Throughout the entirety of Cleveland's longest deep freeze since the late 1800s, Nikkie Sherman had no heat at her apartment in Shaker Square.
"We had put a sheet up to allow the little heat we had to remain in the living room, and it was terrible," Sherman said. "And then the power went totally off."
The first-grade teacher and her family are among the approximately 40 residents ordered out of apartment buildings at 12500 and 12600 Shaker Blvd. after Cleveland's Fire Marshal last week issued a vacate order. They have until the end of March to move from the buildings deemed dangerous and unlivable.
"We have no water, and heat we don鈥檛 have," Sherman said. "And the stove, it鈥檚 not working. We have no electricity ... We had to leave because we couldn鈥檛 stay in that type of condition."
Now Sherman is left to wonder; how will she remove her things from her seventh-floor apartment without working elevators?
Last fall, the long-troubled properties became the center of the city's war on negligent landlords. Leveraging Mayor Justin Bibb's 2024 Residents First legislation, the city filed a lawsuit against the out-of-state landlords for a number of code violations, including frequent power outages, failing boilers, plumbing issues and more.
The suit was settled after another buyer, The Lenox at Shaker Square LLC, stepped up and vowed to invest more than $20 million in the properties, including $5.1 million in renovations and repairs. Housing Court Judge W. Mon谩 Scott approved the sale in September.
The owner also hired a new property management company.
Part of the agreement included quarterly updates to the city. And while progress has been made, Director of Building and Housing Sally Martin O'Toole said it is nearly impossible to make the fixes needed after decades of deferred maintenance from previous owners without impacting residents, many of whom already moved out prior to the buildings' handover.
"When they took ownership, they weren't dealing with that many people over there, but they knew that those buildings were going to have to really be emptied out for them to do the kind of extensive renovation that's required over there," O'Toole said.
The issues came to a head last week, after improperly functioning boilers caused leaking, which then caused the fire alarm system to fail. That prompted the city's fire marshal to step in and issue the vacancy order.
"Right when you walked in, it was like it had been raining water, like somebody opened up the ceiling and water just been pouring out profusely," Sherman said. "We have been having cold weather, and it does freeze up and it was slick."
77-year-old Bill Butler has lived in the building since the 1980s. He has managed to survive the winter by boiling water for his baths and propping up space heaters. But without working elevators, he said it sometimes takes him an hour to get up to his apartment because of his emphysema.
"I just had to suffer," Butler said.
Most of the tenants, including Butler, took the new owner up on his offer to relocate to a property across the street.
He said he still doesn't have hot water, and he blew a fuse trying to heat his water with a bathtub heater.
"But I slept good," Butler said. "I slept good for the first time in a long time."
It's a temporary fix. He said he's looking for another place after decades of problems.
Mary McNamara, who leads the Department of Aging, said they are working to help relocate those who are choosing to leave.
O'Toole said ownership is motivated to renovate the buildings as quickly as possible and will first offer the renovated apartments to previous tenants.
"Unfortunately, these are not simple repairs that can be made quickly," an attorney for The Lenox wrote in a statement to 精东影业. "They require significant equipment and repairs which do take time. We have already made a number of improvements to the property, repaired major systems, and have orders and contracts in place with local vendors for many other major repairs."
O'Toole said the buildings are emblematic of a larger housing problem in Cleveland the city is working to address.
"One of the reasons that we worked with City Council to pass residents first was to provide some assistance in terms of enhancing our rental registration, require certification of HVAC systems every year, having a local agent in charge," O'Toole said. "Which has helped to some degree, but there still are many disinvested buildings and some of which are in a state of foreclosure or nobody being at the helm."
She said the city plans to pursue more civil litigation against those problematic landlords in the future.
