Mid-Valley seniors fight eviction efforts by housing manager

HOUSTON — Several residents in Mid-Valley Senior Center’s housing complexes are crying foul over eviction notices they’ve recently received from Housing Manager Rita Kasper.

All of them have sought legal advice to understand their rights and a couple of them have successfully fought past eviction efforts they said were unwarranted.

Kasper and MVSC Board President Bill Frost said MVSC has been advised by the center’s attorney not to comment on the evictions and issues surrounding them.

MVSC Executive Director Lorie Rounds said she had not heard of any problems with evictions at Mid-Valley’s 18 housing units.

“I just take care of the center and we’re all happy here,” Rounds said, adding she’s been reading about the troubles surrounding the Wasilla Area Senior Center and she hopes WASI’s board and staff are able to resolve their issues soon, especially since WASI is within the same senior network as Mid-Valley. “Nobody’s come to me about any eviction notices because they know I don’t have anything to do with housing. They know they can go to their boards if they’re having any problems, and by gum, they will address them the best they can.”

That’s exactly what Blueberry Pointe resident Patricia Holt, 65, tried to do when she returned home from a trip March 3 and found an eviction notice taped to her door.

She said the notice doesn’t give a reason for the eviction — only that she had to be out of her apartment by May 1, the day her one-year lease expires.

“They gave me no reasons at all and no warnings,” Holt said. “So I went to the board of directors meeting on the 14th and asked the board why I was being evicted. I told them I didn’t feel I had done anything wrong to be evicted. They just told me they couldn’t discuss it right then and would get back with me later.”

Holt said when she went to talk to Rounds about it, Rounds told her it might have something to do with Holt’s two teen-age grandsons sliding a vehicle on the ice while going around a corner at the complex. But that was news to Holt.

“It’s a really slick area,” she said. “I even did a 180 on the same corner and hit a snowbank.”

Besides, why would something like that cause someone to be evicted, Holt wondered.

Holt said she began having problems with her lease after she first moved in a year ago. She had been babysitting her 4-year-old grandson in her apartment for a few days because her son-in-law, a BP Slope worker, had suddenly been called to the Gulf of Mexico to assist with an oilrig collapse there.

Her daughter, Kim Hout, was working full-time at the military base in Anchorage and needed her mother’s help until she could find another babysitter.

“I got a very nasty letter at that time from the board president saying my grandson being there was a violation of housing rules and that either my daughter would have to find other daycare or I’d have to move back in with my daughter,” Holt said of the May 3, 2010, notice written by then-board president George Dusek. “They said this was not a babysitting facility. But I wasn’t receiving any money for it and he stayed in the apartment the whole time. He wasn’t bothering anyone. He was only here for four days and now comes out rarely because of the problems it caused.”

Holt, who lived in Indiana before heart and breathing problems forced her to follow her daughter to Alaska in 2007, said she’s researched housing law and knows eviction notices have to state a reason and tenants have a right to appeal the eviction.

“If I get kicked out of here, I’ll have to move back in with my daughter and her four children until I find another place,” said Holt, who volunteers at the MVSC two days a week and recently submitted an application to run for a board seat. “I like being on my own.”

Fellow tenants Vickie Parsons, her 93-year-old father Walter Gooch, Pat Buchanan, and former Houston city councilman Lee Himes know all too well the frustrations of evictions they feel are unwarranted.

Himes, who is terminally ill with lung and heart diseases, said Thursday he’s received three or four eviction notices over the last year or so claiming he’s been smoking in his apartment and has created a safety hazard with his oxygen tank being outside his front door.

Himes said he has never smoked inside his home and that, in fact, Kasper has been known to walk into residents’ apartments with a lit cigarette. All of those fighting their evictions said Thursday they had witnessed Kasper doing just that.

Himes said his oxygen tank is not a danger to anyone because it’s not the typical explosive kind and is not active when it’s outside.

“They keep giving me notices, but I just hang in there,” he said, adding he even got Houston Fire Chief Tom Hood to come to his apartment recently with special smoke detector equipment to get his official opinion on whether he had smoked in his home. “He didn’t find one trace of smoke there. It’s a very, very sad state of affairs when seniors our age don’t know from one week to the next if we’ll be evicted for some petty reason or have to put up with harassment.”

Parsons, who had moved in with her father about a month ago to take care of him, said she’s been given until April 1 to vacate his apartment or she will be removed by force.

“This is crazy,” Parsons said Wednesday. “My father was on the verge of pneumonia and has type 2 diabetes and gout flare-ups. If I have to leave and he gets sick, he can’t drive himself to the doctor. I don’t know if they’ll get a restraining order against me so that I can’t even come over and help him.”

She said that although her father, a former bull rider from Colorado, is in pretty good shape for his age, she doesn’t want to leave him alone.

Buchanan, who has lived in the Blueberry Pointe complex since May 12, 2010, called the situation “a goat rope.”

She said Tuesday Kasper has a history of independent, “bizarre” behavior when it comes to managing the housing units and that neither Rounds nor the board seems to have a good grasp of how she’s treating tenants.

Buchanan said she’s been targeted for harassment by Kasper because her 19-year-old son, Michael, visits her often and stayed at her apartment off and on last summer while she was out of state.

“Three security cameras were aimed right at my apartment,” she said. “Rita denied it, but I have pictures to prove it. It was so stupid because Rita had given permission for Michael to stay there.”

The residents said they hope the board will fire Kasper so they can finally have some peace and quiet and get on with their lives.

“This isn’t Germany,” Himes said. “This isn’t a concentration camp, but it’s run like one sometimes.”

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.mckee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.