Friday, March 24, 2017

Tenant Spent About $50K To Renovate Home (Special Bathrooms, Ramps, Etc.) To House Eight Wheelchair-Bound Residents, Now Landlord Decides Not To Renew Lease, Telling Everyone To Pack Their Bags & Take A Hike!

In Granada Hills, California, KTTV-TV Channel 11 reports:
  • Eight paraplegics are being forced out of the place they call home.

    The organization Freedom to Live rented the Granada Hills house for the last five years, but on Sunday [March 5], the landlord issued a 60-day-notice for all the tenants to move out.

    “It’s not an easy life being a paraplegic and quadriplegic, it’s one of the hardest things,” tenant Juan Elisarraras said. “We’ve been put through a grilling test and now we’re being put out on the street.”

    Elisarraras, who is paralyzed from the chest down from a gunshot wound, just moved to the house in March and he’s afraid to unpack if he can’t stay.

    This home is specifically set up for quadriplegics and paraplegics with wheel chair ramps and special bathrooms.

    The founder of Freedom to Live, Sian Welch, said she put about $50,000 into renovating it.

    Now the landlord doesn’t want to renew the lease, citing on the 60-day-notice that he wants to move back in.

    Welch said she asked for an extension, since it’s difficult to move eight wheelchair-bound patients who have come to find freedom and independence living here.

    “I can take the bus. I can travel to places that I’ve never been to before, go shopping and live the life a normal person in this world does,” Elisarraras said.

    FOX 11 reached out to the landlord on Thursday afternoon, but has not heard back.

    Freedom to Live is asking for the public’s help fundraising for a future move or a permanent home for tenants in the program.