UPDATE (Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024): Property owner Mark Epker told NBC10 Boston via email Tuesday that the city decided to extend their stay for two weeks. Tenants confirmed they moved to a hotel in Saugus Tuesday. Eligible families will receive a $1,500 insurance payment as long as they don’t have renter’s insurance, according to Epker. The property owner added that he is actively helping families find a new home and offering them his other vacant apartments in Chelsea.
Over a dozen families had nowhere to go just five days after a major fire destroyed their apartment building on Washington Avenue in Chelsea, Massachusetts, last week.
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The hotel they’ve been staying at in Chelsea allegedly told the families to pack their bags Monday morning after the city stopped paying the bill.
Jose Luis Cancel, Elsie Amaya, their 13-year-old daughter and her dog are among more than a dozen families with nowhere to go.
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“The shelter won’t qualify us because of our incomes, so what’s the next step for us – live in the car? We got kids, animals. This is our situation,” Cancel said. “We’re desperate. We don’t know what to do.”
“All these days we’ve been there, we’ve been at (La Colaborativa) filling out paper, filling out paper. They didn’t give us enough time to look for apartments,” Amaya said. “We need more time. We can’t just in one day find a place.”
La Colaborativa, a local social services organization, is asking for a two week extension while the former tenants try to find a new home.
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“This really boils down to a resource issue. This was the largest fire in probably 10 years in Chelsea,” La Colaborativa COO Alex Train said. “Where is the landlord who owns the building where the fire occurred? What is he doing to help the families that were his residents who are displaced?”
All tenants got an email from Boston Property Management on the day of the fire saying their phones were down and haven’t heard from them since, according to Amaya. The management company did not immediately respond to an NBC10 request for comment. It was unclear if the city was going to grant an extension for their stay on Monday.
“We are working as hard as we can to provide as many resources as we can, understanding that Chelsea is a very poor community,” Chelsea City Manager Fidel Maltez said. “If housing was more accessible, if housing was more available, I think this transition would be a lot easier.”
The families stopped by the charred apartment building on Washington Avenue Monday to collect their belongings, only to find their valuables were missing. They noted that some things can’t be replaced.
“I just found my cat. He’s dead. I just found him and I don’t know, I’m missing two more,” Irene Alfaro said. “I’m thankful and thank god nobody got hurt, my baby is good, but they are your family. They are animals. They have a life. They didn’t deserve this. Neither did we.”
