A Sanford landlord is accused of renting out apartments in a condemned building.
The city says the building at 60 Riverside Ave. is a potentially deadly fire hazard, and needs to either be fixed up or knocked down.
Mike Harding is one of 12 people living in the condemned apartment building owned by Hill Street Apartments.
The city of Sanford gave the owner two months to get everyone out.
That was two and a half months ago.
“In that interim time period, not only did they not vacate the property, as they were supposed to do, they put new tenants in the building,” Community Development Director Ian Houseal said.
“Two weeks ago, they moved him in over there in number 7,” Harding said. “They moved him in, in a condemned building.”
Before Kat Stevens and her husband moved in on Aug. 30, she says a property manager told them the building was no longer condemned.
“We were told the Tuesday prior to that they had passed all the inspections and that the condemned had been lifted,” Stevens said. “And we found that is not true.”
A city inspection on July 9 uncovered significant structural and electrical violations.
City leaders say the building is a fire hazard.
“If that building was to catch on fire, most of those people wouldn’t have any way of getting out of the building,” Houseal said.
CBS 13 was unable to reach building owners, but city leaders say they met with them yesterday.
“They told me that they were successful in finding places for everybody that was living there to find a new place to live,” Houseal said.
Mike Harding says building owners had crews working inside on the electrical wiring and outside on the stairs and railings, but he says all that work stopped 12 days ago, the same day that the tenants were ordered to vacate.
Mike Harding is now two waiting lists for apartment buildings.
He says 150 people are ahead of him on one list and 50 on the other.
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