Thread: When illegals lack money and housing, 'Don Carlos' is there

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...n/3500069.html

The larger 'Don Carlos' Lopez homes can hold as many as 10 people. At $50 per person per week, Lopez could potentially collect as much as $2,000 a month rent on a house with an appraised value of less than $100,000.

By EDWARD HEGSTROM
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

When their allotted days at the local shelter run out, and the prospect of sleeping under a bridge seems unpalatable, the immigrant laborers around Shepherd and Washington typically turn to Don Carlos.

"Don Carlos" is really Carlos Lopez, a local landlord who has five old houses in the neighborhood along Washington a few blocks east of Shepherd that cater to day laborers.

Lopez will house almost anyone who can pay $50 per person per week, provided they don't mind bunking on a bare and soiled mattress in a room with two or three other workers they might not know. Some of the houses have stained carpets that reek of sweat and vomit. In others, the linoleum is old and chipped. Most offer neither heat nor air-conditioning, making them chilly in the winter and stifling during Houston's long summers.

Police have cited Lopez and other local landlords for health code violations, records indicate. Still, many tenants are happy to have anything. The worst off of the day laborers, those who typically have problems with drugs, end up sleeping under the bridge where Shepherd crosses White Oak Bayou, according to the immigrants and police.

The larger Don Carlos homes have three or four bedrooms, meaning they often hold as many as 10 people. At $50 per person, Lopez potentially collects as much as $2,000 a month renting a house with an appraised value of less than $100,000.

Former guests say Lopez is very diligent about collecting the rent. Those who cannot come up with their $50 rent by Saturday afternoon will find their belongings on the street. Immigrant men with few belongings are the most common victims of these sudden evictions, but it happens to others as well.

In early February, a Salvadoran woman with a 3-year-old son and a 5-month-old daughter stayed at a Don Carlos house on Lillian. Others in the house returned one day to find them gone, evicted on the spot. No one knew where the woman went, and some openly worried for her children.

In an interview, Lopez conceded that he evicted the mother and her children. He explained that she had arrived with a man, who had paid only $50 for the entire family for one week, an unusual arrangement. The man left and the mother stayed an extra two weeks without paying, Lopez said.

"Fifty dollars for three weeks â€â€

now since Don Carlos only came here because" I just want a better life for my family and me"
we can't say anything bad about him- of course not-
when I worked at a tenant's rights non profit I got so burned out on these stories-
and frankly - I have been thinking that the illegal problem
is caused in part by landlords willing to take money and rent to them- if that could be changed- a fine similar to employers - then they wouldnt have housing-
the city could move in and condemn these biuldings
the migrants need to go back to their villages
why doesnt INS just crack down on Don Carlos and put him out of business- ????/it could happen ----If Ins the police the city council and citizens got together as a team

It's aiding and abetting and harboring and any landlord can be fined and imprisoned for life based upon the number of illegals he has so aided.

That would of course require a government responsible to its citizens to enforce the laws of the citizens.

We are of course without such a government. We have a renegade government and all these employees and officials need to fire and sued for dereliction of duty and conspiring to violate the US Immigration Laws of the American People.

I wonder what ever happened about the evictions on Long Island. Remember that DA named Steve somebody who evicted a house full of illegals who were using the bathroom in the yard, living in FILTH and otherwise making their neighbors' lives unbearable?? I just never heard how that case was resolved but more local governments need to start doing the same thing. This situation is untenable.