A week after the rain stopped, the eviction notices started showing up.
By Labor Day, managers of swamped apartment complexes across the Houston area were informing tenants that it's time to pack up their things and find another place to live.
"These first floors units will not be livable and current conditions pose a significant danger to you," warned one sympathetically worded email to residents of a complex in Fort Bend County. "We regret that this damage has occurred, and we are taking steps as rapidly as possible to repair the damage," said another notice, tacked to the inside of a door in Bellaire.
The notices, affecting hundreds of local renters, order the residents out within five days. They also signal a difficult new chapter in the story of Tropical Storm Harvey for people who do not own a home.
For residents like Sheri Ilo, whose family was evacuated by boat from the Marquis at Cinco Ranch in Katy, getting back to her apartment will be as hard as getting out. The complex sits in up to 5 feet of water. To vacate within the five-day deadline she'd need another boat - and a moving van. Then she'd have to find a new apartment in a suddenly tight market.
"Where do you expect us to go?" Ilo said Monday. "This is overwhelming to my neighbors and I. ... We all work here in Houston so we have to go back to work. Do you expect us to commute from San Antonio?"
Many management companies are refunding rent and waiving late fees. But the mass evictions like the one at Ilo's apartment complex are increasing tensions between landlords and tenants as both grapple with flooded property, late rent payments and in some cases uncertainty over when the next paycheck will arrive.
Landlord-tenant disputes are often the first to surface after a hurricane, said Saundra Brown, disaster manager at Lone Star Legal Aid. Brown, who says she managed more than 1,000 cases after the 2016 floods in Harris County alone, is one of many volunteer lawyers manning a legal hotline set up for Harvey victims.
"This disaster is going to daisy chain into a huge number of legal issues that are going to show up over a period of days, weeks and months," Brown said. "Right now there are going to be many landlord-tenant issues: people who don't think they should give back the security deposit for flooded properties. There will be people who will try to kick out their tenants because their brother-in-law needs some place to stay. There's going to be a severe shortage of rental space in the community."
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The day before, residents of the 240 units were told many of their apartments were destroyed and needed to be vacated. In a letter, the property manager told residents that all of their leases were terminated. It also said rent for the last few days of August would be refunded.
The complex had previously asked everyone to sit tight and wait for updates and not worry about September's rent, according to a series of emails Ilo supplied to the Chronicle. A representative for the property manager did not respond to multiple requests for comment. ... Even as some Houstonians begin the desperate search for a new home, others are struggling to pay for the ones they have. A week without paychecks has driven many apartment complexes to waive late fees on rental payments.