Old downtown building gets new owners. City wants to help tenants forced to move.
Katreena Friend pays $495 a month for a studio apartment in downtown Olympia with a shared bathroom down the hall. On Monday, she said, she paid her rent, went grocery shopping, and came home to a letter telling her she had to move out by the end of the month.
“I’m still reeling (from) the emotions of where in God’s name am I going to go?” she said two days later. “I’m not exactly sure.”
The Angelus building at the corner of Fourth Avenue West and Columbia Street Northwest sold in late April for $1.9 million, according to the county assessor’s office. Less than two weeks later, the new owners gave notices to vacate to the occupants of 11 of the 29 units.
Now, as city leaders consider new tenant protections amid a housing shortage, they say they want to pay to help Angelus tenants find somewhere else to live.
“It’s a loss of very low cost housing. The rents that they charged haven’t been seen in Olympia for probably 15 years, that’s how low they were,” said Anna Schlecht, the city’s community service programs manager, noting city staff had been talking about ways to help tenants who might be displaced since hearing the building was for sale.
The Angelus is more than a century old and in rough shape. Meanwhile, half a dozen high-end housing developments are in the works within a few blocks.
The new owners plan to renovate the Angelus and bring rents closer to market rates.
In 2013, after the city identified the building as a high fire risk, it loaned the then-owner $75,000 to install sprinklers using federal Community Development Block Grant dollars. When the building sold, the city got back about $56,000 of the remaining loan balance, which could be used to help low- and moderate-income Angelus tenants find new housing, Schlecht said.
Such a move requires a 30-day public comment period, pushing a final decision to mid June. The new owners agreed this week to give tenants until the end of June to move out.
Most of the notices were given due to behavioral problems with tenants, including drug use, noise and threats to other tenants, said Tom Glaspie, one of the new owners. He said some tenants also are late on rent and were not screened when they moved in.
An example of issues: On Tuesday night, police were called and one tenant was arrested after she allegedly threatened someone on the street with a BB gun from her apartment window.
Glaspie said he and his partners had planned to renovate two units per month at the building, but decided to change course when they heard about problems from the previous owner.
“We’ve got to clean house and get them out of there and change the culture,” he said. “We want first and foremost sober people who want to live downtown in a safe environment and of course who can pay their rent on time.”
Glaspie said they plan to give $750 per unit to tenants to help with moving expenses and give back any deposit tenants put down under the previous owner, on top of the city’s assistance program.
Whether that will be enough remains to be seen. Tony Varela, who shares a $750-per-month one-bedroom apartment at the Angelus with three family members, thinks they’ll have to compete with their neighbors to find something else at that price.
“(I’m) stressed, confused, worried,” he said. “It’s not just me, it’s all the neighbors.”
This story was originally published May 8, 2019 at 12:58 PM.
