Rocio Fuentes weighed up the cost of getting some new sofas for her new apartment in Pasadena, Texas, and decided the family budget could just about stretch to it. Just one month after moving in, Hurricane Harvey swept through and the Fuenteses were left not only with the ruined furniture but also an ongoing rental demand for a dwelling they had to flee.
“At first we didn’t think it would be that bad, but then the water came through the wall and up through the carpet,” Fuentes said. “Once we saw the water wasn’t going to stop, we left.”
Fuentes, her husband Jaime and their five children, ages ranging from seven months to 14 years, were plucked from the floodwaters by her mother, who arrived in a truck. They are now crammed into her sister’s apartment and with no insurance have little idea where they will live next. Jaime is unable to earn money because his construction job has been paused due to the flooding.
But while everything has changed for this family, they are still expected to pay for their abandoned home.
“Our landlords say we have to pay rent and late fees and every day it is going up,” Fuentes said. “We are paying rent for somewhere we can’t live in. They said ‘you aren’t the only ones in this situation’, but what are we supposed to do? We don’t have any money. We don’t have anything.”
Capitalism is evil.
Like some of the other comments in this are saying, legally a lot of landlords can’t actually charge rent in a situation like this, so if you find yourself in this situation, you do have legal recourse.
In Texas, the tenant law dictates that you have a right to demand that the landlord repair any condition that materially affects your health and safety. Under Texas law, by renting you the property, the landlord guarantees that the unit will be a fit place to live.
So if it’s dangerously flooded and unhygienic THEY have to fix it, not you, and you can break your lease with no penalty or have the landlord court ordered to repair it. Most states have laws like this, so actually the landlords here are risking lawsuits and people legally nailing them to the wall by trying to charge on units that are unfit for habitation.
These landlords are really stupid because apartments that are flooded out and growing black mold are going to be impossible to prove as healthy and safe. They’re just trying to take advantage of people not knowing their tenants’ rights to eke rent out of them for as long as they can before the tenants realize they actually can’t do that.
Primarily, I looked these things up for wildfire and general particulate pollution checks and.. well, the color code is this:
and the rating for most of my state– let alone anywhere effected by flooding [ie Louisiana atm] is “Unsafe for sensitive groups” and “Unhealthy”. The guide for the ratings is found here.
I just wanted to share it because when people talk about pollution in the air, they don’t talk about fires, or how the particle pollution heavily comes from said wildfires and how the west coast suffers under a prolonged fire season as well. It’s a subject that needs to be paid attention to. As an asthmatic living square in one of the more northern red blobs, it needs to be addressed.
Add smoke and ash to what we generally put into the air and we’re all gonna bake/choke to death. If something isn’t done, we’re going to be in dire straights, not just because of the environment, but because of resulting health issues in elderly, children, and vulnerable people.
When I said please boost, I meant please reblog this. No one talks about how the western US goes up in flames and much less how the air quality goes to shit every year.
With Tr*mp in charge, pay to firefighters is backed up months behind schedual. People cannot personally afford to go fight fighters, departments can’t afford to go help other departments fight them. Public awareness campaigns are not being planned and put into action to keep people inside/aware of how to keep healthy and to reduce fire risk.
Unless people are seeing the particles in the air, they aren’t considering it a threat and this is a problem. I’m not the most environmentally versed person and i’m not a scientist, but people need to know about it. Things like ash and smoke drift over the continent and affect much more than their local area.
So please– spread this!
I wanted to know what it looked like currently and…
My area is in the orange, it was yellow this morning when I walked out to the car to find it lightly covered with ash.
but seriously why do people feel the need to avoid the word ableism?
an abled person using disabled bathrooms/parking spaces/elevators isnt just a “shitty thing to do” my guy its ableist as fuck.
an abled person openly hating a disabled person simply because they are disabled, believing they shouldnt have certain rights or certain necessities because they are disabled, isnt just shitty IT IS ABLEISM.
someone believing a disabled person should have to go into debt to pay for medical bills and that they shouldnt be able to get accomodations or help to survive, it isnt just a shitty thing to think, its ABLEISM.
just say the fucking word people it isnt hard, dont talk about discrimination against disabled people as if its just annoying or shitty or mean, ITS DISCRIMINATION, ITS ABLEISM, SO CALL IT ABLEISM.
im so tired of people openly trying to avoid the word.
i’ve been reading about this sort of thing lately, especially wrt uspoli – where people condemning ableism refuse to acknowledge that that’s what it is, and just call it “mean” or “in poor taste” or whathaveyou –
and the best breakdown of it i’ve read/pieced together is that everyone tsking and shaking their heads at ableism, are in fact shaking their heads at crass behaviour and a lack of discretion when discriminating against disabled people.
calling ableism what it is – discrimination, marginalization, oppression – would mean that these people would have to examine their own behaviour and beliefs.
when 45 mocked serge kovaleski for example, he wasn’t mocking a disabled man with great skill and many achievements – he was mocking a person with a disability which is a no-no because that poor man can’t defend himself and why would you behave with such terrible manners and what do you mean, disabled people can advocate for themselves? surely their disability renders them entirely helpless and etc.
people across all political spectrums are guilty of neglecting to acknowledge the full humanity of disabled people, and i think that’s where the root of sidestepping the word ableism lies. if they were to acknowledge that disabled people are whole people, they’d have a much harder time ignoring all the ingrained beliefs that dispute that fact, and the abounding policies that seek to deny it.
“Airline customers looking to get out of the path of Hurricane have been met with dramatic fare spikes for air travel tickets… Airlines have countered that they have not changed the algorithms that determine their pricing, and that the surges are a simple matter of supply and demand with scores of people trying to book last minute flight out of the storm’s path.“ – Guardian
“As Florida stocks up on supplies for another monster storm, those looking for bottled water on Amazon have been frustrated to find monster price tags to match. Prices for water on the site reached as high as $100 for a single 24-pack of bottles or $63 for a single 100-ounce jug as of Tuesday morning, according to screenshots from people in the area. While most of the more outrageous listings seemed to come from third-party sellers, at least a few were also set by the company’s own price algorithm.” – Mashable
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
You must be logged in to post a comment.