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€