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Seven families left homeless after apartment fire now living in Evergreen Park in Potsdam

Posted 3/17/19

By CRAIG FREILICH North Country This Week POTSDAM – Seven families from the burned out building at Lawrence Avenue Apartments are now temporarily housed at Evergreen Park in Potsdam. All other …

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Seven families left homeless after apartment fire now living in Evergreen Park in Potsdam

Posted

By CRAIG FREILICH

North Country This Week

POTSDAM – Seven families from the burned out building at Lawrence Avenue Apartments are now temporarily housed at Evergreen Park in Potsdam.

All other tenants from Building F, where the fire was, have semi-permanent housing elsewhere until the Lawrence Avenue units are ready to be reoccupied, said Martin Chason, regional property manager for the owners, Chason Affinity of Buffalo.

Chason is leasing the seven units from Evergreen Park under a federal Department of Housing and Urban Development “pass-through” leasing arrangement, according to Nancy Orologio, executive director of the Village of Potsdam Housing Authority.

Most tenants were housed in hotels in the area immediately after the fire. Other tenants have found shelter with friends and relatives or have made other arrangements.

Since then Chason and HUD worked out an arrangement to get some of the tenants into seven empty rental units at Evergreen Park, officially known as Village of Potsdam Housing Authority.

Early on such a development was thought to be unlikely due to the complexities in the different ways that Evergreen and Lawrence Avenue operate their subsidized affordable housing under different state and federal programs, the Potsdam Housing Authority’s Orologio said after a conference call with HUD and NYS shortly after the fire.

While she said there appeared to be little that could be done at the time, she is happy to have brought the matter to the attention of state and federal authorities.

The pass-through “is a HUD instrument that allows Lawrence Avenue Apartments to renovate” and still provide subsidized apartments for tenants in the meantime, Orologio said.

According to a HUD statement on pass-through arrangements, “Property owners with tenants...whose unit is uninhabitable may temporarily lease a habitable unit in another building that meets the Uniform Physical Condition Standards.”

Those tenants moved into Evergreen within the last two weeks.

Chason said the move was made to accommodate tenants “until Debra Drive (Lawrence Avenue Apartments) is back up and running” and tenants can move back in.

“That will probably not happen all at once,” but as each apartment is made ready as repairs move forward over the next few months, Chason said.