HOUSTON - All the units at Crestmont Village apartments in Southeast Houston were finally boarded up Friday afternoon, in time to meet a court-mandated deadline. The utilities in the apartment have been shut off and all the tenants have moved on to new housing.
But the horrible conditions KHOU 11 helped expose there like infestations, mold, no electricity, have shown how too many people in our city live.
These problems are ones city leaders say we can't ignore.
Step by step, dragging her possessions off the landing of her boarded-up apartment, Brianna Law is moving on.
"I lost a lot here," said Law. "I lost more than what I came with."
She's one of more than 100 residents moving out of the terrible conditions in the Crestmont Village Apartments.
"I had no lights and no water for at least two months," said Law.
It got so bad, the city took over the complex. They finished boarding up the units there on Friday, after helping all the residents find new housing.
"This was an emergency response to a crisis situation," said Houston Mayor Annise Parker.
Residents stayed in the complex as long as they did because there's not enough affordable housing to go around, plus many of them have past felony convictions and other complexes turned them away.
"People get out of jail, we make it hard for them to find a job, and we make it impossible for them to find a place to live," said Mayor Parker.
Parker wants to change that, especially for non-violent offenders. She would also like to see changes to state law, to make it easier to take properties away from slumlords, who take their tenants' money and leave them in filth.
"A lot of times when we look at a big city, we only pay attention to the people at the top," said Rashad Cave, of the Crestmont Park Civic Association. "But the people that are here at the bottom that are working hard, that are paving our streets, that are cooking our food, are the people we should also pay attention to."
People like Law, saving up, studying business at Houston Community College and looking forward to a future of much more than plastic bags of possessions on a rundown stoop.
"I'm just ready to move forward and not have this as a background of where I came from, because this is ridiculous," said Law.
The city will be bringing in inspectors next to decide if the complex can be rehabbed, or whether to tear it down completely, which they have the authority to do. An even more rundown complex next door will be torn down soon.
The hope is that private developers will replace the whole stretch of Selinsky with affordable housing worth living in.
