The city of Boulder cannot force students to immediately leave their Ash House apartments, despite concerns about safety and illegal construction, a Boulder County judge ruled Tuesday.
After Boulder officials attempted to shut down the off-campus student housing building on Monday — leaving 60 student renters with only hours to leave — Boulder District Court Judge Michael Spear granted the property owners an emergency restraining order against the city, according to court documents.
“The city has been made aware of the temporary court order preventing any additional enforcement of the closure notice,” Boulder spokesperson Julie Causa said in an emailed statement to The Denver Post. “The city will be complying with the court order regarding additional enforcement for as long as that order remains in effect.”
The restraining order will remain active until 10:32 a.m. Oct. 1 unless it is extended, according to court documents.
In the emergency order, Spear said denying the property owners’ request for a temporary restraining order would have caused “immediate and irreparable injury” by forcing all 60 student renters to vacate the apartments.
Ash House residents said Boulder officials on Monday threatened to have them “forcibly removed by police and subject to arrest if they failed to vacate their apartments,” the property owners said in a statement.
The restraining order allows the Ash House’s student tenants to remain in their apartments at 891 12th St. pending a hearing about the alleged code violations scheduled for Sept. 26, according to court documents.
Under the order, Boulder can apply to the court to have the students removed from the property again.
The Ash House was originally built in 1923 to serve as the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house and later was converted into the Marpa House. It was approved last year to house 48 students in 16 three-bedroom units, according to Boulder officials.
City officials ordered students to leave the apartments Monday after discovering a “serious violation” and “illegal division of living space” during an inspection the week before, according to a news release from the city.
Specifically, 15 new bedrooms were constructed without building permits, land-use approval or life-safety inspections and the owners conducted electrical work on the new bedrooms without the proper permits, city officials said Tuesday.
City officials hope to keep residents out of the Ash House until the allegedly improper additions are removed, but 13 students living in illegally constructed bedrooms will need to find new permanent housing, the city said in the news release.
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