Carter's Grove only one of apartment owner's problems

We talked last week about how the city had revoked the certificate of occupancy for Carter's Grove, the north Houston apartment complex with a history of safety and code violations — and sure enough, city officials shut the place down yesterday after helping the last residents move out. The complex drew attention when two kids were nearly electrocuted while playing around an unlocked electrical transformer box in February, but the city said it had racked up more than 200 health and safety violations, including unsafe wiring, faulty gas lines and raw sewage flowing into the parking lot.

A spokesman for the complex's owner, Sidney Pinter of Greenfield, N.Y., told the Chronicle last week that the city was acting unfairly by shutting the complex down before management had time to fix the problems. But as KHOU reports, Carter's Grove isn't the only problematic local complex the Pinter family owns: In Lake Jackson, their Casa Del Lago apartments were evacuated last summer after they were infested by bats; also in Lake Jackson, the Pinters are trying to sell the Lakewood Suites Apartments, which need a new sewer system; in Brazoria, they face a lawsuit over conditions at the Olde Town Center apartments; and in La Marque, the fire marshal has condemned their Crossings at La Marque apartments. "The owner, Mr. Pinter, he was aware of the situation [at Carter's Grove]," Barbara Cole, one of the last residents of the complex, said. "He knows what's wrong. As they would say, he's a slumlord." City code enforcement officer Steve Hawkins painted the same picture: "February first, we gave them 30 days to correct all the electrical hazards here," he said of Carter's Grove. "Now it's almost 60 days later and not any of the buildings have passed an inspection yet." And city inspector Tony Bailey told the Chronicle that conditions at the complex were "the worst health hazards I have ever seen."

According to Saunders, the city just wanted Carter's Grove shut down to get the people who lived there out of the area. "I'm a million percent convinced that this was spearheaded from pressure from the city, based on gentrification," he said. "They want the poor people out of the neighborhood." And, you know, people can be so picky about faulty wiring and raw sewage.