By Ted Kleine
In November the Weinmanns moved into a smaller one-bedroom apartment in Edgewater, east of Broadway, but both still felt they were given the bum’s rush from the place where they’d spent half their lives. “They should have had some consideration for the senior citizens, given them a little more time to move,” James says. “It would have been better if they’d waited until May, when it was warm out. It’s not right to come down so hard on people like that.”
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Chroek Tao would agree. Tao, a 65-year-old Cambodian immigrant, was evicted from an Andersonville apartment last summer because his new landlord wanted to rehab the building. After his one-month deadline had expired, he says, someone nailed boards across the front entryway, and Tao and his three children used the back stairwell to get in and out of their apartment.
After Tao finished his tale, Mimi Harris, the housing services coordinator for Ezra Multi-Service Center, took the microphone. Turning to 46th Ward alderman Helen Shiller, she asked, “Helen, will you commit to change the city code to require a four-month notification for tenants who have to move due to rehab?”
While Shiller favors giving renters more breathing room, she thinks changing the law will be very difficult. “There’s a very strong real estate lobby in this city,” she says. Ironically, Shiller’s ward office is about to move from its Montrose Avenue location so her landlord can tear down the building to make way for an eight-story high-rise.
Hodur says the Weinmanns’ building was so dilapidated that it was wrong to allow people to continue living there. After buying the building last summer, he discovered that the boiler was on its last legs, unlikely to last another winter. Hodur says he shut it down before all the tenants had moved out because he was afraid it would explode. Plus, he claims, the building was infested with gangs. “The second we realized the life safety issues, we decided to clear the building out,” he says. “I have a hard time sleeping at night knowing people are living in total squalor.”
