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As rain lashed his apartment’s only window, Moises Reyes struggled to get out of bed. Then the lights went out.
Reyes, 72, lives with severe arthritis in his knees, elbows and wrists after years working in factories in El Salvador. His apartment at Independence Hall, a 260-plus unit senior living facility on Houston’s north side, is furnished with an adjustable-height bed for people with mobility issues.
When a violent storm knocked out power for all 260-plus Independence Hall residents Thursday night, the bed had gotten stuck in its lowest setting. Standing up was suddenly nearly impossible, he said.
Reyes spent most of the next two days confined to his apartment with no air conditioning as temperatures crept into the low 90s. The food in his fridge spoiled quickly. Without electricity to charge his wheelchair, Reyes struggled to move in and out of his apartment.
Reyes and his neighbors at Independence Hall are among thousands of low-income and disabled seniors in Houston left to rely on their landlords for an organized response to last week’s catastrophic storms.
Many are low-income seniors with disabilities, living in subsidized housing and relying on functioning electricity to charge mobile oxygen machines, run in-home dialysis units, and power wheelchairs. With no power, some residents were rushed to the hospital after they suffered heat exhaustion or their portable oxygen machines died.
A Houston Landing review of federal housing data found at least 57 residential facilities in Houston – totaling over 8,800 low-income housing units – offering services to low-income and disabled seniors, with funding from federal tax credit programs for low-income housing developers.
It’s unclear how many facilities lost power and left residents to fend for themselves. Unlike nursing homes and assisted living facilities that provide higher levels of care, independent living facilities are not certified by the state of Texas, do not require state licensure and face scant oversight from regulators in comparison.
Texas also leaves property owners in charge of developing and implementing emergency response and evacuation plans. The results following Thursday’s storm have been disastrous, city officials say.
Houston Mayor John whitmire
“Independence Hall Sunday afternoon was deplorable. People with no roofs over their apartments. The owners and managers had abandoned the site.”
At Cypress Gardens in northwest Houston, hundreds of seniors were stranded in their apartments without power for days before city officials made contact on Monday.
At Independence Hall, downed power lines cut across the walkways in the complex’s main square as its 260 residents waited nearly 72 hours for power and provisions.
230 residents at the Houston Heights Towers on 19th Street found themselves trapped in the building with no air conditioning and minimal food for two days before a local church arrived with meals and the city was alerted, the Houston Landing reported Sunday.
City Councilmember Abbie Kamin said she asked Linda Holder, vice president and chief operating officer at the nonprofit that owns the Heights Towers, about the company’s “emergency response” plan. According to Kamin, Holder responded: “We don’t have one.”
The dismal conditions inside some of the city’s senior living facilities have prompted outraged responses from public officials, including Mayor John Whitmire, who said residents were “abandoned.”
“Independence Hall Sunday afternoon was deplorable. People with no roofs over their apartments. The owners and managers had abandoned the site,” Whitmire said Wednesday.
Whitmire said the city was still in the process of surveying Houston’s senior living buildings.
“Part of our going forward will be to identify them, hold them accountable, and prevent that. They shouldn’t be doing business with any city, county or state or federal program when they’re so negligent to leave people,” Whitmire said at a Tuesday afternoon news conference.
‘It needs power even when the grid goes down’
Holder did not immediately respond to the Landing’s requests for comment. A representative for Creative Property Management, Independence Hall’s managing company, declined to comment on the record. In a statement, the company denied abandoning residents.
“It was erroneously reported that the property had been abandoned by the site staff,” the company told television station KHOU. “The site personnel were out at the property Thursday night to assess damage and help any residents in need, and there have been site personnel on-site every day since Thursday.”
LDG Development, Cypress Gardens’ parent company, also denied abandoning residents.
“The information reported by the local news affiliate is inaccurate,” LDG Development Executive Vice President Christi Lanier-Robinson told the Landing in an email. “Our relief efforts began on Friday when our property manager walked the entire property, knocked on every door to check on residents and provide them with the emergency number.
“On Saturday, the onsite team returned at 9:30 a.m. with snacks and water and once again knocked on every door to let the residents who were still on-site (most had relocated by Saturday) that there was food available in the community room. On Sunday, the onsite team delivered breakfast tacos to the site and again walked the property, knocked on every door to check on residents and inform them that there was more food and water available in our community room.”
In an interview Wednesday, the director of the city’s Housing and Community Development Department, Mike Nichols, said there are 28 senior living facilities that receive some sort of city financial support.
Other facilities receive funding from entities such as Harris County or the Houston Housing Authority, he said. Meanwhile, an uncounted number rely on rent payments from residents who receive Social Security Disability Insurance. Nichols said he is not aware of a list of all the facilities that cater to seniors or disabled people.
While many senior living facilities may have flown under the radar in the past, Nichols said the city hopes to change that going forward.
“One of the other things I hope to come out of this disaster is a more settled and organized approach to dealing with these problems on an ongoing basis. But it’s a clear necessity in Houston, Texas that if you’re going to have a senior living facility, it needs power even when the grid goes down,” Nichols said.
More broadly, Nichols said the city has a “severe issue” with people who rely on Social Security Disability Insurance living in substandard conditions at facilities like boarding homes and senior living facilities.
“It’s an issue. It’s really a statewide issue, not just a city issue. And we need to think about how to protect those vulnerable individuals. At this point, it is not a very good situation,” Nichols said.
Hurricane Ida inspires safety measures
If governments in Texas wish to step up enforcement of senior living facilities, another city on the Gulf Coast could provide a template.
After Hurricane Ida plunged New Orleans into darkness in 2021, at least seven senior residents of independent living facilities died. The city quickly approved an ordinance requiring licenses for buildings that served seniors and people with disabilities, along with mandatory emergency plans. During emergencies, the buildings must provide regular updates to city officials.
Yet even with that ordinance on the books, some facilities failed to provide updates during a summer heat wave last year. Moreover, the ordinance did not require the facilities to install generators – a key step identified by Nichols that could keep the air-conditioning on, but come with a price for the facility operators.
In an interview Wednesday, Nichols said the city is concentrating first on finding federal funding for generators or other forms of “energy security” to supply to senior living facilities. He said that imposing a generator mandate on facilities that receive city funding could come with the unintended consequence of reducing the city’s affordable housing stock.
“Every time you add on a regulation, it costs money,” he said. “I just keep wanting to make sure we’re not putting unneeded requirements on that would cost us units. My goal is to put as many affordable housing units on the ground as possible.”
Power returns to Independence Hall. Now what?
The power came back and the lights flickered back on in Moises Reyes’ apartment on Sunday afternoon.
Whitmire arrived at Independence Hall within an hour to survey the facility, news cameras and paramedics in tow. A row of white buses parked outside the complex’s main entrance to serve as impromptu cooling stations. Plastic water bottles were distributed to residents near the complex’s front gate.
Reyes was not moved by the flurry of activity at Independence Hall.
After the mayor and the cameras left, the food in my fridge is still spoiled, he said. The air conditioning in his apartment did not return with the lights; his apartment was still hot and the bed was still broken.
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