had cockroaches throughout, including dozens inside the oven. Tape lined some of the walls to help trap and kill the insects.
The ceiling of an upstairs bedroom was cracked where the light fixture hung. One area of the room was particularly thick with bedbugs. Flies circled inside the upstairs bathroom. Around the toilet was a soft, wet spot.
Amid the conditions, the unit looked like a home. A welcome mat lay at the entrance. There were kids’ toys throughout, including a barn and bike.
Lay Moo said one of her sons has asthma, and a teacher who had visited the home had told the family that “this house is not safe for a child that has asthma.”
The family has lived at the complex for two years. Despite the conditions, Lay Moo was overwhelmed at the thought of leaving. She said the landlord had recently upped the monthly rent from $495 to $520, and she fears further increases.
“I can’t even think about that right now, because I don’t have enough income,” she said.
A nearby tenant, Ta Aye Aye, 30, remained inside her unit with her 4-year-old daughter, who was watching cartoons, after inspectors made their way through.
She told The World-Herald through an interpreter that her apartment is “a mess” with cockroaches, bed bugs and a roof and wall falling apart. She buys spray from Walmart to deal with the bedbugs that she said “bite this one,” referring to her daughter.
Ta Aye Aye was born in Myanmar and came to Omaha nine years ago from a refugee camp in Thailand. Asked if she felt safe in her apartment, she said “if other people can live here, I think I can.”
“If they would be able to fix and clean (it), I’d like to stay,” she said.
Saw “Rocky” Khu, a community leader and pastor of Karen Christian Revival Church, called the situation “very sad,” especially for the children. But, he said, the conditions at the complex have been bad for a long time.
“It’s good for the future of the families and for the city” for this to be addressed, he said. “The refugees deserve better than this.”
https://www.omaha.com/news/metro/ci...cle_f8e18612-ee66-5f24-94ba-c54be7fb1658.html
City officials said they had to evacuate each of the 100 units at the Yale Park Apartments at 34th and Lake Streets because of myriad problems, from unsafe electrical circuits to natural gas leaks to the presence of mice, bedbugs, lice and maggots.
“We don’t want them to think that this is what living in America is like and they’re just going to have to put up with the rats and the roaches and the bed bugs, because it’s not,” Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert said.
The property owner denied that the conditions were as bad as the city described and said he was helping the tenants by keeping rents low.
The tenants are refugees from Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.
Officials described the inspection, which involved at least 100 workers, as a humanitarian effort, with multiple agencies working to place the tenants in temporary housing at two city community centers — 120 people at Adams Park and 50 at Columbus Park. The rest made arrangements with family or friends.
An estimated 175 kids enrolled in the Omaha Pubic Schools live at the complex, and OPS staff scrambled to make sure parents and children arriving home from school were reunited before heading off to temporary quarters. Then there are dozens of toddlers and babies.
The Mayor’s Office said schoolchildren will be privately bused back to the apartment grounds Friday so they can take their normal OPS bus route. No children have been separated from parents or normal caregivers.
The residents can sleep, shower and eat at city community centers and will get help finding long-term housing, said Joanie Poore, vice president of Heartland Family Service. She anticipated that they’ll stay in the centers for a week or less, then move to other rental housing with help from the philanthropic community.
It’s not unusual for the city to close housing as unfit for human habitation. But the scale of Thursday’s action was unprecedented in recent Omaha history. No one could recall a similar event. Dave Fanslau, the city’s planning director, said nothing close to it had happened in his 29 years of working for the city.
“We’re doing humanitarian work, but the fact of the matter is, this is a tragedy,” said City Council President Ben Gray. He lamented that complaints only recently brought city enforcement to the complex, which he said has been a “rattrap and an eyesore” for years. City officials said they can’t inspect unless a formal complaint has been filed.
“It is fortunate that we have people that could come together very quickly to put a plan together and make that plan work,” Gray said.
[[Read more: Government workers, agencies and volunteers responded to troubled apartment complex]]
Scott Lane, the city’s chief housing inspector, said inspectors found “astronomical” amounts of unsanitary conditions in more than 90 percent of the units. They found 27 electrical circuits in such bad shape they needed to be powered off. The Omaha Public Power District shut off power at five of the complex’s 13 buildings due to unsafe electricity.
Lane said next steps include the city giving the owner, Kay Anderson, a list of violations. He’ll have 30 days to make repairs.
“We don’t anticipate that can happen in 30 days,” Lane said.
