Senior living communities in the Heights had no power, no emergency plans after Houston storm

Ever since the power went out Thursday night from the devastating storm that hit Houston , Brian Cotten has been living on water and peanut-butter sandwiches in his sweltering apartment at a senior living center in the Heights.

“We were trying to help each other as best we could,” said Cotten, who lives with 230 residents at the Houston Heights Towers on 19th Street and serves as president of the community’s resident council.

For two days, no one at the city was aware of the residents’ plight. Cotten was worried about his neighbors, many of whom are on oxygen or use wheelchairs. The building’s landlord, the nonprofit Housing Corporation, had few employees on hand during the outage.

Cotten finally called the city’s Office of Emergency Management on Saturday to request help. City Councilmember Abbie Kamin said she was alarmed by what she saw when she arrived at the facility later that day.

“I pulled up, and an ambulance was already here because somebody was overheated,” said Kamin, who believes the landlord should have done more to make sure residents had what they needed during the Houston power outage.

On Sunday, Mayor John Whitmire harshly criticized the managers of the Heights Towers and other senior-living communities in Houston, alleging that residents had been “abandoned” during the power outage.

“It is outrageous,” said Whitmire, who specifically mentioned the Towers and another facility, Independence Hall, during a news briefing. Most troubling, the mayor added, is that there could be horror stories that the city doesn’t even know about.

“Are there facilities across Houston that no one’s been able to contact?” Whitmire asked. “We’re only able to fix what we know about.”

No licensing requirements in Texas

Messages left with the nonprofit’s leaders of the Heights Towers weren’t returned Sunday. The Housing Corporation owns seven independent living facilities in the Houston area, including the Heights Towers and Heights House nearby, which also lost power.

None of the Housing Corporation’s Houston properties are licensed or monitored by the state of Texas to provide care for seniors. Unlike nursing homes and other assisted living facilities that provide higher levels of care, Texas does not require independent living facilities to maintain licensure and are not inspected by the state.

Kamin, Cotten and other residents were quick to praise the landlord’s maintenance workers who live on site and worked long hours making repairs to the wind-damaged building.

“We did the best we could with what we had,” said maintenance employee Joel Torres, who said his manager brought some generators to help power the elevators and some electrical outlets in the lobby.

‘What is your emergency response?’

Kamin said she’s primarily concerned about what appears to be a lack of emergency planning for the nonprofit’s senior communities in the Heights, which provide housing for hundreds of low-income residents.

The councilmember contacted the nonprofit’s vice president and chief operating officer, Linda Holder, and wasn’t satisfied with her responses.

“‘I asked, ‘What is your emergency response (plan)?’” Kamin recalled. The answer: “‘We don’t have one.’” A message with Holder wasn’t returned Sunday.

“I said, ‘We’re gonna focus on getting y’all what you need right now. But we will be having some very serious conversations after this,’” Kamin said. “They keep claiming it’s a quote unquote, ‘independent living facility.’ I believe most of these residents are in wheelchairs or are amputees. There are individuals who are blind.”

The Fire Department had to be called Saturday night when a generator stopped working and a resident was trapped in an elevator.

“We had, at one point, like, four or five ladder trucks here,” said Kamin, who visited the facility with Fire Chief Samuel Peña.

Power restored to Houston Heights Towers

A local church assisted residents by providing deli meat and food for people who needed it. The city provided pallets of bottled water Saturday, and coordinated with volunteers from CrowdSource Rescue to provide hot meals.

At around 11 a.m. Sunday, full power was finally restored to the tower, alleviating many of the problems. Residents gathered in the air-conditioned lobby to have lunch, and some said they had no complaints about the landlord.

Others were frustrated.

“It was a total mess,” said resident Keith Hobbs. “People were scared they were going to go hungry.”