Dolly victims told to vacate the day before Thanksgiving
Tenants at the Villa Madrid Apartments in Port Isabel aren't sure how they're going to spend Thanksgiving.
"I'm just going to try to make the best of a really bad situation," said Rebecca Aguilera, a tenant at the subsidized housing complex.
Like the 20 other families who have lived the past four months in apartments damaged by Hurricane Dolly, Aguilera was shocked when a notice was posted on her door last Thursday, advising her to vacate her apartment by the following Wednesday - the day before Thanksgiving.
If she remained, the notice read, the locks would be changed and the windows boarded up.
The six-day eviction would have occurred four months after Hurricane Dolly flooded the Villa Madrid apartments in July, taking sheetrock off the walls, exposing electrical wires and boring holes in ceilings.
The tenants say that living in the damaged apartments hasn't been ideal, but finding a place to live in less than a week on a limited budget is downright impossible.
"We have no place to go; we have no money to move," said Maria Garcia. "I have a son who is a senior is school. I can't move to another town and change districts now."
On Tuesday, Gary Marcrum, who owns the apartments and resides in Alabama, visited the complex.
"The most important thing to us is that these people aren't living in unhealthy or unsafe conditions," Marcrum said.
Sharon Young, a representative of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, visited the complex last week and, after seeing the substandard living conditions, advised Marcrum that he had to get tenants out as quickly as possible.
But Young didn't set the timeline for them to vacate and says that HUD has mandated that Marcrum retract the Nov. 26 eviction date.
"That wasn't a reasonable amount of time," Young said.
Tenants said they also contacted two more allies - the Texas Tenants Union and District Judge Benito Ochoa - to pressure Marcrum to give them a fair timeframe.
"I just advised them that if they are up to date on their rent and the landlord hasn't filed an eviction notice, they can continue to live there," Ochoa said. "It can take from 30 to 45 days for him to file for eviction."
Sandy Rollins of the Texas Tenants Union has been on the phone pressing HUD to keep a vigilant eye on the situation.
"People were living there for months under the impression that these apartments would be repaired," said Rollins. "Why didn't he make these repairs sooner? You know, asking tenants to leave in six days is one thing. Asking them to find new housing is another."
Marcrum is now working with tenants to find them alternative housing. Their personal belongings were frantically packed when management began boarding up windows on Saturday, but now they may be able to have Thanksgiving dinner around their boxed-up belongings.
