Editorial: Renters sent packing

Wednesday, July 18, 2007 | 7:01 a.m.

Federal housing officials are closing 233 North Las Vegas apartments because of unsafe living conditions, forcing about 800 low-income tenants to move.

A story by the Las Vegas Sun on Tuesday reports that the closures at Buena Vista Springs apartments are the result of four years of failed inspections that revealed such problems as poor plumbing, exposed electrical wires and leaking roofs.

A Las Vegas spokesman for the Housing and Urban Development Department told Sun reporter Timothy Pratt that the agency had no choice but to cut off federal subsidies to the Florida firm that owns the complex.

The displaced residents now must apply for Section 8 vouchers, which pay federal subsidies to the landlords of regular apartments so that tenants with lower incomes can afford to rent them.

But the vouchers are hardly a solution to the problem of finding affordable housing for 800 people. A fair number of landlords don't accept Section 8 vouchers because the vouchers don't cover all of a unit's monthly rent. Other landlords simply don't want renters with low incomes .

And some of the former Buena Vista Springs residents may not even qualify for Section 8 housing, which means they will have to find homes in a region that doesn't have much affordable housing.

We are glad that federal officials have lowered the boom on the Florida firm that allowed these poor conditions to exist. But what took them so long? These units failed five inspections in four years.

What's more, this situation illustrates that this process lacks a way to ensure that poor housing conditions are repaired when problems first occur, rather than waiting for a string of failed inspections and then closing the units.

This landlord seems to possess an unnerving lack of fear of repercussions for failing to keep its apartments in good repair. And federal officials apparently have no choice but to close units and launch people who are already struggling financially into the streets. There ought to be a better way.