Merced tenants locked out of shuttered complex. ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do’

The future remains unclear for Merced tenants now without a home after their apartment complex was shuttered more than a week ago, several tenants said Tuesday.

They expressed little hope the 12 units in the 2600 block of Highway 59 would be repaired soon, adding they’re just trying to get their belongings back from the sealed apartment buildings.

“My whole life is in that apartment,” Christina Wood said on Tuesday.

The 37-year-old said a special bed she uses because she has back problems remains inside her apartment of six years, which she has not been allowed to enter. She and her disabled father have stayed several days in a hotel thanks to Catholic Charities and the Merced County Rescue Mission.

Tenants on June 22 were given 24 hours to leave, according to Bal Samra, whose family owns the property.

City code enforcement marked every door with a letter, which said the “complex is deemed substandard and poses an immediate threat to the health and safety of the occupants.”

In the displaced group were children, seniors and adults, including two pregnant women, advocates said.

David Garcia, 28, of Merced, a father of two with one on the way, said he scratched together enough money to rent a room at the complex for his family about a month ago. He said he felt blindsided when officials showed up on June 23 to tell everyone to leave.

As a field worker, he said, work is not always steady, which could make finding a new place difficult. “We got two days left here,” he said standing outside a hotel. “Other than that, I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

On top of that, he said he’s worried that a leak in the apartment will damage his belongings still locked inside.

Another tenant, Nancy Benitez, was renting a room with her four children. She and the other residents said they were told their belongings could be thrown away, but they also can’t get into the building.

Merced building inspectors found the stairwells and ceilings to have “major structural issues” and to be too damaged to allow the tenants to stay, according to city spokesman Mike Conway.

They also found water damage and pests, Conway said.

“You never want to displace somebody. You never want to toss them out of their home,” he told the Sun-Star on Friday. “But, on the other hand, you never want somebody to live in a place that could fall down on them, or (poses) some kind of danger to them.”

Samra said he has consulted with experts for necessary work on the complex, which rents its units at $550 a month. He said the city’s closure of the buildings is what is keeping tenants out.

Inspectors were originally at the complex after an evicted tenant complained, he said.

The owners can’t remove the tenants’ belongings from the building until they are considered abandoned, Samra said. To “play it safe,” he said, he plans to remove the belongings on July 16 and leave them in the complex’s parking lot.

The tenants said they haven’t been able to get a clear answer on if they’ll be allowed to get their belongings before that, according to Wood.

“With everything being up in the air, we just don’t know what we’re going to do,” she said. “I mean, we really don’t.”

This story was originally published July 4, 2017 at 4:09 PM with the headline "Merced tenants locked out of shuttered complex. ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do’."