Ralston's absentee slumlords are due a reckoning for appalling conditions there
Six months ago, after the owners of the Ralston Towers in Columbus had been notified repeatedly and for weeks about air conditioning problems in the building, a 60-year-old man died in a room where the temperature topped 98.
Now, with the city, the state and most of the eastern U.S. in the grip of a deep freeze, the Ralston’s furnace and water heating are so inadequate that the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development has declared parts of the building unsafe for human habitation and ordered those areas to be evacuated, with the affected residents to be housed temporarily in local motels at the expense of the owner.
Wednesday afternoon, the building’s absentee ownership — a New Jersey entity incorporated as PF Holdings LLC — could not be contacted, and the responsibility of relocating the Ralston residents would apparently be borne, at least for now, by the city.
As of Thursday morning, according to a report by Alva James-Johnson, no evacuation had begun, and City Inspections and Code Director John Hudgison said the city was still getting calls about conditions there.
One resident told James-Johnson he’d had no hot water or lights for three weeks. Another had slept in a jacket and hat because the temperature in his part of the building “got down close to freezing last night.”
Mayor Teresa Tomlinson said the city has inspected the Ralston every two weeks since November, and the owners have been given ample time to address violations of city building codes.
Enough. After Ralston residents have been needlessly subjected first to brutal heat and now bone-chilling cold … Enough.
This long ago went way past landlords ignoring a few leaky faucets or stuck windows. This has gone past negligence, past malfeasance, and into the realm of class-action abuse.
The Ralston once was the showcase hotel of downtown Columbus, a place for state conventions, balls and civic club meetings. Now the site of 269 Section 8 housing voucher slots for low-income residents, it is home to an especially vulnerable, mostly elderly population. Those who live there sometimes don’t complain about even some of the most appalling conditions because they truly have nowhere else to go.
The city can do only so much: It does not own the building, and the Housing Authority of Columbus does not oversee the kind of Section 8 program that involves the Ralston. The city supposedly could shut down the building for code violations, but then what? People at the mercy of conditions there now would be literally out in the cold.
Hudgison said Thursday that “HUD enforcement is coming,” and just what authority the federal agency can and will exert over a company under contract with Uncle Sam to provide decent housing could be critical.
Meanwhile, if the nameless owners 800 miles away think they’re being depicted unfairly, they should make the point by visiting their property in person and spending a few sweltering or freezing nights there.
This story was originally published January 4, 2018 at 5:52 PM with the headline "Ralston's absentee slumlords are due a reckoning for appalling conditions there."