COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Nearly 150 families who were evacuated from their east Columbus apartments more than a year ago due to unsafe living conditions will soon be getting thousands of dollars in settlement payments.

Starting April 1, 149 households forced to leave their homes at the dilapidated Latitude Five25 apartments will receive a lump-sum payment of $10,067, the Columbus city attorney’s office announced Monday. Former tenants will still be allowed to sue the owners of the complex, New Jersey-based Paxe Latitude, after receiving the settlement.

The apartments have been vacant since Christmas Day 2022, when burst water pipes and a lack of heat forced residents to vacate the property. But the pair of towers on Sawyer Boulevard had been under the city’s scrutiny for months before that for repeated bug infestations, feces-contaminated stairwells and other unsanitary conditions.

Last February, a judge ordered Paxe Latitude to pay nearly $4.4 million in fines and outstanding utility fees, including $2.5 million to compensate the former tenants. The court also found that contractors the owners hired to rehabilitate the building didn’t properly handle asbestos, leaving many residents’ belongings contaminated with the cancerous fibers.

The owners, who launched a failed bankruptcy claim in New Jersey, never paid the $2.5 million contempt fee. In January, the lender financing the owners of the Latitude Five25 apartments entered into a $1.5 million settlement with the city in lieu of paying the $2.5 million.

“With tenant checks now on their way, we’re focused on the future of the towers and exploring every option to hold those responsible for this crisis personally responsible for their role in subjecting tenants to deplorable living conditions and literally leaving them out in the cold on Christmas morning,” Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein said in a news release. “We’re sending a message that landlords who operate like this will be run out of town and held accountable.”

“It was a sad day for probably most of the residents, I can’t speak for them. To speak for myself, but I did have a Christmas because I was up by my son’s house and it just wasn’t the same,” said Ann Barrett, a former Latitude Five25 tenant.

Barrett lived at the Latitude Five25 apartments for a year and a half. She was lucky enough to find a place a couple of weeks after being displaced, but she said it isn’t the same.

“I would move back there (Latitude Five25) because I really liked it there. I lived up on the 12th floor and I had a nice view,” she said. 

Keith Ackerman and his husband were tenants of Latitude Five25 for three years. He remembers Christmas 2022 like it was yesterday. 

“That day was horrible because it was 7 in the morning,” he said. “We had not unwrapped any presents, and we had a refrigerator full of nice food for the day. We had some gentleman knock on the door and say, we had 20 minutes to get ourselves ready. They figured that we’d be out of the building probably three or four days.”

Those three or four days turned into 15 months. Ackerman said it’s been tough not knowing the current state of their old apartment building.

“We’ve asked repeatedly for videos and pictures of what’s going on so that we would kind of know, is our stuff gone or is it just sitting there,” he said. 

The complex, a pair of 15-story towers visible from Interstates 670 and 71, was listed for sale last week. The real estate group overseeing the sale is looking for an experienced property rehabilitator, and any buyer would need court approval.