Three units in this apartment building at 155 Broadway have been condemned by the village after code enforcement found fire safety violations, meaning the residents are forced to find new housing. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

SARANAC LAKE — Several residents of an apartment building on Broadway are being ordered to move out of their homes after the village deemed their units “unfit for human occupancy” and condemned the structure.

The property at 155 Broadway has been owned by landlord Bob Decker for many years. He is now selling off his properties around the village. But after the incoming new owners allowed code enforcers into the dilapidated property, they found serious safety risks, and the residents of three of the seven units in the building — all in street-facing apartments — have been ordered to move out.

This building condemnation for fire safety violations comes after a fire at one of Decker’s buildings at 11 Elm St. killed resident Michael Simmons this past February.

These apartment closures also come amid a roiling housing crisis in the North Country. This crisis, which has been ongoing for several years, impacts nearly every aspect of life here, from school enrollment to the size of the labor market. It’s impacting some local businesses’ ability to grow and families’ ability to put down roots in the Adirondacks. It’s forcing some residents to commute long distances to work, causing a reduction in volunteer services — including dwindling volunteer fire department membership — and contributes to homelessness.

The residents of 155 Broadway who have been ordered to move out are living out what has become many renters’ nightmare — having their homes condemned or buildings sold with little to no notice.

“It’s unfortunate, but it’s been a long time coming with Decker and his properties,” village Code Enforcement Officer Chris McClatchie said. “It’s unfortunate that it happened the way it did. We don’t need any more people getting hurt.”

McClatchie said he’s tried to get into this Broadway building before, but between difficulties setting things up with the landlord — and the fact that most tenants don’t want him to come in there, knowing they’ll have to leave their homes — it hadn’t happened until recently.

“I’m surprised that nobody prior to me has done anything with them,” McClatchie said. “Unless they just couldn’t get in, which I had a hard time doing for a while.”

Though Saranac Lake apartment buildings are supposed to be inspected every three years, it’s hard to get compliance, McClatchie said this past February. He can’t just go in because they are private properties, and often people don’t want him to come in because that means they’d have to leave their apartments and there aren’t many other available places to live in town.

This is a widespread problem throughout the village. McClatchie said he’s been trying to catch up on late inspections since he came into the role in 2022.

–

Searching for housing

–

Autumn Fravor lives on the third-floor of the building with her boyfriend Daniel Lam Jr., and his father Daniel Lam Sr. They got paperwork on Monday and were told they had to move out within a week, she said.

But apartments are in short supply in Saranac Lake. Fravor said she’s called dozens of landlords, and that as of Wednesday, had only found one open with space for three people, at their price point, and which allows pets. They have a German Shepard and two cats.

Fravor said she is frustrated that they have to move. The order came without any warning, leaving them scrambling to find a new place to live and upending their daily life. Fravor said she works at a hotel in town and Lam Jr. is a lineman but recently got laid off. Lam Sr. is working to get on disability and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development rental assistance.

She said she doesn’t see why she can’t buy a fire escape ladder and stay in the apartment.

McClatchie said before the village orders anyone to leave for a condemnation, they contact the county’s Department of Social Services to work on setting them up with a new place.

Still, the village says it’s too dangerous to continue living in these three units at 155 Broadway.

McClatchie said he started gaining access to some of Decker’s buildings after the Elm Street fire in February and as they are changing hands. He’s now been able to do fire safety inspections.

McClatchie said that the heat at 155 Broadway was not functioning properly.

“On the day that I went in there, there were four of seven units that were heating their apartments with their ovens open and broil on high,” McClatchie said. “How the place didn’t catch fire already, I’ll never know.”

The problem with the three units he condemned is that there is no secondary means of egress — no alternate route out in the case of a fire.

“God forbid. If they ever had a fire … they’re not going to get out,” McClatchie said. “That was my biggest concern.”

The apartments in the back also have a door to a deck with stairs, but the front apartments only have one door.

The building is under contract to be sold to Northern Holdings Group LLC. Tyler Legault, a member of the group and the new property manager for the building, said when Northern Holdings Group took over management of the building they wanted to bring code enforcement in because there were specific violations they knew of. The second means of egress was unexpected, though, he said, and the main reason for condemning the apartments.

“If something were to happen and somebody’s in one of those bedrooms, they couldn’t get out,” he said. “It’s unsafe.”

