Loss of low-rent apartments could result in homelessness, says official

BEREA — Apartments at a Hurley Street building where the City cut utilities last December, have been updated and are back on the market with rents notably higher than before, potentially leaving previous tenants homeless.

“It’s a supply and demand problem,” Martin Richards, vice chair of the Berea Planning Commission, told The Edge. “If people could previously afford [their] rent and now they can’t, it potentially can contribute to an increase in homelessness.”

Burst pipe, dead cats

Units in the Hurley Street complex that previously rented for around $650.00 are now renting for between $795.00 to $895.00, according to the property’s manager, Tyler Oatts, owner of Realiant Property Management in Nicholasville.

Unconfirmed reports from tenants however, are that previously, the rent was as low as $425.00 per month.

At the time the City shut down the eight units at 31 Hurley Street after a burst pipe lead to the discovery of multiple code violations, six of the units were occupied, one by what was later learned was a squatter. The remaining two units had been recently vacated by tenants who both had left behind starving, diseased or dead cats, filth, cockroach and vermin excrement, rubbish, and stench.

Eviction and squatting

Those two units have been rehabbed and listings for each now appear on multiple rental property websites. Oatts said they are expected to rent for a minimum of $795 per month. Eventually, all eight units will be rehabbed, with ground floor units renting for $795 and upper floor ones at $895.00.

So that the building could be brought up to code, the squatter was vacated, and the five legal tenants were asked to vacate of their own volition, although this proved problematic, according to Oatts. “We had to evict one,” Oatts said. At least one tenant is still living without utilities — or a lease — at the property, according to a Realiant employee.

None of the previous tenants were offered lease renewals by the property’s owner, who purchased the property for 1.75 million dollars last October.

Questions about affordable inventory

At a time when legislators in Frankfort are debating a proposed law favoring short-term rental owners by making it illegal for municipalities to track their housing inventory, Martin said it would be helpful to know how many affordable or other units are available in Berea.

“But, we don’t know what the going price range is for rental properties in Berea,” Richards said. Previously, Richards has told The Edge that Berea is 1,100 housing units in any price range, short of the current demand.

Amanda Haney, City codes department administrator, told The Edge that using a formula based on the median income of Madison County, that affordable housing for single person annually earning $32,345.00 and living in Berea, is about $800.00. For a two-person household with an average income of $56,500.00, Haney said affordable units would be approximately $1400.00 per month.

That affordable housing formula might be good in theory, but not in reality, according to Martin. “Prices have gone up dramatically, whether it’s a rental or a purchased home. You could make the argument that because of our low supply and high demand, [landlords] are taking advantage, and extracting more from folks,” he said.

‘We need those units’

Despite the units being re-introduced to the market by the Hurley Street property’s owner, Haney said the building is still not fully up to code.

“They still need to have the electrical items inspected,” Haney said. “I wish they’d hurry. We really need those units to be back on the market.”

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