Current Events > Lotta people getting evicted from their flooded Houston homes

(+) Yeah! (+)

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/after-the-rain-eviction-notices-for-many/ar-AArjz6X?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartanntp

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."

...

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.

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Fuck those greedy assholes.
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Landlords are such greedy fucks.
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who cares if your home is underwater, you still gotta pay rent on that sucker. :u
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Mernardi posted...

Fuck those greedy assholes.

...Flooded homes are literally unsafe to be in until properly dried out and repaired.
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Error1355 posted...

Mernardi posted...

Fuck those greedy assholes.

...Flooded homes are literally unsafe to be in until properly dried out and repaired.

Yeah, but to tell them to leave within 5 days is basically impossible.
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Umm....I'm not sure how kicking people out makes the landlords "greedy." I mean, if nobody's living there then they're not going to be making any money on those apartments. There's not greedy about making less money.

I'd say that a lot of those apartments that got flooded probably don't meet the legal standards for safe living spaces. So if the landlords were to let someone stay there, they'd be liable for all kinds of dangerous shit. Telling people they have to leave isn't motivated by greed so much as simple self-preservation. Let 1 or 2 floors go so that they can repair them and maintain the rest of the building, or let people stay and face possible legal repercussions that might cost them their entire business. Seems like a pretty easy choice to me.

EDIT: Does it suck for those tenants that have to leave? Absolutely. Of course it does. But it sucks for the landlords too. It's not like there's a winner in this situation.
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It's like some people didn't even read the article.
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I"m sorry what's the issue here?
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HypnoCoosh posted...

I"m sorry what's the issue here?

The 5 days to have everything out policy.

Which is more than I'd have here if any such thing happened. I'd have 72 hours.

For the ones submerged in water, how much is salvageable? And black mold would have started growing by now.

It's unfortunate, but they can't stay there and this misplacement of people is merely one inevitable issue that catastrophic weather events always cause.
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Aristoph posted...

Umm....I'm not sure how kicking people out makes the landlords "greedy." I mean, if nobody's living there then they're not going to be making any money on those apartments. There's not greedy about making less money.

I'd say that a lot of those apartments that got flooded probably don't meet the legal standards for safe living spaces. So if the landlords were to let someone stay there, they'd be liable for all kinds of dangerous shit. Telling people they have to leave isn't motivated by greed so much as simple self-preservation. Let 1 or 2 floors go so that they can repair them and maintain the rest of the building, or let people stay and face possible legal repercussions that might cost them their entire business. Seems like a pretty easy choice to me.

EDIT: Does it suck for those tenants that have to leave? Absolutely. Of course it does. But it sucks for the landlords too. It's not like there's a winner in this situation.

Basically this.

There does seem to be a few landlords that seem to be jackasses and aren't giving people their security deposits back and/or similar things, and yeah they are jackasses.

But it seems like the vast majority are telling the tenants to leave because, well, they pretty much have to. They have to repair the property and likely will have to fight with insurance companies to get money for the damages, and keep in mind they aren't making money while this happens. It's likely that most of those apartments are in dangerous condition and/or unlivable due to the flood. That's no one's fault. No one is winning here.
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I'm not really sure what the issue is. While I sympathize with the people who are displaced, if the building is damaged and could potentially harm or kill them, the landlord is doing the right thing.
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