Houston, Saturday morning, Sept 9: We found out about a press conference by angry tenants stuck at the St. James Place apartments, badly flooded by Hurricane Harvey. So, we grabbed November 4 flyers and the 7 Indictments and rushed down to show our support, and to hook people up with Refuse Fascism and November 4.
The people living there, mostly immigrants from Latin America and other parts of the world, were furious at the owners and management who were doing little to provide a safe and clean place to live–and forcing the residents to stay in disgusting and dangerous conditions. The tenants boldly spoke out, with the assistance of organizers from the Texas Organizing Project.
A couple of city council representatives were there as well. The tenants described being left in a toxic situation, where black mold, growing where the filthy water had soaked the walls and sheet rock up to as high as four feet, was so widespread you could smell it just walking thru the complex. And many of the tenants had small children. They described how the management had continued to demand rent payments for these uninhabitable apartments, refused to let tenants move to 2nd floor units, telling them there were none, when there clearly were, telling renters that if they broke the lease, they would get penalized on their credit, and that they would forfeit their security deposits.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the owner showed up. And as the cameras rolled, he outright conceded to the tenants’ demands. He was even compelled–right on the spot–to sign letters for tenants to show that termination of leases were due to damage by the storm and not any fault of the renters. So, it was a little victory, due to people daring to resist.
As the owner directed the press to one unit that was being fixed up, an immigrant woman, with her two kids, took me into her apartment and showed me what most of the units are like–black mold everywhere.
Feeling that “they don’t care about us”, people were in a fighting mood, and so the list of demands that we distributed really resonated with people. Some took copies to get out to others and some of the 7 indictments pamphlets got out too.