Omaha nonprofit asks community’s help, about two dozen displaced residents

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) - A few days ago, conditions in the Omaha apartment building were considered so bad residents had to pack up and get out because they were being evicted.

City officials say there have been problems at the Flora apartments near 25th & Jones for a long time and they finally had to evacuate the residents from the run-down structure for their own safety.

There are tenants who still have some of their belongings in the building. Last Summer tenants of the apartments had to get out of their homes because the building was on fire.

Some of the former tenants tell Omaha Police some of the apartments have been broken into while other displaced residents hurry to get all their stuff out of the run-down apartment building.

“We will turn any of those legal steps over to our law department and prosecutors office and see what happens.”

David Fanslau is the Omaha Planning Director and he tells 6 News the city has been working with the landlord of the apartment complex for a number of months in an attempt to get the property up to code.

“We’ve been there off and on for the last couple of years, some progress, and then we went in there a couple of weeks ago found conditions had deteriorated so much in a short amount of time that we felt it was necessary to move those people,” said Fanslau.

William Stanek is listed as the owner of the apartment building. Records show he has a number of apartment buildings and a number of code violations.

City officials say there are most likely other landlords out there who own troubled properties.

The city’s rental inspection program is fighting an uphill battle. There are close to 90,000 rental properties, much more than expected that have to be checked out by their inspectors to make sure they’re up to code.

“We’re budgeted for two more positions so we’ll be up to 15 housing inspectors dedicated to that program and before that, I‘m going to say we had maybe seven, maybe eight so we’ve almost doubled that staff.”

City officials have been trying to contact the owner of this run-down building but so far he hasn’t responded.

While the property owner remains silent, Together Omaha stepped in to make sure the displaced tenants had a roof over their heads at least temporarily.

“We’ve been problem solving with them trying to figure out if they had a place to go and if they didn’t how we could support them. So as of today, every single resident is moved out of the building and moved into much nicer housing that we’re covering the cost of right now,” said Erin Feichtinger, Together Omaha.

Together Omaha is picking up the tab to keep about two dozen displaced tenants out of the cold.

“This is something we weren’t anticipating having to cover but we’re going to do it because it’s the right thing to do. These people have been through enough, they don’t need to be worried about where they’re going to sleep or where their kids are going to sleep tonight.”

Together is a nonprofit organization working to prevent and end hunger and homelessness. They’re asking the community for help to cover the cost to help the displaced residents.

In the message box about your donation, you can put “Crisis Engagement - 25th & Jones.”

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