Andrews – Four people are living out of a small commercial building downtown that a former tenant says is a “death trap.”
A couple purchased the property just before lockdowns associated with COVID-19 took effect last year and initially planned to use the building as office space for their construction company.
“Twenty-twenty wasn’t really the best time to be growing a business,” said Kaylea Marvin, who co-owns the property with her husband, Marc. “We had just got the floor down and the walls painted when the pandemic hit.”
Kaylea said she and her husband tried to rent part of the building to other businesses, and even considered converting the property into a bar, but none of their ideas came to fruition. After finding themselves in a bind and needing to pay bills, they added a few walls and converted the building into somewhat of a boarding house.
“We rented to a couple tenants to get us by, and it snowballed on us,” Kaylea said.
About eight months ago, 61-year-old Teresa VanZee saw an ad on Facebook listing a room available to rent for $135 per week. When she visited the Marvins’ property in the 900 block of Main Street, she could tell the building had been converted from an office to living quarters. But she accepted the conditions and didn’t ask too many questions because she needed a place to stay.
“Some of those rooms are smaller than a jail cell,” VanZee said. “There’s no windows, no sprinkler system, no fresh air circulation. We were so close together you could hear everything that was going on.”
VanZee said she was the first person to rent a room in the converted building and remained there eight months as the Marvins added walls to accommodate more tenants. The property does not have a stove to cook meals, and tenants share one bathroom.
“It’s a death trap,” she told the Cherokee Scout. “It was like a dorm room situation, but worse. People were supposed to take turns cleaning the bathroom and the shower, but nobody does. It’s a nasty mess.”
The Marvins eventually constructed enough walls to divide the property into five different rooms. Kaylea acknowledged that they housed too many people in the building, which led to complaints and a subsequent investigation. “There’s only four people in there at this moment,” Kaylea said. “A fifth room is just not comfortable.”
Town officials sent the Marvins a letter last month stating that their property at 916/920 Main St. is “zoned for central business district, which prohibits residential dwellings unless a special use permit is approved” by the board of aldermen. The Cherokee County fire marshal is also involved in the matter.
“A residential occupancy inspection has not been done [at that property],” Fire Marshal Kevin Carter said. “We’re working with the town on what needs to be done.”
Kaylea said she and her husband didn’t set out with the intention of skirting the law. They started offering rooms for rent out of desperation because they didn’t want to abandon a building they recently renovated.
“I’ve got a million business ideas, but this is the one that was actually paying the bills. People need housing,” she said. “On a positive note, these people go over to the laundromat, they go and get a pizza, they go to the local pub. I kind of looked at it as a win-win for the community.”