After months of their landlord’s failure to comply with basic safety requirements — fundamental things like providing smoke detectors and a functional, reliable sprinkler system — the residents of the Georgia Apartments are being forced out of their homes.
The red-tag order on the Georgia Apartments was, gratefully, a rare and extreme step to protect tenants and, according to city inspection reports, it was the culmination of two years of efforts by building and fire inspectors to get the owner to bring the units up to code.
Since 2016, inspectors had responded to complaints that smoke detectors were not functional, that one unit had a fire, and units continually were left without heat in the dead of winter.