Dangerous stairs lead residents to eviction brink

Cloquet apartment building owner Roger Bruhn calls his current conundrum a "series of unfortunate events." When the pandemic hit in 2020, he faced, for the first time, tenants who were not paying rent on units in the Victory Apartments at 17 Eighth Street. That's because federal rules allowed tenants to forgo paying rent during the pandemic without fear of eviction. For 17 years, Bruhn said, he has dealt with only one eviction. Now he had four, soon to be five, units with no rental income in the low-to-moderate-income building 12 units.

Suddenly, his money-making building wasn't. And he had a huge expense to deal with after a broken stair tread on an outside stairwell caused a tenant injury and then an inspection from the city. Brahn got notice in the fall of 2020 that the stairs had to be replaced or face an eviction notice for the people who live in the nine units on the second and third floors.

That notice went out from the city this month and now tenants face a June 1 deadline to find affordable housing in a tight market.

Brahn said this week that the domino effect on income from the property and the expensive repair needed hasn't helped him in securing a loan for the project. He said he's run through an exhaustive list of possible public programs to assist him but has come up empty on how to pay for what he estimates would be an $80,000 construction project on a building worth $300,000. "It does zero to improve the interior of the building," he said, which makes getting a conventional loan a problem.

He has kept in contact with the city from Oklahoma, where he moved a few years ago in a job relocation. Victory Apartments participates in city HRA programs to allow lower rents for tenants.

Last week, Brahn was told by Cloquet Community Development director Holly Hansen of a program through the U.S. Department of Agriculture that might be able to help. He's waiting to hear back. Since buying the building in 2005, he has used a city housing grant to replace siding on the building, replace windows and the roof and maintain heating systems.

The failing back staircase serves as the only direct exit from the top two floors of the building. The notice that the stairs make the top floors "uninhabitable" is a first for Matt Munter, the Cloquet housing inspector.

"It's scary," he said of the condition of the stairs. They are "beyond their usable life" with rotting deck boards and lumber dimensions that don't meet code for being weight-bearing.

Munter says the situation causes him a lot of "heartburn on my end. I don't want to displace anyone but I also don't want to see them get hurt."

"Matt is absolutely doing his job," Bruhn said. "It's not up to code."

Bruhn wrote about his building on real estate sites when it was up for sale about five years ago as he was leaving the area. "It consists of efficiency apartments and one or two bedroom units," sites read. "Rents range from $335 to $585 per month. This building averages $55,890 revenues per year. It is professionally managed and it is 100-percent occupied."

Tenants at Victory meet with housing officials and other program leaders on Monday to assess the situation and offer some options as the June 1 deadline looms. Debra Shaff, executive director of the Cloquet/Carlton Housing & Redevelopment Authority told residents what they already knew: There are no vacancies in the area right now for low-and-moderate income housing.