City council officials are investigating Pleasant Hill Village Retirement Community, an affordable Black-majority senior living center in the Fifth Ward, after whistleblower Tonya Ashley circulated photos of moss-covered walls and sewage-flooded floors at a City Hall public meeting earlier this month.
She explained to the council members the “deplorable conditions” in which her 73-year-old mother, Gloria Thomas, lived in a two-bedroom unit for over three years. In another room was the dumpster, where trash from floors above was emptied.
The images disturbed the officials. Councilmember Willie Davis, Mayor John Whitmire’s office representatives, and City Health Department officials visited the site, comprising 165 units. The officials then met with Rev. Harvey Clemons Jr., who currently serves at the helm of Pleasant Hill Baptist Church.
Clemons Jr. told Davis in a private meeting that the property’s management company had not informed him of the building’s conditions. Rev. Clemons quickly clarified that the management company had been terminated, and a forensic accountant had been hired to assess its work.
Clemons Jr. is a native Houstonian born and raised in the Fifth Ward community. The church’s Community Development Corporation (CDC) which owns the property and of which the pastor is the president, has since been under scrutiny from the mayor’s administration for lack of oversight and handling of government funds.
Erica Hubbard, a resident of the area and member of the Progressive Fifth Ward Community Association, asked the council to send a Health Department representative to conduct an air sampling. She also expressed a concern of conflict of interest as Clemons Jr. having “influence” over investigations, owing to his stature in the neighborhood.
“When I walked into the apartment complex, there were people in hazmat suits and the mold scent smacked us in the face,” she said. “The apartment complexes, because they’re so close to I-10, they’re so close to freeway diesel emissions. We’re in the 95th to 100 percentile for toxic air releases. So that exists all on its own without exposure to mold.”
What happened?
When Ashley, a real estate agent, visited her mother, she found Thomas’ apartment floors flooded with sewage water. The buildup began the day before. The management company that supervised the property had gone home for the day and sent a crew to alleviate the situation, which did not help.
Thomas woke up the next morning to water “everywhere.”
“She started calling me at seven o’clock in the morning. I didn’t even go to work,” Ashley said. I just came on over there. There was so much water that they had to call backup crew because each time they backed up the water, it was coming right back.”
Ashley explored other units when she saw the mold. She recalled Thomas telling her repeatedly she felt ill and showing signs of skin abnormalities and suspected a link between the mold and her mother’s deteriorating health.
“The mold was from the floor going up the wall. It was already on the ceiling,” she said, noticing the strong smell that accompanied what she saw. “It’s by the grace of God that she’s still living and breathing. The hallways always smelled bad. She would always be burning candles, spraying Lysol.”
Other residents of the building told Ashley they complained of mold for months.
At-Large Position 3 Council Member Twila Carter pointed out the adverse effects of mold on respiratory health and the necessity to relocate residents.
“The photos that we saw…the mold doesn’t happen overnight. That that didn’t just develop,” she said. “How does that affect your AC unit and HVAC because you don’t have an apartment building with individual seal-off units per apartment.”
Per EPA and the CDC, mold can start to develop on surfaces within 24 to 48 hours of water exposure. Currently, there is no federal law covering a landlord’s responsibilities when it comes to mold. Texas also does not codify any laws that require a landlord’s duties or liability in mold prevention and remediation. However, tenants harmed by mold concentrations have the right to recover damages from their landlord in court to compensate them for their loss. If a judge or jury finds a landlord to have created a mold problem or allowed one to grow on their property out of negligence, they can be held responsible.
Ashley said Rev. Clemons Jr. also could not explain how he used more than $3 million in taxpayer money in 2018 for repairs.
“Where is it [the money] going?” she said. Ashley added that on the day of the flooding, Thomas saw him drive up in his Maserati, a luxury vehicle whose cost starts at approximately $70,000. She noticed he did not get out of the car and that his office staff walked outside the building to speak with him.
“You don’t want to get sick yourself, huh?” Ashley wondered in retrospect. “You know what else gets me about him? You a Black man, a Black preacher, and you are killing your own people.”
What Rev. Clemons said
Clemons Jr. said residents were immediately relocated after complaints of sewage reached his office, but not until the Houston Housing Authority approved the request. “ We didn’t move them because of mold. We moved them because of economics,” he said.
Clemons Jr. said his 89-year-old sister also lives on that property, and had it been “unsafe and unhealthy,” he would not let her live there.
He also categorically denied housing seniors in mold-affected units, maintaining those apartments were empty and were “taken offline” after sewage backed up repeatedly on the first floor. He stated that was also the reason why these units would no longer be repaired.
“I wish there were a way that you and I could keep people from criticizing the work we do, whether good or bad,” he said to the mayor. “When we are doing our jobs as public officials, we cannot stop people from coming to criticize our work.”
He also denied claims of mishandling funds when he presented his side at the last City Hall meeting. He said he used the funds for renovation, landscaping, irrigation, carpentry, roofing, flooring, painting, plumbing, cooling systems, and life safety measures, but at $ 20,000 “a door,” it was not enough. He added that the rent, capped at 60% AMI and $874 for a one-bedroom apartment, is insufficient to cover the routine maintenance and renovations of these properties.
“The City Housing Department knew, the other mayor [Sylvester Turner] knew that the $3 million was going to be insufficient to cover the entire property,” he told the council. “Easily, we could have spent 50 to $60,000 making the necessary improvements.”
This isn’t new: the property has been on the radar
In 2022, Fifth Ward residents asked the Houston City Council to reject CDC’s application to reduce its requirements to clean up the Pleasant Hill site. Locals argued that the senior living facility was built in 1998 on contaminated soil.
Decades before, the land was used by an auto repair shop, a washateria, and a dry cleaner, which left behind toxic chemicals that led to the contamination.
In December 2020, the CDC requested a Municipal Settings Designation from the city for the property, which prohibits “the use of impaired shallow groundwater as potable water,” or water that is used for irrigation, production of food or drinks, drinking, showering, bathing or cooking. It clearly states that an MSD does not “remove any liability from the property owner, nor does it shift any liability to the City.”
Rev. Clemons maintained then that the property met the protocols. However, residents of Fifth Ward believed that the Pleasant Hill CDC tried to use the MSD as a loophole to avoid cleanup.
Lone Star Legal Aid, which represented the Progressive Fifth Ward Community Association, said in a letter to City Council members that one of the community’s ongoing concerns about the MSD Application was that the property owners had been aware of the contamination for over two decades but could not provide answers on what had been done to clean up the contamination.
“Pleasant Hill CDC has known about this contamination for the last 25 years while allowing our most vulnerable residents, senior citizens, to reside feet away from the contaminated soil and groundwater,” the letter said.
Clemons Jr. clarified in the last council meeting that the area had no new source of contamination, and the plume had declined, MSD was filed, which established a new limit for the zone.
