If there aren’t substantial consequences for violating government regulations and contracts what I’d actually stopping people from just ignoring them? We have laws for a reason. And those laws need to have teeth.
To let a company hide behind an innocent third party, deliberately to avoid consequences makes it even worse. For a company to even try is shameful.
Either the company makes it right and updates the building to align with the regulations, or it pays to relocate the residents it’s hiding behind and tears down the building at whatever expense that involves, or it gives up the building, the leases, and any income from the building to the the government.
Nobody says you can’t punish them. Seize the building and use it for affordable housing, for example. Just don’t tear down homes during a housing shortage.
You know what home probably isn’t up to code and isn’t accessibility-compliant? The one you live in, probably. My house has front stairs.
Considering my home is a single family dwelling, it is accessibility compliant since I don’t have compliance to meet and the house certainly didn’t have one when it was built 70 years ago. That’s a straw man argument and not what we are discussing.
We are talking about a new construction that wasn’t compliant at the time it was built, who leased out the apartments knowing it wasn’t compliant.
I did list the government taking ownership as an option. Along with mandating them to bring it into compliance. Considering they also built larger than they were allowed to, its not like they could shrink the building though.
If the building was designed with flagrent disregard for the planning committee and disability accessibility requirements, what else did they decide wasn’t important to follow? Fire code? Building standards? In my opinion, these things put the whole building in question.
A housing shortcut shouldn’t mean we accept people living in substandard or potentially dangerous housing.
Comer Homes Group sounds like a real asshole company.
I’m sure they are. Just not fond of “destroy perfectly functional homes and evict their occupants because the builder didn’t build exactly what was agreed upon”.
From reading the article it’s worse than that - for example it’s meant to have disability access and they just didn’t because it’s cheaper. They also had no planning permission for what they did build.
I’m not really sure how tenants are already in there as you say, likely that regulation needs to be improved and the current ones recompensated for their move.
Sounds like they aren’t perfectly functional, and Comer was warned not to lease them out. I’m not sure what the answer is though. I agree that it sucks if tenants are forced to move, but there should be some option. Maybe make Comer pay for relocation expenses for tenants as well?
