An apartment building at Fourth and Elm streets was condemned Monday, Nov. 28, 2016 by the city of Lawrence.

Apart from the neon green signs condemning the building — one taped to each of its front windows — the two-story brick and stone apartment building in North Lawrence shows no exterior signs of trouble.

But the toilets in the two-unit building, located at Fourth and Elm streets, have not been working since Tuesday. Instead, there is a portable toilet in the alley behind the property.

“If you can imagine — I have four kids all under the age of 10 — sending my children outside in the middle of the night if they have to use the restroom,” said tenant Whitney Anderson. “I’d have to take everyone.”

Whitney Anderson examines a loose railing on the stairs leading up to the apartment at Fourth and Elm streets, which she shares with her four children, on Monday, Nov. 28, 2016. The city of Lawrence condemned the building Monday.

The landlord, Margretta de Vries, initially asked the seven occupants of the building to use the portable toilet until she could get someone out to fix the plumbing. She said that feat was made more difficult by the Thanksgiving holiday and a need to coordinate with Westar Energy because of the proximity of a transformer to the sewage line.

“I’ve been calling people nonstop about this ever since it happened,” de Vries said.

Anderson and her children, as well as the other two tenants in the building, have since vacated their apartments and are staying in a hotel. The tenants reported the situation to the city, and inspectors condemned the property Monday morning.

The city’s Code Enforcement Manager Brian Jimenez said the condemnation was ordered because a plumber found that the building’s main sanitary sewer line had likely collapsed. Jimenez said a followup inspection by the city Monday afternoon found about 20 additional code violations, including a mice infestation.

Anderson said the rodent problem in her apartment is widespread — mice droppings line her countertops and silverware drawer.

“Old buildings sometimes have mice, and I get that, but these are bold mice,” Anderson said, noting they come out even during the day. “They run out on my counters, they eat my food.”

The downstairs tenants also have concerns. The problem with the lines caused sewage to back up into the bathtub, Caroline Phillips said. She said the shower in the upstairs unit is also leaking through the floor, dripping into her apartment.

Some of the issues — Jimenez said it isn’t uncommon for old clay sewer lines to collapse — could be due the building’s age. De Vries said she recently inherited the approximately 150-year-old building from her father, and that she has been working to rectify the tenants’ concerns. She said the property has sentimental value for her, and she wants to use the situation as an opportunity to get the old building into shape.

“I’m going to let the city inspection process identify all the problems and go from there,” de Vries said. “I’m going to rank them in order of severity and go down the list.”

Jimenez said he would not have the complete list of violations fully prepared until Tuesday. Once a landlord fixes code violations identified by the city, the property can be ruled inhabitable again.

The tenants may not wait though, as both say they plan to look for another apartment. The property is one of more than 20,000 rental properties in Lawrence that is covered by the city’s code enforcement program.

But unless a tenant calls to complain, Jimenez said the program only inspects 10 percent of a landlord’s property on a three-year cycle. For 2015, the city did about 1,500 inspections, which amounts to less than 10 percent of the licensed properties.

After the ownership change, Jimenez said the property on Elm Street was in the process of being licensed under Margretta de Vries’ name. Jimenez said the process would have eventually triggered the inspection of one of the units.

In addition to the sampled inspections, Jimenez said the department does inspections when complaints are received from tenants. He said the number of those complaints varies from about 50 to 100 per year. Jimenez said plumbing and electrical issues are a common complaint, but that it can be a wide range of things.

“Weak floors, windows that don’t open or close, lack of smoke detectors; it can be a lot of different things,” Jimenez said.

The city’s rental registration and inspection program began in 2015, and supporters said the effort could produce the largest improvement in living conditions in the city in a generation. In addition to using tenant complaints to identify unlicensed properties, Jimenez said the department systematically uses public records to identify unlicensed rentals, and notifies owners of the requirements.

The North Lawrence Improvement Association provided funds to both tenants for their hotels, according to the association’s president, Ted Boyle. In addition to improving the condition of the building, de Vries said she is in the process of arranging a direct reimbursement to the hotels for her tenants’ lodging bills.

Still, Anderson, who is due to have another baby next week, said the situation has left her in a tough spot.

“We weren’t expecting any of this,” Anderson said. “We didn’t have extra money saved up for a deposit, and all that kind of stuff, so we’re just trying to find people that will work with us.”