Apartment Residents Will Receive City Help

As the deadline for residents of the Cascade and Senator Apartments to
vacate the buildings approaches, the City of Yakima has partnered with the Yakima County
Human Services Department to develop a plan to help the residents find other housing.

In mid-December of last year, the City’s Codes Division notified the owner of the two Downtown
Yakima buildings that several health and life safety issues, including non-functioning fire alarm
systems, holes in walls, and electrical problems, had to be addressed or the apartments in the
Senator and the Cascade would have to be vacated. Since then, only minimal progress has
been made to take care of the numerous code violations.

Because of that lack of progress, a deadline of Friday, July 12th at noon has been set for
residents to vacate the buildings.

To help the mostly low-income residents of the Senator Apartments and Cascade Apartments
find other housing, the City turned to the County’s Human Services Department, which has a
wealth of experience working with rental property owners and other housing providers.

“We have built a strong network of agencies, including the Northwest Justice Project and the
Homeless Network of Yakima County, as well as numerous housing providers that we can use
to help ease the transition for residents of the Senator and the Cascade apartments,” said
Yakima County Human Services Department Senior Manager Tim Sullivan. “Residents will
have every opportunity to find safe, affordable places to live.”

Over the next few days, current residents of the Senator and Cascade buildings will be invited to
meet with representatives from various agencies to discuss their housing needs. A schedule
and location for those meetings will likely be released on Tuesday, July 9th. Door hangers will
be distributed throughout the Senator and Cascade apartments alerting residents about the
opportunity for them to take advantage of the assistance being provided by the County’s Human
Services Department and its network of agencies and housing providers.

Because code violations were only found in the upper floor apartments, businesses that
currently occupy ground floor spaces in the Cascade building are not being required to leave.
No businesses are located on the ground floor of the Senator building.