Residents of the troubled Nob Hill apartment complex in Syracuse are hoping the courts will finally hold the owner responsible for years of deterioration and neglect. They said unsafe conditions remain even after a deadly fire.
The fire in building three nearly a month ago claimed two lives. Seven-year resident Tracey McClellan said it could have been worse.
“The smoke detectors in our apartment did not work. My mother and I barely made it out alive. Now, we have nowhere to live," she said. "Our belongings remain trapped in Building 3. At the same time, even after this deadly fire, emergency lights at other Nob Hill buildings still have not been repaired. Smoke detectors and many units still do not work.”
She joined other tenants in front of the Onondaga County Courthouse Wednesday before a hearing in the city’s case against the Nob Hill Apartment Group that’s dragged on for nearly a year. Shante Gregg has lived there for ten years and says the complex has been going downhill since 2020.
"At this point, I feel like I have no resolution to anything," she said. "To the maintenance requests, to being displaced from the fire, to being in building 2 now where things are still getting worse. There's no one to take accountability for it.”
Kona Lisa Mahu is head of the Nob Hill Tenants Association. She said the owners and managers should face more than civil penalties.
“If you let a code violation go for 30, 60, 90 days a year and people die in a fire because you've not taken care of codes, somebody needs to be held criminally accounted for,” she said.
Mahu said residents are calling for the remediation of building three and access to the units to claim their property. They’re also demanding immediate repairs of all emergency lighting, smoke detectors, plumbing, heating, elevators, as well as garbage collection.
In a separate case, about two dozen individual residents are asking a city court judge to compel the owners to address code violations elsewhere in the complex.
