OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) — A week ago, an apartment building in downtown Omaha was shut down, leaving 12 families without their homes. Now volunteer lawyers are working with the tenants to see what legal options they have.
Tenants of 2557 Jones St. are staying in hotels and with friends, while they look for permanent housing.
Their rent money for January,and for some even February, is in the pocket of the landlord who the city says failed to keep the building livable.
Dave Pantos, a volunteer lawyer with the Tenant Assistance Program and a candidate for Douglas County Attorney is looking at the case to see if they can get the tenants their money back, and get reimbursed for their moving costs.
“The legal issues that I’m seeing are first of all, that these folks have paid rent for January and some of them for February and that’s just like in the pocket of this guy, " Pantos said.
Pantos said there may have been some dollars coming from rental assistance programs, which could complicate things.
He also says getting the tenants reimbursed for moving fees when Together Omaha is putting them up in hotels and covering their moving costs, could also be complicated.
If any of the cases do go to courts, the tenants will be facing William Stanek, a landlord with a history of property violations and evicting tenants during a moratorium.
“He’s definitely an amoral actor where he calculates the risk. Which is fees and fines at a small amount versus his profit by maintaining substandard housing and gaming the system," Pantos said.
Stanek is no stranger to the courtroom, having faced criminal citations for failing to keep his properties safe numerous times.
In 2007, he was charged with six misdemeanors in two separate cases. Five of those charges were dropped, including a charge for an unsafe structure or interior.
He plead guilty to the closure of a structure, serving 90 days probation and paying $80.
In 2017, he was charged with failing to fix issues in four cases. He was given six months probation twice and paid a total of $460 dollars in fees.
City Prosecutor Kevin Slimp, says he can’t talk about Stanek, but was able to talk with us about the process of criminal citations.
“We’re not at liberty to discuss this particular case right now, because it does look like we’ll have something pending. So we’re not going to discuss that," Slimp said.
He says usually landlords are given at least three chances to fix violations. For most violations, the maximum sentence is six months in jail and or a $500 fine.
“If it becomes an ongoing problem and we wind up prosecuting them subsequently, then just like any other kind of criminal offense, the theory would be that we would seek more punishment," Slimp said.
Pantos says Nebraska and Omaha need to be looking at how to better protect tenants under the law.
"There is a problem with the fact that the current legal system state statute does not provide a lot of tools for folks who want to reform the living situations for a lot of folks in our community," Slimp said.
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