Hurricane Harvey Victims Face A New Challenge: Evictions

Now that flood waters have begun to recede, Texas victims of Tropical Storm Harvey face another challenge: eviction notices. Even worse, some people are still on the hook for rent on apartments they can’t live in.

Sheri Ilo was a resident of an upscale apartment complex in Katy, Texas, a city just west of Houston. She was evacuated during the storm and now has just five days to leave her building all over again, according to the Houston Chronicle Tuesday.

“Where do you expect us to go?” Ilo said Monday to the Chronicle. “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?”

San Antonio is roughly three hours away.

Ilo is an assistant principal at a high school and considers herself luckier than others, as she has a place to stay and the means to be able to get her things. The kids she’s responsible for, however, might face different circumstances.

“About half of our school community live in areas that were flooded,” she said to the Chronicle. “My parents live across the street from the high school and they lost everything. The entire street outside the school is loaded with memories and furniture.”

As many as 17 percent of the 640,000 rental units overseen by the Houston Apartment Association have seen some flood damage, according to NPR Saturday. The Association represents at least 90 percent of rental units in Houston.

“Most owners are doing everything they can to accommodate residents whose apartments are flooded, but individual owners and renters are working out those situations based on what level of damage they have received in their unit,” Michelle Pawelek, a spokesperson with the apartment association, told NPR.

Some landlords have waived late fees and returned rents, but others are asking tenants to pay up.

“We are paying rent for somewhere we can't live in. They said ‘you aren't the only ones in this situation,’ but what are we supposed to do? We don't have any money. We don't have anything,” said Rocio Fuentes, who had to evacuate his home, to the Guardian Monday.

Fuentes’ construction job has also stopped due to the flooding and said for the time being he has no income.

Landlords may still charge rent in Texas unless the building is completely uninhabitable. Either a tenant or a landlord can break a lease in Texas if the residence is “totally unusable.”

More than half a million people have applied to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for assistance, and the agency has already doled out over $33 million in housing assistance. Housing assistance can help with rent subsidies, but the market is sure to be squeezed with lots of people left without homes, and housing stock suddenly dipping substantially.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner spoke with NBC Sunday and when asked what his biggest priority going forward was, he responded, “Housing, housing, housing.”