SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. -- Pine
Creek Condominiums owners in San Luis Obispo won't have to foot the bill for its
tenants kicked out of illegal housing.
Last month, a resident called
the city of San Luis Obispo to report her clothes were getting hot in her closet
at the Pine Creek Condominiums on Foothill Boulevard.
Inspectors found that lofts were
converted into bedrooms and 36 units had to be vacated after they were posted
for health and safety code violations.
Many of the displaced tenants are
Cal Poly and Cuesta College students.
A 2004 state law requiring owners
to pay the cost of relocation if their tenants are displaced because their units
are found to be hazardous.
But the San Luis Obispo City
Board ruled against that saying the tenants weren't necessarily displaced.
The safety hazards in question
are the lofts within each apartment but the board says the students aren't
displaced from the entire unit.
The students can't sleep in the
lofts but can move into the bedroom portion of the apartment.
"Although they were
displaced from the loft, they didn't rent the loft as a bedroom," says San Luis
Obispo City Building Official Joseph Lease. "They didn't lease the loft as a
bedroom. The students could be relocated within the units and in some cases,
the owners renegotiated the leases with the tenants so they weren't actually
displaced from the units."
The owners now have to install
smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in the units and have until May to get
permits to either return the lofts to its original state or to add stairs and
covert the storage lofts into study lofts.
All construction must be
completed by August 31st.
The owners also have to provide
annual verification to the city that the lofts aren't being used as bedrooms in
the future.
The tenants have ten days from
the ruling to appeal the board's decision.
