“Honestly, I never imagined this could actually happen, because, well, these apartments bring back a lot of beautiful memories for us – we spent many wonderful moments here as a family – but just as they bring us good memories, they also bring us a lot of bad.”
On Monday June 29th, seven adults and two kids revisited a site of immense trauma, injustice, and unbreakable joy. Most used to be tenants of what was called Edge of Lowry on Dallas St, except for one former tenant of another CBZ managed building, Fitzsimmons Place on Nome St. Two years ago, these apartments were made infamous by president elect at the time Trump who cried Venezuelan gang control to a world that watched as hundreds of lives lost housing at the hands of relentless dehumanization. HAND first outreached Nome St tenants in fall of 2024 as the City of Aurora prepared to condemn the building with less than 48 hour notice, evicting over 400 tenants with nowhere to go, including nearly 100 children. That was just the beginning of what quickly spiraled into an international media sensation and momentary political ploy that irreversibly changed the course of these tenants’ lives, and migrants across the nation, forever.
Five of the complex’s six buildings in the 1200 block of Dallas were purchased this June by the East Colfax Community Collective’s (ECCC) mixed-income neighborhood trust. ECCC invited HAND to bring former CBZ tenants together for an intimate official announcement of the purchase on Monday. One by one, they began to recount what it had been like to live there – most notably, the painful consequences of absent and irresponsible management:
“Look, it was pitch-dark here. There was nobody to complain to, nobody to tell, nobody you could file a complaint with.”
“A firm hand was missing here. Otherwise, we’d still be living here. And resources, investments.”
“When we got here, we practically lost all our belongings. Our apartment flooded. We lost everything: carpets, everything, all the new stuff we had bought and all that. So we told the building manager that it had flooded. He said no, he didn’t know anything about it. I still have photos and videos of everything. He wouldn’t take responsibility for anything. I told him, ‘But listen, this was your fault, because you don’t fix things or anything’. I actually ended up having to fix the plumbing in the apartments myself. I had to fix them. And they’d tell me, ‘If anything breaks, you take care of it, and we’ll deduct it for you’. And I was like, no, that’s a lie. That’s what they said, because they just didn’t want to put any money into this. Nothing, nothing, nothing. They didn’t want to. Everything for them. And that’s why these apartments ended up deteriorating, pretty much all of them.”
HAND walked with the former tenants around the boarded up building, even visiting what used to be home to one of the couples present. They clung to the off chance that maybe they’d find some of the things they had to leave behind when police and security forced them out early in the morning on one of their final days there:
“When we came back, [police/security] wouldn’t let us in. I left my fishing rod there. We never got it out – lots of things. A lot of stuff in there they wouldn’t let me take out. That fishing rod – I told [an officer], ‘Come on,’ I’d say, ‘You left my fishing rod in there, the one they gave me, it was a gift’… At six in the morning [police/security] were kicking us out. I kept telling [my husband], ‘Let’s go, because they’re going to clear out the apartments’. All I thought about was grabbing my bag, a little fish I had, and heading out.”
“I had a guitar too; I play music. I left a guitar, because I kept telling him, ‘Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,’ and he wouldn’t listen to me… At four in the morning they knocked on my door to tell me that by six we had to be completely out.”
Unfortunately, the couple’s unit was utterly empty – an echo of a life lived.
From ICE raids in the darkness of night, to menacing police around every corner, conversations turned to the final days of the apartments and the fear that gripped them before they knew what might come next:
“We arrived at a bad time… The worst. When things were really heated. Then immigration would show up, the police wouldn’t let you sleep, people couldn’t even go to the bathroom. It was crazy… Here in this building, we couldn’t sleep… Here, on the second floor. The police would knock on our door to tell us we had to leave, that we only had until tomorrow. So with all that going on, I panicked because we had the kids – of course, anyone would. I didn’t know where we were going to end up. And I searched and searched, looked for a place to rent, but I couldn’t find anything… And because of all that, with the running around, I missed my appointment with immigration court. I forgot it because I was caught up trying to get out of there, because they were firing shots. They wouldn’t let us sleep.”
