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The owner of a 16-unit apartment building will meet with Milwaukee’s Department of Neighborhood Services next week to discuss a plan to return evacuated tenants to the building, which city inspectors deemed temporarily uninhabitable.
DNS on Wednesday evacuated SoHi Lofts, 2632 W. Wells St., because the steel-framed walkways and staircases on the back of the building are rusted and in disrepair, and two stairs recently fell. The elevator is also broken, said Jeremy McGovern, spokesman for the department.
The unstable structure of walkways and staircases on the back of the building mean that there’s only one usable exit, not the two required in case of a fire.
The department issued an emergency repair order Sept. 1, with the goal of persuading the property owner to take action and communicate its plan to fix the back exits, McGovern said.
“We did not hear from them by the time that expired,” McGovern said.
City assessment records say the building is divided between the street-level commercial space, owned by Sohi Commercial LLC, and apartments, owned by Lindsay NSP LLC. Both of those groups share an address with Evanston, Illinois-based Brinshore Development LLC.
The evacuation came two years after the building owner put up scaffolding to support the structure. Further repairs never came, McGovern said.
Wednesday, DNS said the building was temporarily uninhabitable and ordered it evacuated, giving residents hours to pack and leave. McGovern didn’t know how many residents were evacuated but said all 16 units had been occupied.
The property owner will need to submit permit applications for its plans to address the issue before residents can return, McGovern said.
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WISN-TV reported that the property management company was paying for hotels for residents through Sunday.
“In situations like this, our priority is the safety of residents,” McGovern said. “Of course, we understand what a hardship this creates, and that’s why, for a long time, we’ve been working with the property owner to remedy this situation. This is not a measure we take lightly.”
Ald. Robert Bauman was critical of how DNS handled the evacuation.
“This is outrageous,” Bauman said in a statement. “Moreover, the city has invested millions of dollars in this property over the last 25 years to provide quality affordable housing. I have great concerns about how this project has been supervised by city departments. Finally I will demand that the current ownership of this building provide appropriate compensation to the tenants who are now barred from returning to their homes.”
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