‘KEEP MAKING NOISE’
Complex owner gets ready to leave town; tenants wait for repairs
GALVESTON — When federal housing officials made their rounds at Galveston to visit Sandpiper Cove in 2019, they did not like what they saw. Sandpiper Cove had passed an inspection by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2016 with a high score, a year after Millennia bought it. In 2019, HUD inspected the property again. It failed.
Another 2019 inspection, administered through a contractor and meant to look more at bookkeeping and management procedures, noted uncorrected physical conditions that had been pointed out in past HUD inspections. There were exposed wires, missing fire extinguishers, open work orders. The property, the inspector noted, had a “bleak appearance.”
On his way home from the property, a HUD official fired off a quick email to his colleagues in Fort Worth — cc’ing the same woman Ed Manning, the HUD official working on Englewood, reported to from Kansas City.
“It appears that the owner/agent sent a crew out to clean up the property in preparation of our site visit,” he wrote on April 30. “There were recent ceiling patches, but it appears they are simply painting over potential mold rather than removing the drywall and treating the studs.” A HUD inspector at Englewood had written a similar email after he saw mold that looked like it had been painted over.
None of the bureaucracies involved — HUD, a HUD contractor that does inspections, the Texas state agency ad
ministering federal housing tax credits — was happy with Sandpiper.
The state tax credit agency referred the property for noncompliance issues and potential debarment. HUD’s regional inspection contractor went back and forth with the company, demanding corrections to record-keeping and maintenance issues that stretched for months after the failing inspection. In a December visit, an inspector for the contract company wrote, “Did they replace the wood or just paint over it? My concern is that mildew will eventually seep through again.”
And HUD told Millennia that the company had to find another management group for the complex.
Just like it would do in Kansas City, Millennia appealed — and was denied. But unlike in Kansas City, Millennia officials decided they were done. At the end of August 2019, they sent a letter to HUD. They would put the property up for sale, pending a HUD-approved buyer.
“I am disappointed by the tenor of the communications taken by HUD, but you have all made your opposition clear,” Millennia CEO Frank Sinito wrote. “Our treatment in Kansas City, which is under the direction of HUD Southwest Office has been disturbing as well.”
Millennia still owned — and managed — the property through December 2019, when Tina Harris and other Sandpiper Cove tenants went to City Council and her daughter Aaliyah was hospitalized. After a tenant outcry, a top Millennia executive went to the property.
“It’s been quite eventful walking units in the past 2 days … guns, drugs, being videotaped, and having security to some units,” the vice president, Connie Riley, wrote to Frank and two other top Millennia executives. “We tried to bridge the relationship with the residents, most were not willing and very aggressive.”
She went to the first-floor unit of a woman named Cynthia Minix who had gone to City Council with Tina. During a March 2019 power outage, she’d had to buy oversize plastic syringes to feed her husband, unable to care for himself after a stroke, through his feeding tube. The vice president wrote: “She is one of the ring leaders.”
Emily Hunter was one of the tenants Connie referenced. When Millennia employees came to her door, she held her phone up and videoed. She was sick of constant inspections that felt retaliatory. She did not trust management. She had just received a notice to vacate and found an attorney with Lone Star Legal Aid. She packed up her things and went to stay with her mother in Shreveport, La., a situation that would only last so long with their contentious relationship. She doesn’t know where she’ll end up.
Pending HUD approval, a company called the ITEX Group with offices in Houston and Port Arthur will buy Sandpiper. The city of Galveston sent a letter in support of state-issued tax credits. A new management agency is already in place. ITEX put together a 21-page PowerPoint for tenants detailing how it would rehab Sandpiper Cove. It would renovate the existing community building. It would install new lighting. It would deal with the sewer issues. It would resurface the sidewalks and spruce up the landscaping. It would replace the boilers and add ADA-compliant units.
Down to the brand of new appliances (Energy Star), the new owner presented the same plans Millennia had in its own PowerPoint, four years, four months and 29 days before.
Almost a year after she left Aaliyah in the ICU to speak to the Galveston City Council, Tina testified again. This time it was over Zoom, in front of a state agency administering potential new tax credits, with the help of low-income housing advocacy group Texas Housers. The tenants had gathered to ask that the agency not give any more new tax credits to a rehab of Sandpiper, even under new ownership. They wanted vouchers to leave.
“We need out of here. I mean, that is our biggest concern,” Tina said at the hearing, “because my daughter has been in the ICU.”
Lone Star Legal Aid had sued HUD on June 30 on behalf of the residents of Sandpiper Cove. The complaint cited failing HUD inspections, leaking roofs, mold and broken plumbing. Lone Star Legal Aid accused Millennia of failing to make repairs — and accused HUD of failing to hold them accountable. The case is dragging. It exhausts Tina.
At her last in-person doctor’s visit before the pandemic, Aaliyah, 15, sat on the exam chair, kicking her legs, the stuffed rabbit she brought to every hospitalization and doctor’s visit peeking out of her purse while Tina talked to the doctors. They got back the blood test from the ICU. It came back positive for mold and other allergens, including cockroaches. One of Aaliyah’s doctors, David Lindsay, listed potential causes of her respiratory problems, then turned to the mold.
“You don’t even need to hear it from me and that’s horrible for her,” he said. “She should be pulled out of the apartment …” “That’s what I keep saying …” “It’s probably part of the reason she’s having this,” the doctor said.
“And you’re talking about HUD housing,” Tina said. “This right here is what makes me mad because I spoke to those people and have tried to be as nice as I can …”
“Just keep screaming,” the doctor said. “You gotta keep making noise.”
“If I don’t voice my opinion, who’s going to?” Tina said. “Who’s going to stand up and take up for us living in this situation? You know?”
They left the visit with a new inhaler.
Aaliyah’s doctor checks in with her over Zoom. Aaliyah barely left her apartment all of 2020 because of the pandemic. She still has trouble breathing.
They keep Aaliyah’s old bedroom closed off with a blanket shoved under it. Aaliyah still sleeps in Tina’s old room; Tina still sleeps on the couch. When the temperature dropped in December, Tina ventured in to pick out winter clothes. She hadn’t opened the door in weeks. A dark substance had gathered around it. There was a stink. Eventually, she thought, she’d have to throw everything away. Tina closed the door. She left the winter clothes in the closet. They would have to figure something else out.