“No Justice, No Rent:” After Winter Storm Uri, Tenants Go on Strike
Tenants at Villas Del Paseo were without water for weeks after February’s winter storm. Now, they’re organizing to demand better conditions at their complex.
Tenants at Villas Del Paseo were without water for weeks after February’s winter storm. Now, they’re organizing to demand better conditions at their complex.
Sam Russek
Apr 1, 2021, 9:00 am CST
Sam Russek
Olga Villega’s apartment is humid from the gushing bathroom faucet, causing mold to spread and attracting bugs.
Jaider Vara had tried his best to keep his wife and 5-year-old daughter away from the black mold that bloomed on the walls of their apartment in the Villas Del Paseo apartment complex in West Houston. Since a burst pipe flooded their one bedroom after Winter Storm Uri, he’d ripped out the carpet and disinfected the area covered in spores, but there was only so much he could do without tearing down the walls and fixing the leak himself. Then, nearly a month after the mid-February storm, his apartment flooded again after plumbers contracted by the complex botched a repair on the other side of the wall.