AURORA | Residents of the Edge at Lowry apartments are facing new crises as an imminent eviction approaches, including broken pipes, no water, no trash removal and uncertainty surrounding relocation assistance being offered.
“Many of the established tenants have endured a lot already,” said Paula Forshee of Property Solutions Colorado. Property Solutions Colorado was hired by the city to oversee tenant relocation. “The compassionate and dignified thing to do is get them out of an unsafe situation and present them with options on a case-by-case basis.”
The complex attracted attention from the national media and the Trump presidential campaign last year after armed alleged members of a Venezuelan gang were caught on video entering a unit last summer. Aurora city officials outlined their plan to close down the Edge at Lowry apartment complex, citing ongoing criminal activity, including a recent torture situation, and poor property management as the driving factors behind the decision.
The emergency closure, approved by an Aurora Municipal Court order Jan. 10, cites the buildings as “an immediate threat to public safety and welfare,” according to a statement by the city. Forshee’s team has been posting closure notices, conducting a resident census and coordinating relocation resources. Tenants must vacate by 8 a.m. on Feb. 18, with those remaining subject to trespassing charges.
In the meantime, tenants say they fear background checks and a request for “required documents” from relocators working for organizations and the county. They don’t know if the option will be available to all of them or if some will end up stranded, V Reeves, spokesperson for Housekeys Action Network Denver, said. They said that others fear their information could be taken straight to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, even though the city and the Aurora Police Department have said they will not.
Water shortages, heat, trash issues add to tenant hardships
The complex, plagued by years of neglect and criminal activity, is under scrutiny as the city works to address safety and public health concerns.
The attention being brought back to the buildings this week made the ongoing neglect of the complex and its tenants more apparent Friday after discovering that multiple buildings have been without water for the past five or six days after pipes burst during the cold snap last weekend.
Deputy Communications Director Ryan Luby said that the city has been alerted, and they are working to fix the issues.
It was discovered later in the day Friday that copper wiring was stripped out of the walls, and consequently, there was no power to heaters, which caused the pipes to burst in the building. Currently, five of the six buildings are without water service, Luby said in an email.
“There are significant heating issues in the five buildings,” Luby said in an email. “They need to get heating squared away and sort through the plumbing issues involving still-frozen and/or thawing and/or broken pipes.”
The city and the temporary property administrator don’t know the exact number of units without heat right now, but it was enough to cause frozen pipes, Luby said. The city’s temporary administrator and her team are currently getting temporary radiator-type heaters in place.
“Families have not been able to bathe their children or cook food for them, and they’re pretty desperate,” Reeves said.
Reeves said that police told tenants they could not take water from neighboring buildings, a claim the Aurora Police Department refuted.
Sydney Edwards, public information officer for Aurora Police Department, said that she spoke to the commanding officer who was at the Edge at Lowry yesterday, and he said they were looking into the water pipe burst, but none of the officers made contact or spoke to the tenants while they were there.
“Taking water from one building to the next does not warrant an arrest,” Edwards said. “We want them to have water.”
A video on Housekeys Action Network Denver’s Facebook, however, shows APD officers and fire fighters outside of the building. In the video, as police are apparently driving away, two tenants tell Reeves in Spanish that police had told them they faced arrest if they went into empty parts of the complex to get water.
The lack of water has forced residents to buy their own, but the support has been minimal. Reeves said that a volunteer had only delivered six jugs of water, divided among several apartments, clearly insufficient to meet the tenant’s needs.
Trash service has also been suspended, leading to the accumulation of garbage outside the buildings.
“They are not able to get their trash taken, and they have been piling up their trash outside where the dumpster used to be, and they’re afraid that their children are going to get sick,” Reeves said.
Luby said that the city is aware of that issue and that there will be trash service to the buildings early next week.
