'Unacceptable and disgraceful': Burt Street Apartments' resident have dumpsters removed

Excessive trash is building up at a Midtown Omaha apartment complex.The city of Omaha placed a violation notice in front of the complex, and Thursday, it roped off the trash.The Burt Street Apartments have things like mattresses, broken furniture and other rubbish thrown into the street, and resident said it’s been building for weeks.The city issued the notice demanding that the property be cleaned up within 10 days of the notice — it’s now been over two weeks.Several months ago, the Burt Street Apartments switched property management, and it remodeled the building.One resident, who wishes to remain anonymous, says that’s when problems started to pop up.“They modeled outside and everything, but they don’t come when things break,” the resident said. Some people got frustrated and stopped paying rent.As a result, residents said management removed the dumpsters and temporarily shut off the internet for everyone living there.“It was off for a week, and we just now got the internet back up,” a person staying with family at the apartment, Cody Joslin, said. “That happened the same time frame when they came and got the trash.”Joslin said he thinks it’s calculated.”It’s a way they can push people out, I think that’s what’s going on here,” Joslin said.It’s affecting their day-to-day lives.“We try to keep our place clean where we live in there. It’s been hard because the outside is causing critters to get inside the building,” Joslin said.He adds that in the four months he’s been staying at Burt Street Apartments, he’s never seen the property management. “Our kids like to play outside, and when they see conditions like this, there’s no way for them to play around,” the anonymous resident said. “The trash is everywhere.”District 3 Councilman Danny Begley grew up in this area and is aware of the problem.“It’s been sitting there for days and it’s absolutely unacceptable and disgraceful, the property owners are allowing this to happen,” Begley said.He said the city gave the property management time to fix this.“They have not cleaned it up, so our city crews are going out tomorrow to clean up this enormous mess that was left,” Begley said. That clean-up effort will have no cost to taxpayers. “They’re going to clean the mess up, and they will assess the property owners 100 percent of the cost,” Begley said.He added the effort will cost around $1,200, and said it will take approximately four loads to remove all of the trash.NAVIGATE: Home | Weather | Local News | National | Sports | Newscasts on demand |