A 64-year-old Durango man was evicted from his subsidized home last week at Tamarin Square Senior Apartments, leaving him homeless and in a panic to find a new place to live.
Leslie Crews may not have been a model tenant – he has used marijuana and is suspected of harassing other tenants – but he was nine days from a scheduled eviction when law enforcement showed up and ordered him to leave.
The knock at the door came about 9:40 a.m. March 22 at unit 106 of the senior housing complex, 1401 East Third Ave.
La Plata County Sheriff’s deputies gave Crews 10 minutes to vacate. All of his possessions were moved to the lawn and the parking lot of the apartment complex. A few residents who heard of his eviction rushed over to help load his belongings and put them in storage.
“I’m a transplant patient, and to be thrown out on the street is a death sentence,” Crews said.
An employee with Tamarin Square Apartments declined to comment, citing privacy laws that prevent her from discussing the case. And PK Management, the property management company that oversees the Section 8, senior-living complex, did not return a phone call Friday seeking comment.
Crews said he was targeted for eviction because he advocated on behalf of other tenants who were being evicted. But police and court documents tell another story.
Tamarin Square Apartments filed a complaint March 1 in La Plata County Combined Courts seeking the eviction. The complaint includes a copy of the lease agreement, which shows Crews was living on a month-to-month basis for $164 per month. But it gives no indication of why the complex was seeking the eviction.
After an eviction hearing March 15 in La Plata County Court, Judge Martha Minot granted the eviction and gave Crews until 2:30 p.m. March 31 to leave. In her order, Minot said Crews could be evicted sooner if he smoked marijuana anywhere on the premises or had a verbal or physical altercation with another tenant or employee of Tamarin Apartments.
In an interview, Crews said he has used marijuana edibles, but he doesn’t smoke it.
But what really seems to have prompted the early eviction is an exchange of words he had March 18 with another tenant, who testified against Crews during his eviction hearing.
According to a police report, Colin Boyd was walking past Crews at the apartment complex when Crews said to a woman, “That’s the mother (expletive) who got me evicted.” He then said, “You’re in deep trouble mother (expletive),” Boyd told police.
Crews seemed to shrug off the exchange, telling police, “Boyd is mental and is a liar.”
Boyd obtained a temporary restraining order March 20, and the next day Tamarin Apartments had Crews evicted.
Crews said he planned to move to Boulder in April, but his early eviction threw those plans into disarray. Someone paid for him to stay at the Spanish Trails Inn & Suites through Friday night.
Above all, Crews is upset that a management company from Ohio took control of Tamarin Square Apartments last spring and has since told residents they can’t smoke cigarettes or smoke marijuana.
Part of the reason Crews’ rent was so cheap is because Tamarin Square receives funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. It is against federal law to smoke pot, and HUD does not allow it in any of its living facilities – even in states that have legalized medical and recreational marijuana.
But Crews said he should have a right to do what he wants in his home and in a state that has legalized the drug. It’s another example of the federal government and outside interests ignoring and trying to nullify local laws, he said.
Crews, who grew up in Boulder, said he’s proud to be from a state that was one of the first to legalize medical and recreational marijuana. The federal government and companies that want to do business in Colorado should respect those laws, he said.
Hundreds of elderly and/or disabled people are moving to Colorado to have access to medical marijuana, he said. Crews said he’s been an advocate for the ADA law and fellow tenants who have been targeted for eviction at Tamarin Square Apartments.
“This is the kind of thing that is happening here, where poor people and elderly people are being violently discriminated against,” he said. “I see a great deal of discrimination against people like me.”
shane@durangoherald.com
