Residents and the Texas Organizing Project (TOP) say management at the South Point Apartments retaliated against residents with lease violation notices after their efforts led San Antonio Code Enforcement to find 11 code violations on the property.
Assistant manager Nora Pelegreen said the lease violation notices were the result of complaints from other residents and a loud protest she said disturbed business operations. After three lease violation notices, the complex will have the right to file official eviction proceedings.
Residents at the South Side complex have described deteriorating conditions in their complex — hazardous electrical wiring, cockroaches and rodents, leaky pipes, broken AC, and exposed sewer lines. The violations San Antonio Code Enforcement inspectors found included surface, plumbing, and electrical hazards.
Code enforcement personnel will return on Nov. 9 to see whether or not management has fixed or demonstrated they are actively trying to fix all of the code violations — if not, they will cite the complex. Then, representatives from South Point Apartments will have to appear before a municipal judge, who will decide whether to fine them or extend their time to fix the code violations.
Pedro Aguilar, an eight-year resident who has been active in organizing with his neighbors, said tenants tried to exercise their rights.
“You know, management and the owners don’t really care about us right here,” Aguilar said. “And so we’re just trying to get something done because we feel like it’s in our rights.”
Residents worked with TOP to make repeated calls to 311 and spoke at a Development Services Department task force meeting to bring attention to the poor conditions in their complex, resulting in the inspection last Tuesday. The following day, four of those residents were handed lease violation notices for protest activities.
Pelegreen defended the lease violation notices.
“Everybody has the right to protest, but not interrupt my business,” she said. “I’m here working, and they come in and interrupt the environment — that was the lease violation.”
Pelegreen said the protest was held outside of the leasing office and residents banged loudly on the door, disrupting her business. She also claimed to have a list of seven residents who made complaints about being harassed by the organizers, though she declined to share it.
When asked about residents’ complaints that maintenance issues were not being addressed, Pelegreen didn’t offer many details.
“We are working on that, that's the only thing I can tell you,” she said. “We're working on resolving all those problems.”
Ashton Condel, a housing justice organizer for TOP’s Bexar County team who has been working with some South Point Apartments residents since September, said the protest Pelegreen mentioned didn’t warrant lease violation notices.
“The banging on the door, I mean, I have it recorded, and I don’t think anybody would really see that as any kind of serious attempt to threaten or cause fear in them or anything like that,” he said. “The point is just that these tenants are tired of being ignored.”
Condel also said that TOP and the residents had already gotten 55 other residents to sign petitions out of the roughly 150 units on the property.
While Condel did not share a list of all the full names of the residents, he did provide a list of first names and the last four of their phone numbers as proof. For residents who did not hand over numbers, he provided initials.
“We promise our tenants that their identities will be protected and only shared within our organization and in some cases, the necessary City departments,” Condel said, explaining why he was offering limited information.
Condel cast doubt on Pelegreen’s claim that multiple residents had complained about the organizing activity.
“We do door knocking several times a week and not once have we had a conversation where somebody says that they feel that they’re being harassed,” Condel said. “Usually people are very engaged with that conversation, very open about explaining what their struggles have been.”
He said there were some residents who told organizers they weren’t interested in participating. He added that his team never knocked on the doors or left flyers at those units again to avoid alienating them.
“We definitely respect those wishes and don’t return to them,” Condel said.
Condel noted that management has never mentioned the seven residents who they claim have complained, and said he believed the claim was untrue.
The inspection and lease violation notices were the latest chapter in an effort residents took to improve conditions at the South Side complex.
Condel said TOP was called in by a tenant to assist residents organize in September. Since then, he and other TOP members have assisted with door knocking around the complex, holding weekly meetings, and engaging in coordinated actions, such as the protest Pelegreen said forced her to send out lease violation notices.
“We are basically a facilitator,” Condel said. “We do our best to try to make sure that it’s the tenants themselves that are leading this and doing that organizing, because we believe that that is really ... the theory of change.”
Tenants and TOP also issued a demand letter on Oct. 7 to South Point's management to fix health and safety issues around the property.
The demand letter, which was also sent to the District 3 Councilwoman Phyllis Viagran, outlined the major concerns residents had with the complex. It also listed 15 demands for management, including fixing all reported maintenance problems within 96 hours, installing additional exterior lighting, offering year-long leases to all residents on month-to-month leases, and establishing monthly meetings between tenants and apartment ownership.
Though the letter had an Oct. 11 deadline to respond, Condel said residents didn’t receive a response until Oct. 20, but it was only to ask one resident what specific maintenance issues she was experiencing in her own apartment. It did not address any of the demands.
Aguilar said management routinely ignored maintenance issues and were disrespectful to residents.
“The AC’s are the originals and they don’t want to fix ‘em,” he said. “And then another thing is, like the manager, when you go and talk to them they talk to you very disrespectful. And you know I’ve worked all my life, and I don’t think that I should be talked [to] like that.”
Aguilar said he’s taken it upon himself to fix certain things in his apartment, such as the door frame after he had a break-in, because management wouldn’t.
“They came and kicked the door in,” he said. “I fixed it myself both times. I had to fix it because this was done on the weekend, [and] if you call them on the weekend, you don’t get nobody. … This has been like that for more than three months, and they haven’t even come to try to fix it.”
He also had to fix one of his cabinets where the wood is rotting so that it wouldn’t fall apart, and he pointed to dark spots on his ceiling that he thought was mold.
He said when management does fix issues, it’s only ever a patchwork fix.
“And whenever they do have to fix something, it’s because it’s to the point to where they have to do something about it, [and] instead of fixing it the right way, they go the cheap way and put a Band-Aid on it,” Aguilar said.
He said more people in San Antonio needed to pay attention to the conditions faced by his neighbors and residents of other apartment complexes with poor conditions.
“People really need to realize that there’s stuff going on out here,” he said. “That people are getting treated wrongly out here, and not getting treated justly. … This is happening all over San Antonio.”
TOP has also organized residents at the Seven Oaks Apartments on the Northwest side. In August, Seven Oaks residents, members of TOP, and District 7 Councilwoman Ana Sandoval protested in front of the Seven Oaks’ owners’ headquarters.
Aguilar believed the tenants can only change their living conditions if they organize.
“And we've been trying to organize the tenants together as a union so we can fight against this, because the more of us that are together, the better it's going to be for us,” he said.
