About 30 families live at the Rancho Selma apartments. They have one month to leave as the new owner plans to renovate the complex. Google Street View image

The Rancho Selma Apartments are under new ownership and for 30 families, that means a month left to find a new place to live as ownership restores the property.

Tenants received the first notices to vacate their units Sept. 2, giving them until the beginning of November to leave the Selma apartments. And the limited housing options in the city have many resigned to the fact that soon, they and their kids will be homeless.

Jonathan Arevalo has lived at Rancho Selma for five years with his wife and five kids.

“If I cannot find anything in those 60 days, I’m going to have my kids in the car because these people want to remodel the place? Come on, man, there has to be something that someone can help us out,” Arevalo said.

Arevalo’s five children range in age from five months to 10 years old. He said he first heard about the new ownership when the old landlord told them they need to contact the new company about issues. His next interaction was the notice to vacate.

The property management company sent out notices in both Spanish and English.

After Arevalo got the eviction notice, he went out to make sure the other tenants knew what was going on.

Arevalo said a lot of the people who live at the complex are field workers. Some don’t know how to read or write, some are just too scared to ask anything, Arevalo said. People received the letter and didn’t know what to do.

Joel Lugo, another tenant in the complex, has been calling around looking for places to live. The limited apartment complexes in Selma are all waitlisted. Moving into a new apartment also means paying market rate rent, which according to RentCafe is around $1,100 for a 950 square-foot Selma apartment.

Lugo pays $650 per month for a one bedroom.

Over the past eight years they’ve been there, rent has only increased a few dollars, Lugo said. The property management company waived October’s rent.

Lugo said he knew the apartments were in poor condition when he moved in eight years ago, but at the time, it was all he could get. There was work that needed to be done, but he told them he just needed a place for his family. Lugo is a stay-at-home dad to his three young boys but was previously a manager at Walmart. A back injury keeps him at home while his wife commutes to Fowler, where she’s a manager at Denny’s. Lugo said things were beginning to come together financially when they got the eviction notice.

“It’s coming at Christmas time. I’m trying to afford a decent gift, at least one each, and now we have to move,” Lugo said.

Stockton-based Calturas Capital purchased the 37-unit complex in July. Xavier Santana and his business partner Boyd Woodward specialize in finding distressed properties and restoring them.

When his agent found the property, it was in poor condition, Santana said. The air conditioning units were constantly breaking and needed to be replaced. Roofs were poorly maintained, and wood had dry rot. On the inside, cabinets needed to be replaced as well as flooring.

Common areas had become overgrown with weeds.

“It’s not a safe environment for families right now, especially children,” Santana said. The previous owner had put the property up for sale because of the liabilities, he added.

Lugo said requests to spray for cockroaches had gone unanswered. They paid for their own exterminator.

Now, Santana said the goal is to bring the property up to Class A standards. There were rumors circulating among tenants that the property would be a senior living facility, but Santana said they will be available for anyone.

“Our No. 1 priority is to get the entire property up to a Class A look and feel and then make sure it’s a place where people can come into it and feel at home and feel safe,” Santana said.

Santana said it’s a hazard and liability to do the kind of renovations they do while people still live there.

“It’s a process we need to go through, there’s no easy solution because this is not a 250-unit complex. We have a few units here and this is going to be a major construction zone for the next year-and-a-half,” Santana said.

Lugo and Arevalo are trying to do what they can to find solutions. Arevalo is having to look as far as Fresno for a place to live.

Arevalo said he feels targeted because the tenants have low income.

He organized the tenants and began posting about their situation to a Selma Facebook group. Lugo posted a video to social media. Selma Mayor Scott Robertson had come out to the apartments and Arevalo said it was encouraging to see him. They plan to get tenants together and march to Selma City Hall on Friday morning. They feel out of solutions.

“We only have one month to save our money, but by Nov. 4, if I’m not out of here, I’m not out of here,” Lugo said. “There’s nowhere I can go. At that point, I don’t know what to do.”