RESIDENTS OF NORTH & AUSTIN PROTEST EVICTION ORDERS

Approximately 12 residents and their family members are being ordered out of what they say is a substandard building at the northeast corner of North Avenue and Austin Boulevard. They say they all suddenly received eviction orders despite being on annual or month-to-month leases and having rents paid up to date.
They charge the rental agency for the building – Pangea Realty – refuses to accept rent payments from tenants, but offered some of them $400 cash if they vacated their apartments in three days.
Tenants say Pangea has been harassing them by changing locks on the building’s entry door, turning off heat and hot water in the building, and refusing to correct code violations, such as exterminating rodents, repairing plumbing and electricity, repairing holes in walls, etc.
The residents are being represented by attorneys from Lawyers Committee for Better Housing. Businesses in the building’s storefronts are also being evicted, except allegedly the corner grocery store that 25th district police and CAPS label “a chronic problem and gathering place for troublemakers.”