Inspectors in protective suits enter an apartment complex as the City of Omaha moves to inspect and potentially shut down the squalid Yale Park Apartments at 34th and Lake Streets, which is home to as many as 500 Myanmar refugees, on Thursday, Sept. 20, 2018.
The outcomes for former Yale Park tenants give us a look at living conditions in low-income housing. They moved into apartments with living conditions similar to those they had been forced out of because unsafe housing is pervasive in our low-income housing market. Omaha does not enforce the minimum housing standard without a complaint. Many times, tenants are afraid to file complaints for fear of retribution or eviction. They may not have the extra cash on hand to move. No one is held accountable.
The failure of Omaha’s complaint-based system of code enforcement is evident in a new website, wedontslum.com. Organizations that work with tenants, whose expertise has not been sought by the mayor and City Council, are collecting and uploading photographs from Omaha rental properties with substandard living conditions to show the widespread and devastating nature of the problem. Story from Omaha World-Herald. Comments are closed.
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