The Board of Public Works and Safety on Tuesday approved a condemnation order on an Eighth Street apartment unit where city officials said a mother and her young child are living in unsafe conditions.
The condemnation order was for apartment 2 at 1012 Eighth St., which the county GIS system indicates is owned by Columbus Homes for Rent LLC.
Assistant Director of Community Development Paul Smith said the landlord had been having problems with the tenant renting the unit not “allowing him in there to do the work to get it up to a living habitable standard” and that the condemnation order is to give the landlord “legal recourse to be able to get into the apartment.”
“We believe there’s a lady there and her baby, a small child who lives there,” Smith told board members. “She may have other children as well, but the small infant, the 2-year old, is the one you see in the last picture there, that physically we’ve seen.”
The house at 1012 Eighth St. is split up into several apartments — Smith said city officials have gone through the other units and “they seem just fine.”
Board member Melanie Henderson asked what type of resources are provided to a tenant in a situation like this. Mayor Mary Ferdon said Code Enforcement Officer Fred Barnett typically contacts the Department of Child Services (DCS).
Smith had initially said the “landlord has asked our assistance with condemning it so that he can evict the tenant,” which caught the ears of Erica Schmidt, Human Rights Deputy Director, who asked if getting a condemnation order with the purpose of eviction was a means of “circumventing the eviction process.”
Typically, a landlord would go to court to file for eviction if they believe a lease was broken, Schmidt said.
Smith then clarified.
“I may have misspoken on that, it may not be to evict them, but at least to give them legal recourse to be able to get into the apartment. The tenant is not currently working with the landlord to be able to get into the apartment to do the work right now,” Smith said. ” … I believe that’s only in the event that the tenant doesn’t decide to comply and be able to work with the landlord in order to be able to bring it up to habitable standards.”
