Fire victims rally for security deposits
{Keith Walker/News & Messenger}
Ricardo Juarez, right, and Reyna Arciles hold a press conference Monday at the Friendship Place Apartments, where a fire displaced roughly 45 people last month. The residents want their security deposits refunded.
Most of the people who were put out of their homes by fire last month at the Friendship Place Apartments in Woodbridge can’t find places to live.
They might be better off if they could get their security deposits back, but the deposits are slow in coming.
Christina Gomez, one of the residents who was displaced by an accidental fire June 26 at 14400 Gemstone Drive, said families can’t get a straight answer from the apartment complex management.
“They say they don’t know what is going to happen — that the insurance needs to give them an answer — they haven’t really concluded exactly what is going to happen,” Gomez said.
The fire started on the first floor of one of the apartment buildings and spread to seven units, displacing about 45 people. At least one family was forced to jump to safety.
Lina Roldan manages the complex and said she has been talking to many of the people who were displaced and she’s told them all the same thing.
“I’ve been telling them that we’re going to give them their security deposits back,” Roldan said. “By law we’ve got to process the security deposit back by 30 to 45 days.”
The apartment complex paid for the displaced residents to stay for three nights at the Rodeway Inn in Woodbridge, Roldan said.
The Prince William Chapter of the American Red Cross paid for a few nights, and several area churches including St. Matthews Lutheran Church in Lake Ridge, Manassas Mosque, Manassas AME, Manassas Church of the Brethren, St. Francis of Assisi in Triangle and the Bull Run Unitarian Universalist Church in Manassas paid for a few more nights, said John Steinbach of Mexicanos Sin Fronteras, which organized a rally at the apartment complex Monday.
“It’s obvious they’re going to get their deposits back, but they need them now. That’s the crux of the issue,” Steinbach said.
The organization, led by Ricardo Juarez, rallied about a dozen of the displaced residents Monday to present a letter asking the apartment complex owner, Leo Cummings, to quickly return the deposits.
The residents took the letter to the management office where they signed it, forming what they called the Friendship Place Tenants Association.
The management office is closed Mondays and Tuesdays, so there was no one present to whom they could deliver the letter, which also asked Cummings to provide references for those who were displaced.
The letter further asked that Cummings “make a good faith effort to offer financial compensation for the belongings lost in the fire as well as the trauma and hardship the tenants have faced since the fire.”
Roldan said she had done as much as she could to help the tenants.
She went to other apartment complexes and tried to find places for many of them, but encountered difficulty.
“I went personally to a couple of places, but they’re not qualified because of their income and credit,” Roldan said. “We’re trying to help these people because we understand.”
Oscar Moreira, is staying at the Rodeway Inn with his 76-year-old mother, Maria Moreira, and admitted to having poor credit that’s hampering his efforts to find a new place to live.
“We don’t have any place to go,” the 34-year-old Moreira said.
Roldan said it will take three to six months to rebuild the destroyed apartments.
Teresita Jacinto, of Mexicanos Sin Fronteras, asked for help from the community.
“We’re appealing to the community to respond, to open their doors to one of these families,” she said at a press conference after the letter signing.
Jacinto said people who wish to help may call and leave a message at 703-369-7427.
Alan Scott, the manager of the Rodeway Inn, is contributing as much as he can.
“We tried to help them out with some rates and make sure they have a refrigerator and a microwave so they don’t have to go out and buy food everyday,” Scott said. “We’re just trying to do the right thing.”
Scott said he’ll try to keep things going as long as he can.
“We’ll work with the families and we’ll work with everybody that’s helping them out. We’re just doing our part on our end,” he said.
Jacinto said the displaced families would be homeless today if not for such help. “We ask that the community continue to support us,” she said.
Manassas Bureau Chief Keith Walker can be reached at 703-369-6751.
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Reader Reactions
Chris says “Phdee screw your compassion, how about some compassion for legal immigrants instead of job stealing criminals, after all this is a criminal matter.“
It is amazing how much patience you people have with this screwball. I was wondering how much time would go by and who would blow first? lol
And the immigrating from the south thing…classic.
Who cares who migrated here first, since the US became a country is when i am talking about immigration laws and what the Constitution states. Thanks for proving my point about Native Americans migrating here though, fossil record of settlements on the west coast confirms this as well. MSF, KKK, Aryan Brotherhood, Nazis, Mecha, Ms-13, and La Raza are not my favorite hate groups that’s why i don’t like them. I skipped one also, The Black Panthers and or the New Black Panther Party. I am no friend of hatred no matter what the color. It’s pretty hard to migrate from south of North America when their is no one to migrate, where are the record of settlements and time frames please and i can give you a time frame of the Mayans and Aztecs and the Toltecs, it was long after the Asians came over the land bridge. Phdee screw your compassion, how about some compassion for legal immigrants instead of job stealing criminals, after all this is a criminal matter. I say let their renter’s insurance pay for it. They do have renter’s insurance right???? LOL Chris Cummings
ph duh,i don’t know that all of them are illegal,just most of them.the article says so.plus,msf is involved in the mess.
mrbill: How do you know they are all illegal immigrants?
I view this as a personal disaster for the tenants. Perhaps some of us hae more compassion than you do.
blackjack: So is a ball. What’s your point?
ZCX: how do you know for a fact the Indians came from Asia. If there was in fact land connecting Siberia and Alaska or somewhere around there, why couldn’t the Asians have migrated from America to Siberia. There’s 2 directions you know.
ph duh the story here is ;how do you take care of illegal immigrants? put it on the native americans(those born here)or the ones that come clamoring?
phde, I am insinuating that ZCX does not know the difference between migration and immigration. I don’t know or care how the native americans got here, but I do believe they were here first and certainly before any Europeans were here.
phdee
You do know that the world is round right?
mainemom: Are you insuinating to us that the Indians “migrated” from cold Siberia to frigid Alaska? As large as these areas are, it must have taken quite some time to migrate. Wonder how many would have frozen to death? In my opinion, if the territory now the US was “empty”, it would be more likely migration if it occurred would have come from south of the US.
zcx - I’ve heard that story that the Indians came from somewhere else. What is your ACTUAL proof? Cite source please.
DNA has pretty much confirmed that? And who did the DNA testing, who were the DNA participants etc.?
And how, according to your alleged facts, did “they” know there were NO natives in N. America? After all, it’s quite a big piece of real estate.
ZCX, as usual, you always drift off into a lot of irrelevant nonsense unrelated to the topic at hand. The topic of discussion was not on who all killed indians, nor was it on your favorite local hate groups an d fellow racists. I can’t help your ignorance.
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