Also, watch this story on
http://www.telemundodallas.com/video/27385266/index.html
A couple of weeks ago I received a call from Ana, who was complaining of mistreatment at the Dallas Northpark Terrace apartments, located at 8662 Park Lane. She had been living there for almost a year and she said was tired of the way the new manager Emanuel Costas treated her and a dozen Hispanic residents. She also said that her husband, a maintenance employee at the apartments, and some of his co-workers were being harassed and mistreated by Costas.
I went out there and found a group of about 15 people ready to tell me their complaints. Lets start with the residents:
Alma said she was desperate to move out. After a fire in January damaged her apartment management moved her to another unit. She was paying $450 dollars a month for a one-bedroom apartment that had a hole in the wall, another hole in the bathroom wall, a broken stove and a filthy and stinky carpet. She had been living there for more than 2 months and had asked management several times to fix the apartment but they had not. She said the smell that was coming from the carpet was so bad that she had to pull it out of the living room herself, leaving nails and tack strips exposed. She even had to place her bed in the living room because they couldn’t stand the smell of the carpet in the bedroom. She has a little boy and was concerned that the nails could injure him or that he could suffer health problems due to the exposed insulation in the shower wall.
Another resident who was also moved to another unit after the January fire showed me the conditions of her apartment. There were clear signs of humidity damage on some parts of the ceiling, the bathroom needed repairs, and the closet doors had fallen. With little kids in the apartment she worried that these doors could end up falling on top of her kids.
Aby was complaining because she got fined $150 dollars for having kids toys in the balcony. She said there was nothing in the lease saying they could not have toys in the balcony. She felt that if the new management wanted to start implementing new rules, the residents should at least be given a warning before they are issued a $150 fine.
Now lets talk about some of the workers. When I got there I saw a group of about eight of them trying to fix a roof in the complex. This is what they told me:
Jose said that they lacked the training and the proper tools or safety gear to fix the roof. He said he had been hired to do maintenance work not to fix roofs.
Santos also complained about working on the roof. He also said that the new manager did not pay them all the hours that they worked.
Oscar said that he used to work there but that he had recently been let go. He was told: “you are too old for this job”. He made a living picking up litter around the complex.
But the most troubling complaint that I heard was this: Miguel said that the manager would make remarks suggesting that they were illegal immigrants and that he was going to call immigration on them. He said that one day, when he went to pick up his check, the manager told him and another group of workers: “next week you guys have a date with immigration”. He said his family and some neighbors lived in fear and felt harassed because they were immigrants.
When I first tried to talk to the manager, Emanuel Costas, he was very confrontational. Then he agreed to see me in his office but did not want to talk on camera. I asked him about the poor conditions of some of the apartments and he said those units were “move in ready” when they were assigned to the residents. He said the complex was undergoing a major renovation and that they were trying to resolve residents’ complaints within a week. He also said that he had told the workers when he hired them that they had to bring their own tools. He said he had been paying them for all of their worked hours, he even showed me the pay stubs and added: “If they think that I am not paying them fairly, they should not sign the checks”.
What about the worker that said he had lost his job because he was too old? I asked. Costas said that he was let go after being issued several warnings that he was underperforming. Lastly, he denied any claims that he had threaten to call immigration on them.
This story aired on Telemundo Dallas on Wednesday March 30th, 2011. The next day Miguel and Santos lost their jobs. The manager told them that they did not have any more work for them at the Northpark Terrace apartment complex. He offered them work at another complex but Miguel and Santos declined. As a result they received notices to vacate the property. The notes explained that because they did not work for the complex any more they had lost the right to live there. I asked Claudia Cano, a lawyer with Legal Aid of North West Texas if this was legal and at least in Miguel’s case it was. Miguel and his wife Ana were living in an apartment that had been leased out to another family member, their names were not on the lease. They had to be out in 48 hours or face eviction.
I went back on Friday April 1st and talked to Miguel and his wife Ana. Needless to say they were very upset. Ana said that Costas also told the neighbors: “you are a bunch of ignorant Indians, beggars, I will make you sign your death sentence”. I called the apartments office and tried to talk to Costas but two of his assistants told me he was not going to talk to me. They also threaten to call the police on me if I dared coming back to Northpark Terrace apartments. But as you might guess it takes more than that to scare a reporter.
The last time I talked to Miguel and Ana they said they were glad they had moved out. Now they had peace of mind. On top of that, they were told that the Texas Workforce Commission and the Department of Labor were investigating the apartments’ management. Apparently prior to me working on this story a former employee of the complex had had his own issues with management.
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