Fort Worth state rep’s company tried to evict tenant. It may have violated federal law.
In a potential violation of federal law, a property company owned by Fort Worth state Rep. Craig Goldman filed an eviction against an Arlington tenant living at an apartment that appears to have been protected under the CARES Act.
The eviction for nonpayment of rent was filed in April by The Arlington Village Apartments LLC and brought to a court hearing in late June. From March 27 through July 24, eviction filings and fees for nonpayment of rent were banned by the CARES Act on properties backed by federal mortgages, such as from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to Tarrant County records, Arlington Village Apartments LLC’s deed of trust was secured by Fannie Mae. The apartment’s address and property name also show up as being backed by Fannie Mae on a CARES Act database created by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Goldman, a Republican who has served in the Legislature since 2013, signed the deed. Texas Secretary of State records from 2019 indicate that he and his wife, Auryn Goldman, are directors of The Arlington Village Apartments LLC. And in a 2020 Personal Financial Statement with the Texas Ethics Commission he noted that The Arlington Village Apartments LLC was held by him and Auryn. Auryn Goldman also holds apartment complexes through SC Apartments LLC and Martha’s Villa LLC, according to the Personal Financial Statement.
The tenant, who hired an attorney and successfully challenged the eviction, filed a lawsuit against Goldman’s company and faced a second eviction filing, in July, for alleged lease violations. “We think it was done in retaliation and on purpose to avoid any prohibitions from the CARES Act moratorium,” said Stuart Campbell, an attorney with Legal Aid Northwest Texas who represents the tenant.
Goldman’s specific oversight regarding Arlington Village is unclear, but he appeared at a Tarrant County District Court hearing regarding the lawsuit against Arlington Village in late July. He declined to respond to the Star-Telegram’s questions about his role with the complex and whether he believed it was federally backed and protected by the CARES Act.
“Given that there is pending litigation we are limited in what we can share. But the eviction of the resident was not filed because the resident did not pay rent,” he said via email. “Instead, it was filed because the resident committed a number of non-monetary violations of her lease.”
Campbell said the original eviction filing was solely regarding nonpayment of rent, which was not permissible at the time at federally backed properties. “Our lawsuit is that they violated the CARES Act,” he said. “I don’t hear any denial of that.”
Claim of CARES Act protection gets no response
Goldman’s property Arlington Village is a sprawling 220,000 square foot low rise apartment complex on Fielder Road in Central Arlington. Cameron Tillmon started living there in December 2019.
“I was looking to get on my feet,” she said.
She had a job as team leader at a Jack In the Box restaurant. After the coronavirus hit in March, she began giving shifts to other workers adversely affected by the pandemic. “I’m that kind of person,” said Tillmon, who is 51. “I help everybody.” She was late on her $795 monthly rent at the beginning of April, and an attorney for Arlington Village filed an eviction on April 13. About two days later, Tillmon paid the rent in full, according to a signed statement.
She said she tried to set up a payment plan for May but an apartment employee told her the partial payment would go to late fees. She found the property managers to be uncooperative, if they returned her calls at all, she said. Another notice to vacate (the document that begins the formal eviction process) was placed on her door in early May, according to court records.
In mid-May, Tillmon said she searched the property’s address in an online database and found it was federally backed. According to a signed declaration, she sent Arlington Village managers an email notifying them of her findings and that she could not be evicted or charged late fees because of the CARES Act. Arlington Village did not respond, Tillmon said. According to court records, it also did not file a CARES Act affidavit, which would have required the property to verify that it was not a federally backed property. On June 10, Tillmon was personally served with the eviction, and a court date was set for June 25.
The inaction from Arlington Village perplexes legal experts. Fred Fuchs, director of the Housing Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law and an attorney with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, was surprised the property didn’t immediately pull the eviction filing. “Once the tenant raised the issue to management and said, ‘I’ve checked the database and this is covered,’ that clearly would’ve required any landlord who cares about complying with the law to step back for a minute to engage in a due diligence check to see if it’s covered,” he said. “I’m just flabbergasted that didn’t happen here.”
To Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project, Arlington Village Apartments LLC had no reasonable excuse to be unaware of the law, particularly given its affiliation with Craig Goldman. “There are some people who didn’t understand what the stimulus act was and that it got passed. There are certainly some landlords who fell into that category,” he said. “I think, however, if you find yourself in elected office it would be hard to understand that you didn’t know the CARES Act was passed and that it didn’t have a number of provisions around evictions. Certainly around June you could’ve figured that out.”
Frustrated by the lack of response from Arlington Village, Tillmon retained representation from Legal Aid Northwest Texas. In the days leading up to the June 25 hearing, Legal Aid posted flyers throughout the Arlington Village complex notifying tenants of their protection under the CARES Act, as did the housing rights group Texas Housers. On June 25, Arlington Village didn’t appear in court. Campbell brought up the CARES Act to the justice of the peace presiding over the hearing, and the case was finalized in favor of Tillmon. Another Arlington Village eviction was finalized in favor of the tenant because of the CARES Act at the same hearing, Campbell said.
Tillmon’s eviction was one of hundreds filed in apparent violations of the CARES Act throughout Texas this spring and summer. A Star-Telegram investigation found more than 100 Tarrant County eviction filings between June 1 and July 14 — about 13% of all evictions during that time frame — potentially violated the CARES Act. In Harris County, 24% of all evictions between March 25 and July 25 potentially violated the Act, according to research by attorney and South Texas College of Law Houston professor Eric Kwartler. Because no enforcement mechanism was built into the law, Kwartler said landlords were able to violate the act without fear of a fine or jail time.
Goldman’s company files a second eviction
On July 14, Tillmon filed a lawsuit in a Tarrant County District Court against The Arlington Village Apartments LLC seeking a temporary restraining order and monetary damages. The temporary restraining order, which was granted, blocked Arlington Village from collecting the late fees, harassing Tillmon regarding non-payment of rent and preventing any eviction filing for non-payment of rent until the expiration of the CARES Act, which expired July 25.
Campbell said neither Goldman nor any representative of Arlington Village Apartments LLC has disputed that the apartment complex is a federally backed property during the eviction process or any lawsuit hearings.
But Tillmon’s saga with The Arlington Village Apartments LLC is not over. After the June eviction hearing, she said, Arlington Village declined to accept a three-month rental assistance payment she had been approved to receive from the Arlington Housing Authority.
And the same day the suit was filed, Arlington Village filed a new eviction against her. Instead of non-payment of rent, the complex accused Tillmon of noise complaints, using fireworks and partaking in criminal activity, she said. (Campbell demanded a jury trial for the eviction hearing, so Tillmon cannot be forced out of her apartment for the foreseeable future because of a COVID-related moratorium on juries.)
Goldman said via email the tenant admitted many of the lease violations under oath in open court. “The most important of her non-monetary lease violations,” he said, “is that another tenant reported that an unauthorized occupant, which the tenant has allowed to reside in her unit, threatened the lives and safety of several other tenants by brandishing a weapon.”
Tillmon says the claims are false: “It’s ridiculous. It’s pitiful.” Campbell added, “I have no idea what they’re talking about. Nothing she said confirmed any of their violations.”
She received notice of those lease violations on July 6, according to Campbell. That same day, he said, Arlington Village and a property held by Auryn Goldman, Serrano Creek Apartments in Grand Prairie, sent similar notices to two of Campbell’s other clients, one of whom had also challenged a CARES Act eviction. “If that’s not a pattern and practice, I don’t know what is,” he said.
Also in July, Tillmon’s air conditioning unit stopped working. She said the temperature in her apartment reached 100 degrees and she had to sleep at friends’ homes or in her car. Management at Arlington Village didn’t fix the A/C unit until she reported the violation to Arlington’s Code Compliance office, she said.
Despite the issues over the last several months, Tillmon remains at Arlington Village. She considers herself a positive person who never holds grudges. But the experience with Arlington Village has still taken a toll: She gets out of work sometimes and doesn’t even feel like returning home.
“I just want it over with,” she said. “I’m tired of being stressed out about it.”
