LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Clark County officials recounted a nightmare that played out just three years ago.
A run-down apartment complex just north of UNLV had boarded-up windows and a big problem with squatters. Apex Apartments became a magnet for crime. The owners were taking COVID-19 rental relief money — about $330,000 according to the county. And nothing was getting better for tenants.
The county tried to get the owners to fix things, but the efforts were ignored. Apex was the site of two homicides and drugs were being sold openly. A report from the 8 News Now Investigators showed just feet away from the apartment manager’s office, a sign was posted: “Due to COVID-19, the Candy House is only taking call in orders.”
But the county didn’t have a lot of options. County Commissioner Tick Segerblom told state lawmakers on Wednesday the landlord actually told them, “Shut us down, we don’t care.”
“At the end of the day, we don’t want to put 200 people on the street, we don’t want to shut this property down,” Segerblom said. What he wants is the tools to resolve a situation that gets so out of hand.
Counties and cities might get those tools from Assembly Bill 211 (AB211), the subject of a hearing on Wednesday in Carson City.
AB211 would allow the appointment of a receiver to step in and take control. A receiver is a third-party brought in to take control of a company’s assets to repay creditors. It’s an extreme step, but it’s one that is written into laws in 20 other states.
“AB211 provides a solution to the extreme situation when a property is significantly substandard and all attempts to bring the property to standard are rebuffed, ignored, or the situation is where the owner is unable to bring the property up to code on their own,” Democratic Assemblymember Venicia Considine, the bill’s sponsor, said. She represents parts of Henderson and unincorporated Clark County.
“These are situations where seniors are crawling up the stairs or trapped in their unit because an elevator has been inoperable for months, or when the owners have determined that paying a fine is more acceptable than the option of fixing the property,” she said.
That happened at Horizon Seniors in Henderson, the subject of another report by the 8 News Now Investigators. Documents showed a growing number of problems there in the summer of 2023, including a broken elevator that left a woman in her 90s stranded in her apartment.
A lot has to happen before the property owner loses control. The bill requires a ruling by District Court that residents are “substantially endangered,” and it specifies allowing the landlord a reasonable opportunity to resolve the situation. But that doesn’t always happen, and appointing a receiver provides “a final resort,” Segerblom said.
Joanna Jacob, the county’s manager of government affairs, said there was another case where the health department found a swimming pool that had been improperly covered. Feral cats made it their home, and “hundreds of dead cats” were found, she said. The complex, which she didn’t name, was the site of multiple homicides, Jacob said.
It happens all over the valley, Jacob told lawmakers.
Assemblymember Toby Yurek (R-Clark County) asked if the bill was more about living conditions or crime rates.
Officials said the two problems often go hand-in-hand, but Considine said, “This bill is about bad actors and those that cannot afford to fix their properties.” She said existing eviction laws are there to get rid of criminals.
But Segerblom didn’t make the same distinction. “If the landlord won’t step up and make sure that they’re safe we don’t want to put 200, 400, 600 people on the street for something that could be fixed,” he said.
“They’re out-of-state landlords, they’re corporations, but they’re not large corporations that have multiple units throughout the valley,” Segerblom said. “It’s not the big landlords that you would read about in the paper.”
