Dallas-based Lurin Real Estate Holdings, which owns the complex, filed for bankruptcy in Texas after falling behind on a $46.3 million mortgage<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A lender filed for foreclosure on the property in May.\u00a0<\/p>\n The City of St. Petersburg has also sued the company to recover more than $400,000 in unpaid water bills.<\/p>\n Charles Phillips of the St. Petersburg Tenants Union<\/a> addressed the St. Petersburg City Council on Thursday, calling on the city to intervene on behalf of residents he described as voiceless.<\/p>\n “The conditions at the complex are frankly, very shocking,” Phillips told council members. Phillips said the complex is operating at roughly 30% occupancy.\u00a0<\/p>\n In an interview with 10 Tampa Bay News on Sunday, Phillips described a facility in steep decline \u2014 with an out-of-order laundry center, a pool closed by the Pinellas County Health Department and grass so overgrown that residents risk encounters with snakes while walking outside.<\/p>\n “It’s dangerous for people to walk around, walk their dogs, because of snakes and other things,” Phillips said. “There is mold, structural damage to a lot of the buildings, management is unresponsive at best and retaliatory and threatening at worst.”<\/p>\n Last summer, tenants faced the threat of a water shutoff after Lurin fell behind on utility payments<\/a> to the city. The St. Petersburg Tenants Union also says\u00a0fire safety systems<\/a> at the complex are nonfunctional.<\/p>\n With foreclosure proceedings now underway, Phillips said the moment presents an opening for the city to act.<\/p>\n “It’s going to go up at auction, and we would like the city to purchase the property to run it as city-owned public housing like the Jamestown Apartments,” he said.<\/p>\n Lurin Real Estate Holdings did not respond to multiple requests for comment made over the past several months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Residents at The Morgan Apartment Complex face mold, broken fire systems and a shuttered pool as their Dallas-based…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-307625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307625","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=307625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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