Concerns over relocation assistance
While the city and Property Solutions Colorado have promised relocation support, questions linger about the process. Tenants must provide identification and undergo background checks, which Reeves said has sparked fears of potential cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“We don’t even understand if they’re actually going to get rental assistance from this or if they’re just taking note and sharing with the city and maybe with ICE officials,” Reeves said. “We don’t know who they’re sharing information with about the individual living there.”
Residents, and much of the immigrant community in Aurora and the region report being increasingly fearful as the Trump administration rolls out some details about mass deportations, which Trump made as part of his campaign for the White House.
In addition to that, local immigrants say they are increasingly fearful of local police, unclear what their role will be in threatened immigrant roundups.
Forshee’s team is posting closure notices, conducting a census of residents and coordinating relocation resources using city and Arapahoe County funding. To qualify for assistance, tenants must contact Property Solutions Colorado, provide identification and undergo a background check. Spanish-speaking call takers will be available to assist residents.
Luby said there are options for what government identification will be required to relocate tenants. The temporary property administrator advised people that valid government-issued identification would be, for example, someone’s A-Number/Alien Registration Number/Alien Number assigned to a noncitizen by the Department of Homeland Security.
“But ultimately, as we noted, the temporary property administrator will work with folks on an individualized, case-by-case basis,” Luby said.
The costs are also a concern because there is no clear amount of funding, and tenants are unsure whether they will qualify.
“On the process in general, the city is shouldering the costs for now but will recoup the costs through a lien placed on the property,” Luby said in an email. “Arapahoe County tells us it has limited assistance available to support impacted residents by connecting them with available resources on a case-by-case basis.”
Closure decisions
The Edge at Lowry has been a focal point of national attention after video evidence surfaced last summer showing alleged members of a Venezuelan gang entering a unit. Criminal activity, including a Dec. 17 kidnapping, led to nine arrests, with seven others in custody pending investigation.
“It would be irresponsible for us to allow anyone to stay at the property any longer, and the court agrees,” Aurora City Manager Jason Batchelor said in a statement. “We are grateful for our community partners helping us find meaningful solutions for these tenants, as Aurora does not have county-level human services functions.”
Patrol officers will monitor the complex during relocation to ensure safety and prevent further exploitation, the statement said. The city reaffirmed its commitment to enforcing state and local laws without engaging in federal immigration enforcement, which is in line with Colorado law.
“This latest effort marks a critical step in addressing years of safety and management failures at the Edge at Lowry while prioritizing the well-being of residents as they transition to safer living conditions,” the city statement said.
V Reeves is NOT a lawyer and needs to stop providing such BS information to these people. She is pretending to be a lawyer and she should be arrested. Hey V, how about you work with the city, instead of being an obstructionist? Why doesn’t your organization provide water and other supplies? Oh yeah, that’s right. HAND doesn’t care about the residents, only them.
All this could have been avoided if early on code enforcement and the city did their job before it got this bad. It’s true that the open borders made it worse.
We are in luck; Aurora officials tell us they hired a third-party step in to make strides and reorganize CBZ properties back to something of a normal functioning situation. City hall officials flexed its muscle, with all the bravado and their professional how they-re going to take -charge. Trailing over five years of well documented pages of code violations over the years on all the three CBZ rental properties. After looking at the city’s web site of registered active and in good standing business licensees, a little city requirement. What a surprise all three properties paid up, and open for business. The city never bothered in all these years to aggressively leverage any of these CBZ city licenses. A cornerstone to operate in Aurora and has the teeth for chain up the doors quickly. Denver has similar CBZ problems with similar type code issues. The William Penn Apartments, 1644 Pennsylvania. Denver has levied $280,000 in fines against CBZ and has been taking action over a couple years. Unlike Aurora, Denver on the other hand suspended the CBZ business license allowing Denver to clearly shut down the business and establish control and going after the fines. Aurora city officials keep telling us they need to find ways to fund the city. It’s right in front of them, this is a small example, and still, they can’t seem to figure it out.