After a long day of class, the last thing a student could imagine starting the afternoon with is suddenly becoming homeless.
For business sophomore Chris Fike and economics and finance sophomore Aaron Havill, Tuesday was that kind of nightmare.
Fike and Havill’s home was the first student house to fall victim to Mayor Jim Newberry’s recent aim to address safety fire codes and zoning violations in neighborhoods surrounding UK.
Five student tenants were living at 171 Woodland Ave. when Fayette Circuit Judge Ernesto Scorsone issued a temporary injunction for not meeting the fire safety code requirements of a “lodging” house with more than two stories.
Anamary Wehle, a spokeswoman in the Mayor’s Office, said a “lodging” house is defined as a residence with unrelated adults living together in a congregate living arrangement with one or more of the characteristics: rent is collective and paid to an owner or owner’s agent, bedrooms make up at least 60 percent of the space of residence, bedroom doors have either keyed locks or deadbolts, tenants do not have unrestricted access to all parts of the house, and the cost of meals and food is not shared.
The property was zoned as commercial instead of residential, according to the Fayette County Property Valuation Administrator Web site.
The tenants said their landlord, Mike Haley, offered them another house to lease, but because of their mounting frustrations, they declined because none of them wanted to live in a house leased by Haley again.
The injunction prevents the owner of the property, Michael Morrison, from operating the house.
Landlords were given notice of the city’s plan to increase surveillance on fire code and zoning violations at an Oct. 9 news conference.
“We made them aware of our intentions to aggressively enforce any violations of the fire code and zoning requirements,” Newberry said in the news release.
When the house was originally inspected on Oct. 2, 10 students tenants lived there. All bedrooms had individual locks and the smoke alarms were not interconnected into the electrical system, according to the news release.
Morrison and business partner Haley said they made improvements since the original inspection, but the house still did not have sprinklers and was not in compliance with the zoning code, according to the news release.
Neither Morrison nor Haley returned phone calls to the Kernel by publication deadline.
Fire code and zoning violations are not the only problems the house has, according to the news release. The house has no certificate of occupancy, several of its electric meters have not had final inspection and the property does not meet the parking requirements for 10 people.
The students said as of Tuesday evening the city had not offered them another place to live.
Finance sophomore and resident Taylor Alcott said Tuesday when the injunction was announced that he and his roommates had nowhere to go.
“We’re forced to be here tonight,” Alcott said.
-Staff writer Allie Garza contributed to the story.
it’s Havill, not “Harill”
Goodbye Castle, had some good times…
HAHAHAHA good job
The house isn’t the “victim” the students were victims while paying to live in a place without proper safety codes met. Yes, it’s an added hassle to move in the next few weeks, but you weren’t getting what you paid for, which is a safe place to live. Congrats to code enforcement for a job well done!
They’ve known since October 9?
What did they expect would happen?
Duh!
They’ve been trying to find apartments elsewhere, but it’s hard at this time of year. Mike Haley reassured them multiple times that these repairs would take place in a timely manner, but they never did. He really screwed them over on this one
There has to be an agenda somewhere with these targeted property inspections.
http://bluegrasspolicy-blog.blogspot.com/2009/11/bullseye-on-campus-housing.html
There has to be an agenda somewhere with these targeted property inspections.
http://bluegrasspolicy-blog.blogspot.com/2009/11/bullseye-on-campus-housing.html
Mike Haley is a slumlord who preys on students not aware of their rights as tenants. He buys homes, does the literal minimum to make them livable and charges high rents because of their proximity to campus. He has been doing this for years. The city could meet their quota by just inspecting Haleys’ Properties.
All I have to say is Karma is a ….well you know. Mike Haley is finally getting what he deserves with his unethical business practices. I lived in a house rented to me by Mike Haley 2 years ago and I have never had to scream at one person so much because of his inability to be a decent person. Our house was a standing death trap, it’s a miracle that me and my 6 other roommates are still alive. I advise anyone who has a problem to with Mike Haley and his business of renting homes to act immediatley and enforce your rights as a tenant. I have been in many of his rental homes and they are just as bad, if not worse, than the one I lived in. Maybe he should have opened his ears 2 years ago when I was screaming at him and maybe his business could have been salvaged. Once again, Karma is a …..yeah.
Having lived in a Haley-Corso owned home for approximately a year and a half, It is hard for me to claim to be surprised that one of Mike Haley’s houses was the first to fall prey to this new law. As I saw during my time living under the tyrannical reign of Mike Haley, he once again has shown blatant disregard for the safety and well-being of his tennants. He uses cheap labor and materials in order to add bedrooms on to his shoddy houses in an attempt to charge college students more money for substandard living. If the city actually wants to protect college students, they do not need to be looking all over the city, rather they should launch an investigation of perhaps the largest slumlord in the city.