“That day, when [ICE] kidnapped [my husband]… That day was terrible for me because we lived downstairs. I was working, and he needed to go out to work and they wouldn’t let him. I was asleep, because I’d got up at four in the morning, and I heard: ‘Police, police!’ We could hear their boots running – boom, boom, boom! So he tells me, ‘Looks like the police came. Looks like they’re robbing someone. The police came,’… When we looked out, the SWAT truck was there, shining its lights straight into our window… That day was a day when they cleared out the whole building, super horrible. A lot of innocent people. That’s when it happened, that’s when the kidnapping happened… But that day, that day they arrested everybody – kids, women, everyone. Even the girls – twelve, thirteen years old – they were handcuffing them.”
Despite millions of dollars spent on media reporting and millions of eyes reached through provocative headlines, the victims of this story saw none of the benefits and all of the burden of a world that criminalized them for the harsh conditions created by their out-of-state slumlord, Zev Baumgartner, who was hardly ever mentioned. This phenomenon resulted in escalation that put them at further risk when local vigilante groups decided to take matters into their own uninformed hands and brought guns to the Dallas St complex full of families with children:
“They had weapons – Cubans with guns – saying they didn’t want ‘those people’ here. I’ve got the recording right here on my phone. With pistols, saying they were going to kick Tren de Aragua out of here. Armed, with everything, hiding out in the middle of the night to drive the gangs out. Nobody came out, man.”
Still, life goes on for the former CBZ tenants. Some have found themselves in other slums due to racist systemic barriers and the judgment that followed whenever they listed their former address, or even their nationality, on a housing application. Others find themselves in and out of housing, juggling lack of affordable, accessible housing with an immigration system more complicated and expensive since Trump took office for a second term. Still other residents, who were detained during ICE raids that took place at the apartments or shortly thereafter the sensationalization of their lives, remain locked up and isolated from their loved ones, some to places as horrific as CECOT in El Salvador or Guantanamo Bay. Several have been deported to the countries they’d escaped – their American dreams cut short and the course of their lives changed forever.
Former tenants will be amongst the first to be offered the opportunity to move back in two to three years, once funds have been raised and renovations have transformed the space. Those present had plenty of perspective on what’s needed to ensure safe, healthy, dignified housing conditions moving forward:
“Well, the first thing they need to do with these apartments is bring in good staff, people who will manage them properly, and put security cameras everywhere. And good upkeep. They need to keep the place well maintained, of course, because I remember when I lived there, we’d go out to throw away the trash and the rats would run right over my feet. (Rats?! Those things looked like rabbits, you hear me?)… As long as there’s good management, as long as they give people solid leases where folks respect the rules, everything’s going to work. Like, for example, there have to be security cameras… Second, there has to be order here in the parking lot. Meaning each apartment has to have its own space for their cars… When we get home at ten at night, we have nowhere to park… When people say, ‘Look, I’ve got a problem with my bathroom sink’, that there’s staff here… something like maintenance, that they’re on top of it. That kind of stuff, keeping things maintained. No drinking in the parking lots and parties only up to a certain hour. And set rules: noise only until a certain time, because there are a lot of neighbors who have to work, right? And to respect the neighbors across the street.”
“We want to take an English course… Maybe they should create a place, a room, where they can have English classes or where they can have other community activities or events…We could get an apartment just for throwing parties – parties, gatherings, birthdays – like an event hall. And people could reserve it and stuff like that.”
“I’m happy because it was [ECCC] who bought this, and you’re people who already know us – you already know what we lived through, you already know what we went through here – and obviously you’re going to have a little consideration for us.”
Ultimately, these former CBZ tenants want and deserve to live in safe, dignified housing where they can raise their families in a thriving and respectful community. Beyond the travesty of justice that befell the tenants of slumlord Zev Baumgartner, the unshattering spirit of those who chose this country through sacrifice and immense effort shines through the hate:
“Look, back when we got here and saw all the chaos… He and I are Venezuelan. We’re decent people, we like to work, we’ve got kids… I’ve always been Venezuelan, and it’s not for nothing – I’m Venezuelan and proud as hell – but I used to live peacefully.”
As people with a shared history, these former tenants have unwittingly become experts in housing barriers that befall the poor and/or migrant. While we’ll never be able to atone for the levels of trauma that this country caused multiple generations of impacted families, we must respect their collective knowledge and leadership to inform what becomes of these buildings, and to prevent ever repeating this sort of tragedy. May we ALL fight that much harder for equal housing access as a human right, no matter where you’re from.
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