CENTRALIA — City officials on Monday put a stop to all operations at the Home Motel on West Noleman in Centralia and declared all rooms of the facility uninhabitable.

According to Centralia Police Chief Greg Dodson, after several months of inspections by state and local officials, every single room in the facility was found to have multiple electrical, plumbing, building code and fire code violations rendering all of the rooms unsafe for occupancy.

Dodson says the facility has been an ongoing site of multiple drug arrests and overdoses as well as general criminal activity and public nuisances and from a Law Enforcement perspective is deemed as a “Drug Involved Premises.”

In a press release, Dodson revealed that while officers were vacating the premises Monday, a subject was caught fleeing through a back window to one of the rooms and was found in possession of methamphetamine while another occupant was arrested on an outstanding Clinton County warrant.

He says that declaring the Home Motel uninhabitable stops a den of drug activity in the middle of a Business/Residential area of Centralia that is also on a roadway that serves as a main artery through the community.

Dodson described the living conditions in all of the rooms as beyond appalling. He says the motel has for the past several years operated as more of a boarding house than a motel and at times families and children have lived in deplorable, unsanitary and unsafe conditions.

The owners of the facility will be given the opportunity to correct all of the violations and make the facility safe for occupancy or the City will proceed to condemn the property.