Moving from a home they love

Affordable Medical Center apartments are being torn down for a new hospital

By ALEXIS GRANT
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

Chemotherapy always has been a short commute from Elizabeth Cabrera's home near the Medical Center. It was just a five-minute drive when she was fighting breast cancer more than a decade ago, and she still makes the same trip once a week, now for lung cancer treatments.

Her commute is about to get longer.

Cabrera, 59, is one of hundreds of residents of the Parkwood Apartments, a cluster of old brick buildings next to the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center, who must move out by next month before the buildings are demolished to make room for Baylor College of Medicine's new hospital.

"It's sad for us, it's very sad," said Cabrera, who moved into the apartment 14 years ago with her husband, a Baylor physician. "For reasons of my health, I always was here."

Like Cabrera and her husband, most of the people who live in the small neighborhood work or study at Baylor or one of the other nearby medical facilities. They were shocked, Cabrera said, to learn several weeks ago they had two months to find another place to live.

Hospital to be built
By the end of this year, their homes will be torn down, and soon afterward construction will begin on a hospital, Baylor officials announced last week. The college has owned the 35-acre property since 1988, though a separate company manages the apartments.

Moving vans dotted the quiet, tree-lined streets on Saturday, and some residents hauled furniture out of the four-unit buildings. They were old, built in 1948, but well-maintained, some residents said, and housed mainly immigrants.

"We weren't planning to move because we like the area and it's close to where I work," Cabrera's sister, Marina Motta, said as she packed hangers into a box in the apartment just across the hall from her sister's. A doctor's assistant, Motta moved there with her husband seven years ago so she could be closer to her ill sister. "When they tell you at the last minute, it's crazy."

Since Parkwood residents have no leases, management was required to give only 15 days notice, though they gave 60. They stopped renting out units in August and management is providing relocation services to help residents find new homes, said Baylor spokeswoman Lori Williams.

"We are trying to make the transition for the residents as easy as possible," she said.

The demolition was planned before Baylor decided to build the hospital, she said, because apartment repairs were becoming too costly and property taxes too high.

Residents who have begun looking for new homes said they knew all too well about the high costs of living in the area. Some said they would move farther away than they had hoped because they couldn't find housing in the Medical Center that was comparable to what they had paid at Parkwood: $600-$700 for one- or two-bedroom apartments.

"We're priced out of decent housing in this area," said Michael Hickey, Motta's husband. The couple decided to rent a place about 10 miles away.

"Whatever I found first, that's what I took," said Motta, a Guatemalan immigrant. "I wasn't looking to live all the way over there."

Management could not be reached for comment.

The notification letter sent to residents read, "Rapidly escalating maintenance costs and property taxes make the continued operation of the property impractical."

No warning
Bill Zhou, a 32-year-old University of Houston chemistry student who on Sunday was helping neighbors move their stuff into a truck, said he had to look for new housing right after he had settled at Parkwood.

"I just moved in two months (ago) and now I have to move out," he said, adding that he had not been warned about the impending demolition when he moved in.

As for Cabrera, who had boxes piled in one corner of her apartment, she and her husband planned to move in with their daughter until they found a suitable house. It needs to be one floor like their apartment, not a two-story, she said, because the cancer causes her to tire easily.