ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (WFLA) \u2013 Families at the embattled Morgan Apartments in St. Petersburg are pushing for the city to take over the property.<\/p>\n
Renters feel that their future has been uncertain since last year. Zane Bowman previously said, \u201cWhat the hell, guys, c\u2019mon, this is how you treat your people? I\u2019ve been here for 8 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many protesters gathered outside City Hall when they were told to vacate their homes because the property owner, Lurin Real Estate Holdings, had failed to pay nearly $500,000 in water bills. Thursday, they\u2019ll return to City Hall with a request for the city council to purchase the complex.<\/p>\n
Pinellas County court documents showed the owner defaulted on a loan of more than $46 million, creating the threat of foreclosure. <\/p>\n
William Kilgore with the St. Pete Tenants Union said, \u201cWe\u2019re demanding that it comes under public control, because we can actually hold it accountable and the tenants can have a safe, stable, and comfortable housing.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Kilgore, the city already has enterprise facilities, including the Jamestown Apartments and Town Homes on Burlington Avenue N. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re saying that the city needs to step in when this things goes up to auction and to purchase it, to make it permanently affordable, permanently habitable, and also just to have, you know, accountability and transparency that you don\u2019t get with a private landlord and corporate landlord,\u201d Kilgore said.<\/p>\n
Families said it\u2019s obvious the complex isn\u2019t being taken care of, and they want the city to address uncertainties surrounding the property. <\/p>\n
\u201cThese are people\u2019s lives, you know, this isn\u2019t changing the quality of a hamburger. This is people having roofs over their heads,\u201d Bowman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (WFLA) \u2013 Families at the embattled Morgan Apartments in St. Petersburg are pushing for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-130491","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-st-pete","9":"tag-st-pete-headlines","10":"tag-st-pete-news","11":"tag-st-petersburg","12":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","13":"tag-st-petersburg-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}