WATCH: Two disabled Comox women are being evicted from their longtime apartments due to being too young for their complex. The two low-income residents live in a seniors complex yet they say their age has never been a problem until new management took over and they received notice they had to move. Skye Ryan reports.
Between their walker and scooter, Zoe Nagler and Teona Sparkes don’t move a lot faster than the seniors in their safe and quiet Comox complex.
Nagler said her apartment is a dream come true.
“I thought I would be here for life,” Nagler said.
But now the 46-year-old and 53-year-old Sparkes are both being evicted because they are too young to live in d’Esterre Gardens, a 60-plus housing complex for low-income seniors.
“All of a sudden, new management came in and my age mattered where it hadn’t before,” Nagler said.
She has cerebral palsy and has lived d’Esterre Gardens for six-and-a-half years. She said she has never concealed her age and the last management had an unwritten policy of taking on disabled low-income residents if there were vacancies. Nagler said the old management knew how desperate the situation was for disabled people.
Now, their eviction letters state:
“It has come to our attention that somehow you were given tenancy in our complex without reaching the minimum requirements to qualify.”
So the two women have to move out of the subsidized housing complex in what is now an even harder rental market.
“It’s excruciating,” Nagler said.
“Like what are they going to do with us if we don’t’ have a place to go,” Sparkes said.
The management of D’Esterre Gardens declined requests for an interview, saying they had no comment and that the evictions are going ahead at the end of March. Nagler and Sparkers are looking for apartments but are worried they won’t be able to afford them. They are also taking their rental fight to arbitration, hoping to hold onto their spots at the seniors’ complex.
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