Residents Get Extra Time To Move Away From ‘Red Tagged’ Apartment Building
Feb 14, 2019, 12:33 AM
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – People who live in the Georgia Apartments will get some extra time to move after the city deemed the building unsafe to occupy.
The order to evacuate came Monday morning from the Salt Lake City fire marshal. Residents were initially given three days to find a new home. Wednesday evening, the city announced the people living at the Georgia Apartments had until noon on Saturday to move. City officials said the building’s owners had ignored repeated requests from the fire marshal to get the building up to code. According to a previous KSL story, the building had hazards including missing windows, nonfunctional heating system, electrical wiring not up to code, and missing fire extinguishers and smoke detectors.
A spokesperson from the mayor’s office said Wednesday evening that people in 30 of the 31 occupied units had engaged in plans for new housing. Twenty-four of them, he said, had already found a new place to live. People in one unit, he said, had not engaged in the process.
While several people have found new homes, they are still frustrated by how events played out.
“There’s not much we can really do about it, just got to pull together and help everybody out, try to get what we can done,” said Marco Martinez.
Martinez said he had lived in the building for about two months with his mother. He said the building where they previously lived had also been condemned. The pair has found a new place to live.
“It is. It’s really hard. Especially when a lot of the people that live here are either low-income, or, you know, can’t afford to get U-Hauls or moving vans and help,” Martinez said.
The mayor’s spokesperson said the fire marshal also issued a cease and desist order to the building’s owner, prohibiting them from telling residents they do not need to evacuate.
