AUSTIN, Texas — The February freeze is still taking a toll on renters in Texas, who are dealing with the bulk of storm damages.
Many apartment complexes are still without basic necessities, including running water and gas. Residents are also facing roadblocks getting landlords to fix these problems.
In Austin, residents at Oaks on Lamar have been without gas since March and say they’ve had little help from property management.
Dao Vo has lived at Oaks on Lamar for 22 years. Since the gas outage, she’s had to boil water with an electric kettle, fill up a bucket in the shower and use a measuring cup to bathe herself. Vo is Vietnamese and says she feels like she's living in a rural town in her home country.
“I cannot imagine in the United States, this is a very civilized country, but we do it like we live in the old Asia in Vietnam,” Vo said.
The property did supply portable showers, but Vo says there were only four showers for men and four for women, in a complex of more than a hundred people, so the bucket is a better option for her.
Property management provided free meals from a food truck for a few weeks and recently gave residents a single electric burner to cook with, but she says this was all they gave them after they asked for more accommodations.
“We complained about this and they said, 'Yeah, we will have some new stuff,' and this is the new,” she said.
Vo is one of the leaders of the Oaks on Lamar Tenants Association. The complex has a large immigrant population and many, like Vo, are from Vietnam.
“We face a lot of issue over here, because of a language barrier,” she said.
That’s why her community is coming together to help each other. Nonprofits helped residents sign up for rental assistance and handed out free meals at a recent event on the property. BASTA is working with the tenants association to put together a list of demands to give to management. It's something the organization has done before.
“People just want healthy housing, they want communication,” BASTA organizer Mincho Jacob said. “They want to come home and cook because they’ve worked all day and they have kids, and they just want to do the basics, you know, that’s really all they’re asking.”
Jacob was also one of the organizers who helped East Austin residents at Mount Carmel reach an agreement with their landlord after their gas line was shut off in February. So Mount Carmel’s success has become an example and a template for other renters to unite and fight for their rights.
“That’s why it’s important to organize so that these guys can advocate for their rights because they’re viewed as not equal,” Jacob said. “The property owner is usually who is viewed as the person in this country and renters don’t get the benefit of the doubt.”
We reached out to the property owner, Related Management Company. In an email, a spokesperson gave us this written statement:
“We’ve worked closely with residents by offering ongoing rental credits and temporary electric cooking options until gas service is fully restored. We deeply appreciate residents’ patience during this time.”
Property management set up a temporary boiler so residents have hot water, and they have offered some rent reimbursement. Vo says it’s not enough.
“They try and make some effort to improve, but this is something that like is a Band-Aid on a much bigger wound,” she said. “It’s just very little, we spend more than they compensate.”
BASTA is currently negating with property management.
The tenants association has written a petition and will be sending it to the owners.
