Samayah Winston was visiting a pregnant friend in Florida when she received a text from the neighbor watching her apartment: Her keypad door lock had been replaced with a deadbolt. She later found her belongings hurled into a dumpster.
Samayah Winston looks at photos of her apartment after it was emptied on Friday, Aug. 26, 2022 in Houston.She didn’t know the history of the place — that Adorable Pointe had filed for evictions 68 times between 2009 and 2018, according to court records. In recent years, the court proceedings had tapered off for the building. But that didn’t necessarily mean there had been no evictions.
When Winston went back to her apartment the next morning to sort things out, she walked into a heart-dropping scene: Men were carting her belongings to a dumpster, where neighbors had gathered to watch. Already her television was covered in trash. She grabbed her coats, hangers and bedding out of her closet, which the men had not yet reached, and put them in her car. She lost almost everything — electronics, furniture, kitchenware, power tools and more.
And the Harris County Constable Precinct 5 said that in a civil dispute, “the only way we’d get involved in eviction is if a judge notifies us to get involved.” After a justice of the peace judge rules in favor of the landlord in an eviction case, the judge can order a constable to formally evict the tenant and move their things out of the unit. But in this case, the case had never even begun.
Reflecting on those first few days, Winston said her trust in the system has been shaken: “That whole day made me feel so unimportant,” she said. “I feel like if I were a Caucasian girl, at least the police would’ve come.” At the closest courthouse, she met an attorney with the nonprofit Lone Star Legal Aid who moved to file for a writ of re-entry on the spot. But Winston could not get scheduled for a hearing in front of Judge Israel Garcia for another four days.Meanwhile, Winston continued calling shelters she had found online, but she was turned away time and again.
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