Owner of condemned apartments contends he made repairs

The owner of an apartment complex that has been condemned by the city of Joplin said Wednesday he has made numerous repairs for months and thought he had done most of the work specified by city officials.

“We put in a tremendous amount of money and effort” toward the issues cited by fire and building safety inspectors, said David Carey, the longtime owner of apartments at 117 and 121 S. Byers Ave.

But city officials who had worked with Carey since October to correct dangerous conditions they said existed in the buildings issued an order Jan. 26 to vacate the buildings by March 10, saying there were not adequate repairs.

The city’s notices that cite the problems inspectors found with the buildings are posted on the outside of the buildings. The evacuation order specified that tenants be notified by Feb. 3 to vacate by March 10.

Carey said there are 22 to 26 tenants in the two buildings, not 40 as the Globe had reported Wednesday. He said the number of people in the two buildings varies because some tenants allow others to stay in the apartments.

Owner cooperation

The owner said he had made repairs in past years and in 2016, when conditions with the buildings were cited as dangerous. Repairs were made then under the oversight of the city’s Building Board of Appeals.

“This time, they came down hard,” Carey said.

He said fire inspectors wanted five or six things done that had not previously been required. Those items included the installation of lighted exit signs over the exits of the buildings, breaker bars installed on existing fire extinguisher boxes, and doors sealed and holes in walls patched to prevent smoke from traveling through the building in case of a fire in an apartment. He also said that carbon monoxide detectors were required for the first time since he has operated the building.

City documents listing the code violations state that those items were largely do-it-yourself fixes that did not meet city code requirements.

“We had several people who worked hard on getting those things done” after the initial inspection, Carey said. Not all the repairs ordered by the fire department had been completed before a follow-up inspection was done Dec. 15. Carey said he intended to get everything done, but before he could, the weather brought on a hard freeze that broke several water pipes in the buildings.

Carey said that tenant statements that there had been no water service for months wasn’t the case. He said the water was shut off while the broken lines were fixed in December. The day after that was completed, other water pipes broke from the freeze, requiring another water shutoff, Carey said.

“Pipes were frozen all over town,” he said.

Tenant Sheri McGee said that sometimes utilities such as electricity get shut off because not enough tenants pay rent to provide the money for the landlord to pay all the bills.

History of issues

City officials said in a written statement that they had worked with the owner “for many years to correct a variety of dangerous building and code violations” under the city’s fire code, dangerous building code and housing code.

The notice in October cited a variety of “significant life, health and safety violations,” said Tony Robyn, assistant city manager.

Those included five violations that met the definition of a dangerous building under city codes. There were 11 violations of the city’s housing code and 12 violations cited by the city’s fire marshal, the city statement reported.

The owner was given 45 days to correct those issues.

On Dec. 15 at a reinspection, the fire marshal and building inspector “found a number of extremely significant violations remaining, which constitute an imminent threat to life, health, and safety to the residents of the building,” which left the buildings in an unsafe condition for residency, according to the city statement.

“The owner has put the building residents and city in an unfortunate situation,” Robyn said. He said city officials reached out to a number of community organizations through the Homeless Coalition and Economic Security Corporation to assist tenants in trying to find housing and meeting other needs that result from having to be relocated.

Tenants blamed

Carey sees it as the city putting needy residents in a difficult situation, saying many cannot afford rents in the current market. The landlord said he had always worked with people who needed a place to stay at low cost.

“I make agreements with people, and they get to work on the property” in exchange for rent or to pay a lesser rent. He has allowed some people to stay on the property at no charge when they could not afford to pay rent anywhere, Carey said.

“Some people need help, and others just want a free ride,” he said. Some of the problems with the buildings are the result of some tenants not paying the rent, vandalizing the property or stealing, he contended.

Kim Copher, the maintenance manager at the apartment buildings, was working on the property Wednesday. She said she replaced broken windows in the buildings in the two months after the city’s October inspection but that tenants have already broken some of them.

Some residents or visitors have damaged the buildings, she said, by writing on walls and committing other acts of vandalism. Some people come and stay with tenants but don’t pay rent, “which makes it harder for me to pay for materials to do things” and for the owner to pay the utilities, she said.

“If there’s no money going in to the landlord, he can’t take away from his family just cause people want a free way,” Copher said.

McGee is grateful to Carey for the place to live. She became homeless two years ago, but Carey gave her a place to stay and after being able to obtain disability and retirement benefits she can pay her rent, she said.

“A lot of them (the tenants), he tries to get them to pay their rent, and they won’t. But they want him to come to fix stuff,” McGee said. “He’s trying to do his best, and that’s the truth.

“He’s done people a lot of good by giving them a place to stay when they didn’t have a place to,” she said. “But they get in fights and break the windows and this and that. All this is not because he didn’t fix stuff but because they get to fighting and break windows and kick in doors.”