3 December 22–28, 2022 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Month XX–Month XX, 2014 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER | Contents | Unfair Park | sChUtze | featUre | night+Day | CUltUre | Movies | Dish | MUsiC | ClassifieD | Life After Eviction The story of one family’s life on the edge of homelessness as evictions return to pre-pandemic levels. by Tyler Hicks A ngela Smith says her hus- band will not be happy about this story. She launched a Go- FundMe, too, and he wasn’t too keen on that. “We both have a hard time asking for help,” she says. “He doesn’t want our bur- dens to become anyone else’s.” But the 55-year-old says she felt her story needed to be told, as many others are going through the same struggles. Her husband, who is 22 years her junior, will understand. In September, Smith, her husband and their “fur baby” Juana (a chiweenie, which is a cross between a Chihuahua and a dachs- hund) were evicted from an Irving apart- ment complex called Brittney Place. The eviction was the end of a battle with red tape that consumed over a year and a half of their lives, and it was also the beginning of a new kind of struggle. For the last three months, Smith, her hus- band and their dog have experienced inter- mittent homelessness. They’ve lived out of their car for weeks at a time; they’ve crashed with Smith’s sister-in-law and her children in a Grand Prairie apartment; and as of this writing, the trio are living week-to-week in a motel. Money from the GoFundMe, which Smith started after their eviction, was largely spent on car repairs, so now they subsist on money from her husband’s new job at a transport and logistics company. But for a while, both were unemployed. Smith hasn’t worked in recent years because of back and neck injuries caused by a 2010 car accident, and her husband was laid off dur- ing the pandemic. In November, Smith fi- nally began receiving disability payments two years after applying for them. In many ways, Smith and her family are not alone. According to data from the Child Poverty Action Lab, landlords filed 40,165 eviction cases in Dallas Country through Dec. 4 of this year — just 600 fewer than the last two years combined. Granted, 2020 and 2021 statistics are skewed by eviction moratoriums ordered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that were in place during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. (The Su- preme Court effectively ended the morato- rium in August 2021.) But the 2022 figure represents a year-to-date increase from 2019. That year, there were fewer than 40,000 evic- tion filings in Dallas County through Dec. 4. “Pre-COVID, there was a pretty predict- able pattern for evictions,” says Ashley Flores, senior director at the Child Poverty Action Lab. “There was almost a seasonality to it: There’d be spikes in January and late summer or early fall.” It’s too early to tell if this trend will re- sume in a post-pandemic world, she says, but it’s not too early to be concerned. “Prices are making it more and more dif- ficult to stay current on rent, and because we have such a hot market with low vacancy rates, renters don’t have a lot of leverage.” Smith’s story illustrates just how power- less renters can be in the face of the Texas landlords who are benefitting from that pip- ing-hot market. “The worst part,” Smith says, “is that all of this could’ve been avoided. We wouldn’t be living like this if our apartment had agreed to accept our rental assistance. The nightmare would’ve never happened.” S mith met her husband 14 years ago at a drive-in theater in Midland. In 2008, both Smith and her eventual husband were working The Big Sky Theatre, a three-screen venue where the vast Texas skyscape and its glittery stars often distract from the films. She was 41; he was 19. Smith was a cook for the theater’s con- cessions operation, and her then-boyfriend cleaned up the parking lot after the films. Since it was a small operation, she used to lend her partner a hand and pick up dis- carded popcorn and candy. Then came the 2010 car accident that will likely plague Smith the rest of her life. She was with two friends when a truck rear-ended their car. Her memory of the crash itself is hazy, but she does recall “feel- ing stuck” at one point. The hospital let her go the same day, but they recommended sur- gery for the crack in her neck. Since Smith didn’t have insurance, the operation would’ve cost her $135,000. “There was just no way that was ever go- ing to happen,” she says. Her boyfriend helped nurse her back to health as well as he could, but Smith has never been the same since. She has trouble walking, and more recently, the injury has kept her from being able to work at a full- time job. Shortly after the accident, what began as a quibble over the cooking of drive-in chili led to a full-blown argument with her boss. Smith was fired from the theater and even- tually got a job at a local Family Dollar. She and her husband stuck around West Texas until 2020, when they moved to Dallas. After initially settling in at a different apartment building, Smith, her husband and the dog made their way to Brittney Place in Irving. The complex changed ownership shortly after the Smiths moved in. (Repre- sentatives of Brittney Place did not return a request for comment.) Multiple people interviewed for this piece say Texas is one of the most “landlord- friendly” states in the country. They may have a point: Texas has no rent control laws nor limits on security deposits. Further, bar- ring any local ordinances, Texas landlords are not required by law to give their tenants a chance to make up for missed rent; they can simply issue a notice to vacate within three days. The Smiths fell behind on rent multiple times during their stay at Brittney Place, and at one point, they received much-needed rental assistance from a nearby chapter of Catholic Charities. According to Smith, there were multiple problems with the amounts they were being charged. At one point, she says the apartment complex was operating under the erroneous assumption that she and her husband were month-to- month tenants, thereby charging them more per month. When the couple fell behind on rent a second time in summer 2022, Smith was hoping ownership would work with her: Her husband had lost his job, and she had yet to receive the disability payments for which she applied in 2020. This is where the duo from Midland met a perfect storm of red tape. The city of Irving, which was ready to supply some rental assistance, needed a new lease from Brittney Place to disburse the funds. Meanwhile, Brittney Place needed the funds to issue a new lease, yet their pol- icy dictates they cannot issue a new lease to tenants who have a balance on their ac- count. (“A lot of times, the apartment’s pol- icy is just some bullshit they made up,” notes Mark Melton, a Dallas attorney who has made a name for himself as a staunch ten- ants’ advocate.) Of course, the Smiths needed the assistance from the city to get rid of the balance on their account. Unable to reconcile the landlord’s policy and the city’s rules, the Smiths received an eviction notice. “We were always told an eviction is like a black mark,” Smith says. “How do you wash away a black mark?” Specifically, evictions stay on credit re- ports for at least seven years and severely limit tenants’ future renting options. In a “hot” real estate market like today’s, where landlords have most if not all of the power, an eviction is indeed akin to a black mark. Smith was told all of this by her legal aid rep, who urged her to appeal to the judge with a detailed story of her family’s strug- gles. The rep told her to tell the judge that the eviction notice was not properly given. (Smith claims the notice appeared on the outside of her door, when the law dic- | unfAiR pARk | Angela Smith has a hard time asking for help but has struggled with homelessness. Mike Brooks >> p4
