KANSAS CITY, Kan. — For Aundrea Charleston, coming home used to make the day’s stress just melt away. But that’s changed.
For example, usually she would start with a nice, cold glass of tea. Not anymore. It’s awfully hard to keep things cold when you don’t have any electrical power.
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It all started on July 15. First, there were storms, then there was rain – then the retaining wall in the complex’s backyard collapsed, crushing the apartment’s power source.
It left them with no power, no lights and no air conditioning or anything else that depended on electricity as a power source.
Time just ticked by, day by day, as Aundrea “kept reporting the outages every day, every day, every day.”
Then after a few weeks, city inspectors posted a notice on the building, warning that they had until Aug. 28 to restore the power or all residents would have to leave.
Aundrea said she doesn’t know what to do.
“When this date comes, literally we’ll be right here on the sidewalk, because we have nowhere to go,” she said.
Finally, she reached out to the FOX4 Problem Solvers.
Our first question was the obvious one: What’s the hold up?
So, we started with the owner of the complex, who is based out of Atlanta, Georgia.
We spoke with the landlord by phone. He said that part of the problem is, instead of just fixing the electric, the city inspector wanted him to move the power source from its original spot in the back of the building and put it on the side of the complex. A move, the city said would ensure the building is up to code.
The landlord told us that the problem with the move is that he would now need all new permits for the new location, and that takes time.
He claims that otherwise, he “would’ve had it done within a week.”
So next, the Problem Solvers contacted the city building inspections department to see if they could expedite getting the landlord those necessary permits.
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They answered us in writing, which stated, in part:
“Effective and extensive email correspondence has been ongoing prior to the unfit posting of this building. The unfit status was placed due to the time frame of repair/repairs to be made and the lack of utilities to the building.”
FOX4 followed that up with more questions, but we are still waiting to hear back from the department.
In the meantime, the landlord told FOX4 that he is not charging residents rent while the power is out. In addition, he said that if any of the tenants want out of their lease agreements, he will allow it.
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