I lived in one of the houses owned my Mike Haley and Mike Morrison last year and it was a horrible experience. We moved in on August 1st and the house was infested with bugs and was extremely dirty. He refused to clean it for us becasue according to him it was “fine for a college student”. To top that the carpet needed replaced when we moved in and they made us pay for it, then when we moved out they charged us for carpet on the secrurity deposit. Also the house was literally falling down and people from the city came and inspected it and said it must be fixed. They got their more than likely illegal alien handy man Alejandro to fix it. All he did was dig a hole under the house and buy car jacks to pump the house up and put bricks under it. This was only one of the many problems we had with the 2 Mikes. Something really needs to be done about them. The city should definately inspect all of their houses first.
i lived in one of Mike Haleys’ houses last year and it was the biggest rip off ever. He never answers his phone when you need him. He will tell you he will do something and doesnt do it. To top it off one time when I called him because our gas got turnded off because the piping was deemed too gangerous by the gas company in the middle of winter he told me to F##k off because he had more important things to do than deal with immature college students that cant handle not having heat for a couple days. The last time i checked we were paying 1800 bucks a month to live there and its his responsibilty to make sure the house is safe.
I think the Kernel should do an artcle on bad landlords especially Mike Hayley.
I would like to second the opinion about Mike Hayley and Mike Morrison. Worse landlords at UK. Kernel please do an article about these two slumlords!!
When I lived in Mike’s house on Waller, we got sued by the neighbors for driving in their yard. When I called Mike about it he told me to learn how to park. He gave eight people about six spots to park in. Hey Mike I hope you lose all of your ill gotten gains. What goes around comes around you freakin’ scumbag!
When I rented from Mike Haley, we had a $3000 deposit which we saw none of in the end. His response as to why no return: I had to replace some carpet, paint walls, and clean the house because you all left it a mess. $3000 worth? Think not! Plus I was the last one to move out and know for a fact it was spotless. He deserves to lose all he has stolen from us students!
Mike Haley kicked a hole in our wall during a maintenance check and charged us for it! Plus he promised a deck out back and never gave it to us… So we had to build our own!! And the cabinets in our house were way too high!! Alehandro can’t speak english!
Mike Haley asked us where he could score some ecstasy because he was going to Vegas for the weekend with his bros. He told us not to tell his wife that he was asking where to “score,” told us to keep it between bros.
He also linked the apartment behind us into our gas, electric and water line. When our bills nearly tripled and we figured out why, we confronted him. He flipped out on us for refusing to pay our last months rent until we got the share of the bills we were owed. He punched a hole in our living room wall, told us to “fuck off, I thought we were friends” and then preceeded to peel out of our driveway while flipping us off….all while his young daughter was in the car.
The man is a clown, he loves drugs, Vegas, his bros, illegal immigrants, lying, being friends with 19 year old kids, and screwing college kids (in a monetary kind of way of course).
If you stand up to him you will soon realize he is a coward. Please write an article about this clown.
Cmon’! Give the guy a break.
Wow, this Haley guy sounds like a prick. The city should definitely investigate his properties and I think it’d be great for the Kernel to do an actual article on him. Sounds like the perfect venue for a student newspaper to actually investigate.
These guys might not have been evicted if they hadn’t thrown a huge party at their house before school started with at least 5 of their guests being arrested, and the residents refusing to take responsibility for the party. You shouldn’t have called attention to yourselves
They were not evicted if you read the article you would know that…. And yes we threw some bangers if you were there I’m sure you weren’t complaining while they were going on.
From a parent’s perspective, I must say that I feel Mr. Haley has not been the ideal landlord, there were problems from day one, a copy of the punch list was provided to Mr. Haley regarding all the repairs that needed to be addressed, documented follow up calls were made requesting repairs on the property. Unfortunately for Mr. Haley, the city addressed this in a manner that is applaudable. The other problem that was not addressed , is the fact that these students had no place to go, Mr. Haley offered them one of his other rental properties only under the condition that they sign another lease with him, which is not much of an offer considering his history as a landlord. Mr. Haley collected rent checks for the next three months on 11/7/09, two days later the property was condemned, he is charging a full month’s rent for two days of occupancy. He is also requiring them to sign a lease termination, which requires hiring an attorney to protect these students from waving all legal rights they have against Mr. Haley Aka Haley Properties pior to refunding them the remaining two months of rental payment. I would welcome opportunity to sit down and discuss this with Mr. Haley adult to adult but if the LFCG deemed the house unsafe then I feel certain that a court of law will find that Mr. Haley did indeed knowingly put these students at risk. As parents we strive to teach our children to be accountable for their actions but unfortunately there are those adults in our society that require the judical system to enforce such accountability.
This is bullsh!t The citizens of the US are now afraid of their government where it should be the opposite. The government should be afraid of the citizens. Today people just hold signs up and chant. Well you know what, that DOESNT work anymore. Look at our history, when we were first becoming a country we had riots against Great Britain. Today we do nothing except hold signs up and sing. Other countries get things done because they show their government that they are against what they are doing and then they finally listen and understand. There are many many videos off people that gather together and protest outside of events that just sit there. The people in the conference have actually came out looked at them, laughed, and walked back inside. Now if we were more aggressive they would be hiding in the conference hall. Who cares about the police present. We show them that we wont back down and then they finally will. It has been proven and it still happens when the people start becoming more aggressive and stop writing how they feel to their government officials or blogging. I use to work for a party I will not name at their HQ. I saw how dumb and clueless they are and was shocked that these are the people that are running things. It drove more crazy to the point that I had to quit. STOP writing and singing, and blogging. Do something.
Is haley properties also Big Blue Investments