Temple Family Left to Live With Massive Hole in Ceiling
Katheren Douglas of Temple is a hard working single mother of two kids. She has multiple jobs and is enrolled in college courses. She's a very busy woman, and you can imagine that when she comes home she expects to enjoy a modicum of relaxation.
Douglas lives at the Village of Meadowbend Apartments in Temple. For the past two weeks, she and her two kids have had to live with a huge hole in their ceiling. The combination of rainfall and frigid conditions led to a collapse of her ceiling in the dining room and kitchen area.
Something as massive as this would cause one to believe that the maintenance team at the complex would be fixing this in a hurry. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened, and that's why Douglas contacted KTEM Newsradio 1400.
When the ceiling first caved in, it left gallons of sitting water in her household and sheet rock everywhere. Maintenance got someone on the scene to clean up all the water, and said they had to wait two to three days for the sheet rock to dry in order to replace it.
The carpet upstairs was damp, and three big industrial fans were brought in to dry it. Meanwhile, the family has been sleeping with this huge hole in their residence during these frigid temperatures.
Maintenance was called a second time just days later, when Douglas was awoken by smoke alarms. She thought there may be a fire, but she walked out of her room to the surprise of wet floors. She walked downstairs and saw more water.
Douglas says she waited upstairs for maintenance, and a worker just sat at her front door and never came in. She called the Temple Fire Department, and they came and assisted her. They turned the circuit breakers off to stop the risk of being electrocuted with all of the sitting water and the excess water still flowing from the roof.
Maintenance made a call for the water to be cleaned up once again, but that was all the maintenance department did for Douglas. After cleaning up the water, the head of maintenance was outside for an hour, then came with some news for Douglas.
He told her that there was nothing else they could do for the day and that her apartment is considered habitable. So, a huge hole in your ceiling with growing mold and mildew is considered habitable?
You can take a gander in the video above and judge for yourself if this is an acceptable living situation for a single mother and her two kids. We attempted to reach out to the Village of Meadowbend Apartment Complex property manager on Wednesday, but she was not on site.
We're definitely hoping to see more assistance coming in the direction of the Douglas family, because no one deserves to live in such grotesque conditions.