The inspection was prompted by more than 90 formal complaints filed with the city since Sept. 14 by the tenants, with assistance from Restoring Dignity, a volunteer group that helps the refugee community. City officials didn’t know the extent of the problems until they started inspecting the units about 10 a.m. Thursday.
“What we have found is what we suspected,” Fanslau said. He added that “no one wanted to do this. But this action (removing tenants) is necessary.”
Lay Moo, 27, lives in one of the units with her husband Moo Gay, 33, and their three children, ages 4 to 1. Lay Moo told The World-Herald through an interpreter that her family has told the landlord “so many times” about problems. When it’s raining, she said, “there is leaking everywhere in the house.”
“We kept telling the landlord so many times, (hoping) maybe he would reply back one time,” she said. “It looks like he doesn’t care.”
Anderson, who is also the on-site landlord, acknowledged that some units needed repairs but said he believes the units are safe. He responds when tenants have problems but believes most are content. Anderson was on-site Thursday, answering questions from the news media and taking to a portable lectern after city officials offered official updates.
“It’s a serious overreaction,” he said.
He said, for example, reports of gas leaks are more likely unlit pilot lights because many tenants have never used a stove and prefer to cook outside.
Anderson said he charges $550 to $595 for two- and three-bedroom apartments, which he characterized as a bargain.
[[Read more: Yale Park landlord says he’s done a community service by charging low rents to refugees]]
The mood at the complex was generally relaxed among tenants when inspectors started their work. An interpreter said tenants probably knew ahead of time about Thursday’s effort. As inspectors and other personnel made their way through units, tenants sat on their front stoops. People held children, tended to gardens or watched officials work.
Khu Ter, 28, lives in an apartment with her three boys, two of whom attend Fontenelle Elementary. She ticked off a list of ongoing problems: bedbugs that bite 3-year-old Harry, water that leaks in through the roof, collapsed flooring in the kitchen.
“When I call the landlord, the landlord says ‘tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow,’ ” she said.
City officials and social services and advocacy groups said the complex’s residents are not inclined to confrontation. That, coupled with language barriers and a lack of knowledge about how to navigate the bureaucracy of City Hall, may have kept more residents from making noise about their living conditions.
“I think there’s a fear factor there, that if they started to say things they would be let go,” Fanslau said. “They would be gone.”
Residents also had built a community, relying on one another for child care and transportation.
“The Karen people are so generous and so patient,” said interpreter Shuma Hinds, who is Karen. Even if fixes aren’t made quickly, “they give the landlord the benefit of the doubt.”
Franklin Thompson, the city’s human rights and relations director, said that in his estimation, “the refugee families here are being taken advantage of.”
The unit where Lay Moo and her family live had cockroaches throughout, including dozens inside the oven. Tape lined some of the walls to help trap and kill the insects.
The ceiling of an upstairs bedroom was cracked where the light fixture hung. One area of the room was particularly thick with bedbugs. Flies circled inside the upstairs bathroom. Around the toilet was a soft, wet spot.
Amid the conditions, the unit looked like a home. A welcome mat lay at the entrance. There were kids’ toys throughout, including a barn and bike.
Lay Moo said one of her sons has asthma, and a teacher who had visited the home had told the family that “this house is not safe for a child that has asthma.”
The family has lived at the complex for two years. Despite the conditions, Lay Moo was overwhelmed at the thought of leaving. She said the landlord had recently upped the monthly rent from $495 to $520, and she fears further increases.
“I can’t even think about that right now, because I don’t have enough income,” she said.
A nearby tenant, Ta Aye Aye, 30, remained inside her unit with her 4-year-old daughter, who was watching cartoons, after inspectors made their way through.
She told The World-Herald through an interpreter that her apartment is “a mess” with cockroaches, bed bugs and a roof and wall falling apart. She buys spray from Walmart to deal with the bedbugs that she said “bite this one,” referring to her daughter.
Ta Aye Aye was born in Myanmar and came to Omaha nine years ago from a refugee camp in Thailand. Asked if she felt safe in her apartment, she said “if other people can live here, I think I can.”
“If they would be able to fix and clean (it), I’d like to stay,” she said.
Saw “Rocky” Khu, a community leader and pastor of Karen Christian Revival Church, called the situation “very sad,” especially for the children. But, he said, the conditions at the complex have been bad for a long time.
“It’s good for the future of the families and for the city” for this to be addressed, he said. “The refugees deserve better than this.”
https://www.omaha.com/news/metro/ci...cle_f8e18612-ee66-5f24-94ba-c54be7fb1658.html
