Since April 12, Ria Knapp has lived in a hotel room. On April 8, she and seven other residents of The Domain apartments, located on East Stadium Boulevard, were told that they would have to relocate due to structural damages in their apartments. Knapp packed up clothes and necessities, loaded the rest of her belongings into a storage container, and moved into the Holiday Inn and Suites.

Knapp said that she had been noticing cracks appearing in hallways and had heard other residents talking about cracks appearing in walls and doorways. On April 8, Knapp, her three roommates and four other residents of another unit were told that the cracks were due to structural issues in building 8. They would have to move out of their units immediately so that the damages could be repaired.

“It totally changed everything,” Knapp said. “We had to pack up and move out April 12, and the week before we spent in meetings with the management. It was really stressful trying to barter concessions while still trying to do school.”

Other residents of building 8 are safe, The Domain spokesperson Mark Evans said. Evans said the damages were caused by settling in the building’s foundation.

“We’ve done safety checks and made sure only building 8 was affected,” Evans said. “The damage was due to settling. City engineers have assured us that it’s stopped, and now we can make repairs and restore it to what it was before.”

Evans emphasized that all other buildings on the property have been deemed safe by city engineers, and settling should not continue.

“We are hopeful settling will not reoccur,” said John Simon, the building regulations supervisor for the Public Works Department. “They’re in the process of making repairs over there to address the issue by pushing piers down to the bedrock to stabilize the foundation.”

Simon said the settling seems to have occurred from an issue when building the apartments but is not due to any larger geological issue. The fill laid down beneath the foundation was not compressed properly, causing about three inches of settling beneath building 8 and the complex’s pool, and should be fixed by anchoring the building to piers in the bedrock.

Residents should be able to return to their apartments by the middle of May, and construction on building eight will continue throughout the summer.

“We’re trying to accommodate everyone,” Evans said. “A main concern was studying during finals week, so we’re halting construction on Stop Day, and we’ll pick it back up when finals end. We want to make sure construction has a minimal impact.”

Knapp and the other residents have each been given their own rooms in the Holiday Inn and Suites on Stadium Boulevard and College Avenue. Knapp said it’s now harder to spend time with her roommates, who are some of her best friends.

They have been given food, transportation and laundry allowances, and refunded their rent for April through July. Knapp said she and the other residents had to fight for those concessions.

“We seemed like an afterthought,” Knapp said. “They had everything taken care of, they planned to fix the building, but I don’t think they planned a lot to help us.”

Knapp doesn’t fault The Domain or its new owner, Campus Advantage, but she wonders if structural issues will become a common problem across Columbia.

“I’m sure this is just one more story of many,” Knapp said. “People throw up these buildings so fast and they cut corners, and students pay for that, again and again.