A SWAT situation, a fire, no water and heat. And then a building is condemned, and residents are forced from their home days before Thanksgiving.
Margaret Jackson sat on the couch in her Avalon Park apartment Tuesday afternoon uncertain of where she would go if city of Chicago inspectors told her she couldn’t stay in her home.
Jackson and some of her neighbors had gone four days without water and had not had heat in the building since temperatures started to drop this fall.
A weekslong saga that also included a fire and a hostage situation in early October forced all the residents from their home Tuesday evening after an inspector condemned the building in the 1400 block of East 79th Street.
An old electric heater next to her with bright orange wires warmed up the living room earlier Tuesday. In her narrow kitchen, the oven was on and propped open to also help heat the apartment. For four days, Jackson, 62, and her fiance Timothy Williams, 70, had been without water at the apartmen, using gallons and bottles of water to flush the toilet, cook and wash dishes.
A week earlier, on Nov. 17, Jackson’s landlord left a notice on their door saying the water would be shut off Saturday to prevent the pipes from freezing.
Packs of bottled water leaned against the kitchen counter. In the bathroom, a red bucket sat on a stool inside the tub, where they’d been filling it up then dumping water in the toilet bowl, hoping they’d used enough force for it to flush.
Jackson is disabled and sometimes relies on a cane and a walker to move around. She receives home care and physical therapy.
“I have someone to come in and help me. I had to cancel that,” Jackson said. “‘Cause we don’t have no water for somebody to come in here and help me.”
The landlord and building manager, Craig Lane, said he told every resident on Oct. 2 that the building was not safe to live in and they should move out. Lane’s dad, Vincent Lane, was the Chicago Housing Authority chairman from 1988 to 1995. Their family owns the building, with Craig Lane managing it.
He didn’t provide a written notice, he said. Jackson says Lane didn’t tell them they had to move after the fire, and that they paid rent that same day.
Four residents left, the other four stayed, saying they didn’t have anywhere to go, Craig Lane said.
“We told them it wasn’t good for them to stay there and they were saying they didn’t have anywhere to go or anything to do,” Lane said. “So they imposed it on themselves.”
Lane said he did not offer the tenants any resources or help for them to find a new place to stay at the time.
A building inspector and a deputy commissioner with the city’s building department walked through and around the building on Tuesday.
They stared up at the boarded windows and blackened brick, walls and roof from the fire.
The commissioner ultimately condemned the building and told the remaining residents about 7 p.m. Tuesday that they could not stay there.
About 3:30 a.m. on Oct. 1, a 38-year-old man set fire to an apartment on the top floor “after a domestic dispute,” according to a Chicago Police Department spokesperson.
The man stabbed a 53-year-old woman and an 11-year-old girl and held them against their will, according to an email from the Police Department. While police were at the scene, the man refused to come out of the apartment.
He then set fire to the apartment and jumped out of the window. The woman and the girl were removed from the apartment before the fire was set and were taken to Trinity Hospital with stab wounds but in good condition, police said.
The man was arrested and taken to University of Chicago Medical Center with third-degree burns, police said.
Lane said the heating system was damaged in the fire, but Jackson said she’s always had to use electric heaters and her oven to warm up the apartment in which she has lived for seven years.
Wednesday morning, Jackson sat in a motel room on 81st Street and Stony Island Avenue disputing claims that she’d had guests the night before. Lane, who was paying for the room, told her they couldn’t stay at the same motel another night.
She and Williams headed back to the condemned building Wednesday about noon to get more of her things and cook sausage and eggs while Lane found a new place for her to stay for the night.
By Wednesday night, Jackson and Williams were in a new hotel, hoping Lane would be back before noon on Thanksgiving morning to pay for another night at the hotel while they figure out where their new home will be.
