WASHINGTON — Imagine going to work for the day and returning home to learn you have to quickly gather some belongings and stay somewhere else.
That’s what happened to some residents of two buildings at a local apartment complex in Gaithersburg, with the Thanksgiving holiday right around the corner.
“This was at 5:30 at night, and I don’t know how long the electricity had been out. I was not notified until I got home,” says Marie, one of the displaced residents of the Villages at Gaithersburg, who wished to be identified by her middle name because she fears some sort of retribution from local property managers.
Marie saw the bright orange “Do Not Occupy” sign from the City of Gaithersburg affixed to the front door of her building. According to the notice, any person who stays in the affected apartments or allows anyone else to remain can face a fine of up to $200 a day.
“Everything was dark. Everyone was outside … I walked up to the stoop and all I’m getting is everyone telling me ‘You can’t go inside, you can’t go inside.’” But Marie says she needed to go inside to gather some belongings and her pets.
She found another place for one of her pets to stay. However, she left her second pet inside her apartment. The first hotel where they stayed, the Sleep Inn along Research Court, allowed pets but the second hotel they moved to only allows documented service animals. Marie says she returns home each day to feed it and use the gas stove to briefly heat the apartment a tad before turning it off before she leaves again.
Marie told WTOP that communication between local management and residents has been less than ideal. She said she received a hard-copy letter from local management several weeks ago, a letter asking for residents’ email addresses for communication purposes. “I submitted that, and I haven’t been kept informed, so what was the point of that?”
Marie sent a tip to WTOP saying residents were forced out because she hears there’s an issue with “live wires in contact with water in laundry rooms.”
A representative for the Villages at Gaithersburg didn’t detail the issue, but told WTOP there is a problem in the basement in one of the affected buildings. He learned about a code violation last Tuesday, and said he immediately brought in licensed local contractors to start fixing the problem. He said the violation was based on an issue the company didn’t know about before they bought the property last year. On Wednesday, this representative found out the code violation was a more serious safety problem and power had to be cut.
According to a note from management that Marie showed WTOP, the original time frame local management anticipated for the electricity shutdown at buildings 23 and 25 was between Thursday, Nov. 17 and Monday, Nov. 21.
However, it could be longer.
The out-of-state property representative said they spent Friday working on permits needed to get temporary power on so residents can return to their homes. He told WTOP they expect trucks and equipment to arrive by Monday to start this process, but he also says it’s not something that happens in one day.
“We are committed to providing for the housing, welfare and safety of the residents. We are housing them temporarily in a local hotel at our expense, and are working with a local electrical contractor to immediately restore temporary power to the building as quickly as possible,” he said.
They hope to have residents back in their homes by Thanksgiving.
