BEE COUNTY, Texas — Tenants of the Bee Pointe Residences have been left without water for over a week, at the city says owners have failed to pay the bills.
KRIS 6 first learned of the matter when an apartment resident reached out via email. According to them, "water has been shut off for over a week with no possibility of us individually connecting it ourselves. We have fraudulent people trying to collect rent when those people do not want to disclose the landlords information." The tenant continued, "No one knows who the landlord is or what the contact info is. The City of Beeville Utility states that the owners have not been paying the water bill for months now." He also added that there's on going issues with roof leaks , roach infestations, electrical problems and "no one is helping."
Speaking with that tenant, who wished to remain anonymous, he says that things have "deteriorated" under recent management.
He said maintenance requests stopped being fulfilled earlier this year. “It was working all right all the way till maybe May, but then they stopped doing any sort of maintenance request."
"We have kids here, we have babies, we have elderly people here and we can’t flush toilets. We can’t cook, we can’t clean, we can’t bathe."
He described additional problems inside the units. “The roaches are out of control here. It’s in every single building,” he said.
The tenant also said open and abandoned units have caused concerns. “A lot of apartments have windows open, doors wide open. Homeless people or maybe people out there that don’t have a place to live, they come in here. And you have random people just stay here and live there cause I mean, it’s an open apartment."
Another resident, also wishing to remain anonymous, described ongoing conditions in the apartments. “There’s mold all over the ceilings, ceilings are cracking, falling, literally ceilings are falling to the ground where you can see the sky,” she said. “A lot of rodents, roaches, they refused to fix anything.”
She also alleged that residents were told for months to continue paying rent while the water bill went unpaid. “What they did in those three months, they collected everybody’s rent money and when it came down to it finally got shut off, they stopped answering all the tenants’ phone calls.”
Several tenants said they went to the City of Beeville for answers after the water was cut off. “I tried to get my own water individually in this apartment complex, but they said no it has to be the landlord. They just told me well we don’t know who the landlord is and we haven’t been able to contact them for months and for the unpaid bill that they have that’s why we shut off the water,” he said.
Beeville City Manager John Benson confirmed the city is aware of the situation. “We’re very familiar with the apartments. This has been an ongoing issue as far as the water bill not being paid,” Benson told KRIS 6.
Benson said the water account is the responsibility of the property owner. “That water account is under the ownership of the property and so it’s the owner’s responsibility to pay the water bill,” he said. “We have reached out to the owner to let them know of past due amounts that are owed on the water, and that under city utility policy that if the bill is not paid, our policy is the water does get shut off.”
Property records reviewed by KRIS 6 show the Bee Pointe Residences are currently owned by Gulf Sky Apartments, LLC, a Texas-registered company with a mailing address in Corona, California. Tenants have complained about being able to contact anyone in management over the past several months. KRIS 6 reached out to Gulf Sky LLC and were sent straight to voicemail.
Benson said tenants were notified earlier this summer. “Back in June, we placed door hangers on each of the apartments’ doors, notifying the tenants in there of what was happening and that the bill had not been paid. We did door hangers and sent letters to each of the tenants back in June, giving them two months heads up notice … that the water would be shut off due to the owners,” Benson said.
Benson added, the city understood relocation would be difficult for residents. “That’s why we try to give them as much time as possible, in this case two months advance notice,” he said.
Benson said code enforcement officers can and have issued violations if problems are visible from public areas. “We cannot go on private property without permission of the property owner or an invitation,” he said. “But if from the street or public areas they can see violations, we do issue violation notices.”
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