Fravor said they’ve lived there since June 2022. They had been paying $800 a month for the apartment, she said, but after the heat stopped working they started refusing rent. She said a furnace in the basement was not running.

Decker denied that the heat was broken.

“That’s just not true,” he said, asking why Fravor would stay in a place with no heat for over a year.

“I would take anything she says with a grain of salt,” he said. “She hadn’t paid me rent in over a year. She yelled at me every time I talked to her and wouldn’t let me in to do work.”

Decker said the furnace was working and he kept the building at 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

“If somebody wants it at 80 that’s not my responsibility,” he said.

Legault said the coal furnace works, but wasn’t stocked with coal reliably before, and it would run out on limited fuel.

“All winter I had no heat, at all,” Fravor said. “I’m freezing my a** off at home every day. … I was under like three, four blankets a day.”

She said she’d skipped showers because although the water was warm, when she got out she was 10 times as cold and would start shivering.

They had two mini-heaters for heat, she said, but one of them caught fire.

Fravor said she may stay temporarily at the hotel she works at and she has one potential lead on an apartment. But with pets, she said it is very hard to find apartments in Saranac Lake.

–

Future of the property

–

Decker owns six properties around town: 16 Morris Way, 11 Elm St., 189 Kiwassa Road, 155 Broadway, 165 Charles St. and 23 Cantwell Way. He said he’s under contract to sell four properties so far and the properties have been turned over to property management companies, so he has no control over them any more.

“I have virtually nothing left,” Decker said. “Everything I have is either under contract or being managed by a management company. I have nothing to do with rentals anymore.”

Decker said he didn’t want to say too much to avoid saying anything negative about the village and causing himself more trouble than he has.

Decker said he’s always done everything a building inspector asked him to do, but said the village is different than it used to be.

“They’re doing what they think is their job and best for the village,” he said, but said things have been harder on him, especially with the state making evictions harder to do.

“It’s a New York state thing where tenants have more and more rights and property owners have less,” Decker said.

Northern Holdings Group plans to completely remodel the Broadway apartments. Legault said this will likely take several months to a year, to get the permits, find contractors and get the work done. Their goal is to fix the building up, he said.

“This place has been neglected for probably 30 years,” Legault said.

An open window of the roof gable is a roosting place for birds.

“I have pigeons in my ceiling,” Fravor said.

McClatchie also said the septic plumbing stack is broken. When the upstairs apartments flush their toilets, he said it drains down to the first-floor apartment, leaving “raw sewage on the walls.” To fix this, he said people need to move out.

Fravor pointed out that renovations usually come with rent rates rising. Legault said this will probably be true.

The village is currently prohibiting the three Broadway units from being occupied except to make repairs. Violating this order carries a fine of $500 per day of violation or imprisonment up to a year.

McClatchie’s corrective actions required in the paperwork include installing a new window and a second means of egress; updating all septic waste lines to be free of breaks and leaks; and installing new smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. It gives the property owner 30 days to comply, subject to fines and prison if they do not.

“Safety is the main priority,” McClatchie said Tuesday. “Especially having had one fatality already this year that could have been avoided if things had been looked at better in the past and finally getting rid of this owner.”

Questions about code violations have been raised after fatal fires in Saranac Lake in the past. In 1995, Saranac Lake teenager Paul Schlitt died in a Depot Street apartment building fire sparked by an electrical issue, prompting the Saranac Lake Village Board to push for the U.S. District Attorney’s Office to investigate possible code violations regarding the fire. The teen’s family said at the time that the building had no fire alarms and the code enforcement officer said there was “overwhelming proof” that the landlord neglected to provide smoke detectors; the building’s owner, Ed Dukett, disputed that. Fire investigators found no smoke alarms in the building but Dukett was not prosecuted due to conflicting proof and a lack of sufficient information, according to a 1996 article in the Enterprise.

The 155 Broadway building has been a notorious property for years. In 2013, police, neighbors and nearby business owners told the Enterprise that the house is a haven for drug activity. Then-village police Chief Bruce Nason told the Enterprise that the department responded to that building more than any other in the village, and most of the calls were drug-related. Then-village Code Enforcement Officer Tom Worthington was in regular contact with Decker to deal with complaints about the condition of the building. Between 2010 and 2013, Decker had been cited 17 times for state building and property maintenance code violations at 155 Broadway.