Apartment Look

CLOSE Video and audio during the night of November 28, 2016. Angela Gosnell/News Sentinel Buy Photo Fire erupts on both side of Highway 441 near The Spur on Monday, Nov. 28, 2016. (Photo: Jessica Tezak, Special to the News Sentinel) Buy Photo The rain never came in time. Records released this week show authorities battling the deadly Sevier County wildfires looked to an expected downpour that came too late for salvation as crews struggled in a desperate tug-of-war with skyscraper-sized flames the night of Nov. 28, 2016. As the blaze approached the city limits, authorities knew the rain wouldn't arrive for another 12 hours. "Rain may not be in Gatlinburg until 4 a.m.," reads a 5:30 p.m. entry on notes kept by staff inside the incident command center . “Rain may not be in Gatlinburg until 4 a.m.” a 5:30 p.m. entry on notes kept by staff inside the incident command center Authorities didn't order a citywide evacuation for another three hours -- and had no effective wa...

For more than two years, city inspectors have documented unsafe and squalid conditions at a weekly hotel near uptown that houses low-income families with children, the disabled and others with nowhere else to go. Inspectors found rooms with no heat or air conditioning , piles of garbage, bedbugs and broken windows among other problems at the Airport Parkway Inn and Suites. Former tenants and a neighboring business complain the building on Wilkinson Boulevard is a magnet for drugs and crime. Now, Charlotte officials are taking steps that could lead to the demolition of the hotel, a rare move the city has not taken in at least seven years against a lodging establishment. The building is part of a virtually unnoticed housing sector in Charlotte, where hundreds of people suffering from addiction and mental illness or simply with few other options depend on weekly hotel rooms for permanent shelter. While tenants avoid sleeping on the streets, they often stay in decrepit and vermin-in...

EAST CHICAGO, Ind. – The smell of burning bacon stirred Demetra Turner from her makeshift bed on the floor, a stack of quilts the only padding between her body and the ground. Long gone was her mattress, tossed into a dumpster with her couch, her recliner, her favorite theater chairs , her kids' beds. She had thrown them out on instructions from health officials , who said everything in the West Calumet Housing Complex was poisoned with arsenic and lead. Everyone must move, Mayor Anthony Copeland said last August, because the land was too dangerous to live on. But now it was May, and Turner and her children were still trying to escape. She shuffled past barren walls , packed boxes and cases of bottled water. "Who cooked that bacon?" Turner, 44, asked her 18-year-old son, Jeremiah. He sheepishly replied, "I did." She smiled and shook her head. He was just trying to help, she knew. Her overnight job at a gas station left her exhausted, and everyone in the fami...

El Sereno resident Scott Toland is another unhappy customer of L.A.’s new refuse and recycling program. Toland recently learned that the monthly trash bill at the 10- unit condominium complex where he lives could double — at a minimum. And that’s only if his homeowner association cuts back on regular trash pickup . The reason? An assortment of extra fees, all backed by Mayor Eric Garcetti and the City Council as part of RecycLA. Universal Waste Systems , the neighborhood’s designated refuse hauler , sent Toland an estimate indicating the company would charge $43.30 a month to open the gate to the complex, which requires a remote control clicker , for the property’s regular trash. The company added the same $43.30 “access charge” for recycling pickup. And it tacked on $303 in monthly “distance charges,” which compensate a hauler for moving trash bins across the parking lot to the street, where they are emptied. “No other trash company has ever charged us to open the gate or drive ...