On Friday, a Newport News circuit court judge held the property owner of the SeaView Lofts apartment building in contempt, or disobeying the order of the court, over still-ongoing code compliance issues with the building.
Witness testimony from the city's code compliance and fire marshal's offices demonstrated that despite efforts to make repairs to the numerous items not in compliance, many items inside the building remain not up to code.
Exactly one week prior to the hearing, the City of Newport News condemned the apartment building after a safety inspection earlier in the week revealed neither of the complex's two elevators were properly working. Residents had been given just a 48-hour window to vacate the property, leading to many residents rushing to figure out what their next living situation would be.
“I don’t know if I should buy a house, rent a house. But I’ll never rent an apartment again. I’ll never know when this is going to happen again," Vernette Scarboro said Friday during a recess of the hearing. Scarboro is a 73-year-old resident of the apartment building, who is now living in a hotel with her older sister and wheelchair-bound husband.
In the hearing, the judge noted that the property owner would be responsible for reimbursing the city for the money they're spending to house the temporarily displaced families.
City attorneys noted that was an approximate cost of more than $15,000 per day, having totaled more than $70,000 so far.
Of the apartment's two elevators, officials noted that one week after residents had left, both still needed work. One elevator that is physically able to go up and down has other issues that need fixing with its telephone system, travel cables, and its ability to respond in emergency situations, like a fire.
The other elevator is non-operational altogether, even though the elevator doors had recently been repaired.
Officials with the city's fire marshal's office noted that two boilers in the building did not appear to be properly working either.
A city spokesperson for the City of Newport News said that the hotel stays for those displaced families have been extended through until July 14.
The next hearing between city attorneys and SeaView Apartments LLC will be Thursday, July 14.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/mone...4813807d0d1970ffd470

This is happening in tidewater Virginia. In the past Virginia had been a fairly landlord friendly state. Now it looks like, if you have a tenant, you have to house them forever.

During the Covid hoax, Virginia had a rent moratorium. I wonder how many of the displaced tenants have been paying rent? It is really hard for a landlord to pay for repairs if the tenants don't pay their rent. I wonder if elevator parts are in short supply.

Investing in rental property seems to be a mighty risky business these days.

Remember the tenant from Hell:

This is why you incorporate if renting.

The corporation can file bankruptcy.

Maybe I'm not reading it correctly but it came across like a slum lord got ordered to fix code violations by the court, did not do so, got get held in contempt of court and the property condemned.

Then the court ordered the slum lord to pay for the resident's cost of having to find new places to live in 48 hours.

I'm not sure I'm on the slum lord"s side here. I see where you brought up covid related non payment of rent but i did not see that mentioed in the article.

quote:

Originally posted by SpinZone:
I see where you brought up covid related non payment of rent but i did not see that mentioed in the article.

Well they wouldn't mention that would they? It doesn't fit the narrative.

If there was insufficient cash flow from lack of rent during covid to pay for the upkeep of the building, or even pay a mortgage and taxes, the landlord may have a case at appeal. But there isn't enough info.

The blanket "no eviction" rule allowed many people that were perfectly capable of paying rent to stop paying and spend their money on other things. There should have been a requirement to provide reasonable proof of hardship to stop paying rent, or get a temporary reduction.

Notice there wasn't a "no foreclosure" rule absolving home owners from making mortgage payments. No that would have hurt the big banks...