300 face eviction on Hilton Head as Chimney Cove apartments for sale, many are stranded

A mother of four pinches her lips, willing the tears not to flow, a week after she learned she had a month to move out of her Chimney Cove apartment because the owner was selling the property.

“I could see it in her eyes; we’ve got to bring some reality to the situation because where do they go?” said Italia Parisi, a member of the Lowcountry Diversity Coalition who, along with Pastor June Wilkins of Christ Lutheran Church, was passing out fliers to mostly Spanish-speaking residents.

On Aug. 12, Chimney Cove’s nearly 300 residents came home to find eviction notices taped to their doors. A few had move-out dates in November, but the majority of tenants were ordered to vacate by Sept. 12.

For the people of Chimney Cove — a low-income apartment complex on William Hilton Parkway — moving out means finding an affordable place to live, transportation to their jobs on the island (or switching jobs altogether) and changing schools for their children less than a month into the new school year.

“My heart breaks for these people,” Wilkins said. “There’s 200-300 people that live there that we are effectively kicking off the island because there’s nowhere else to go.”

Owner Sam Johal refused to answer questions from The Island Packet, including when the property was put up for sale or whether residents received ample notice. Most residents said they had leases that were month-to-month.

The apartments in Chimney Cove, a place with overgrown grass and rundown buildings, are home to mostly families. Children’s bikes litter the sidewalks. Neighborhood kids meet up on the weekend at a pair of benches at the center of the property near the laundry room to play games. When Wilkins and members of her church, located next door, visit the community during the day, there’s rarely anyone home.

“Everybody is working; it’s a place for people who work,” she said. “All the people on this island who do the actual work. ... We wonder why the pharmacies close half the time, why we can’t get a doctor’s appointment, it is because nobody can afford to live here except rich people.”

Sandy Gillis with the Deep Well Project, a nonprofit on the island offering aid to the residents, said Chimney Cove has always been where people who work on Hilton Head live.

“People should sit back and think about 300-plus people about to be homeless on Hilton Head and what that would mean for our community,” Gillis said.

It’s not the first time

Chimney Cove was built in 1973 as a low-cost home for Palmetto Dunes employees, and since then has survived numerous changes in ownership as an affordable housing option for working islanders.

This latest wave of evictions isn’t the first Chimney Cove tenants have experienced since Sam and Hari Johal purchased the property for just over $3 million in December 2015.

The Island Packet reported in 2016 that, after their purchase, Sam and Hari Johal, who are cousins, asked previous property manager Don Cadman — who had worked on the property for around 10 years — to evict the tenants. Cadman refused.

The tenants were low-income families native to the island at that time. When The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette reported on Chimney Cove’s change of ownership in 2016, Sam Johal said all new residents at that time were seasonal workers from Jamaica with H-2B visas, a visa category that permits migrant workers into the U.S. for temporary, non-agricultural jobs.

Residents evicted at that time were given “ample warning,” Johal previously told the newspapers. Although the sale was final in December 2015, some residents were allowed to move out as late as the end of March 2016.

Current Chimney Cove residents told reporters they received no notice the property was for sale. The first time they learned it was being sold was when they returned home to find eviction notices pinned to their doors.

The eviction of Chimney Cove’s residents places greater strain on Hilton Head Island’s few affordable housing options. Although the town is arranging a public-private partnership to build workforce housing near the North End, Town Manager Marc Orlando said construction on those units wouldn’t begin until 2023.

Plans call for new owners to rehab the apartment complex and raise rents, which now run about $1,500 a month.

Reginald Wallace, who identified himself in an email to Wilkins as a “contract holder” for Chimney Cove who was “pursuing a reimagining of the property,” told a reporter Tuesday that he was not at liberty to discuss the project. The property, he said, had not yet been sold and was still owned by Johal’s company, California Chimney Cove LLC.

County records do not reflect the property’s change of ownership as of Wednesday.

The Town of Hilton Head told Wilkins in March that there wasn’t anything they could do because the prospective developers of the property weren’t rezoning.

“We expected that the new owner would then give out the eviction notices once they got clearance from the board about sewage and they have not done that,” Wilkins said. “We don’t know how this is working out.”

Instead, California Chimney Cove LLC, served the eviction notices on Aug. 12.

“If you fail to vacate the property … the property owner will initiate an action of ejection on Sept. 13, 2022, requesting that the Sheriff of Beaufort County evict you from the property immediately,” the notices read.

The notice, Gillis said, is not a “subtle threat.”

“It’s playing on every fear those people have. This is not just a story of apartment development. It’s got all these ripples,” she said.

A 30-day notice is required in Beaufort County only for tenants who do not have a written lease agreement. For the residents at Chimney Cove who do have a lease, the owner of the property must file for eviction, which is then served by a deputy from the Sheriff’s Office. Once that happens, tenants must leave the property or go to court and explain to a judge why they shouldn’t be evicted.

“They don’t feel secure calling the sheriff because you just don’t do that in their situation,” Wilkins said. “They’re (California Chimney Cove) taking advantage of that.”

‘Again, they won’

One man told Parisi and Wilkins as they handed out fliers on Sunday that the stress was keeping him up at night. Another, one of the lucky ones, said he already found a home to rent in Bluffton.

“We can’t stop what’s happening, but we can offer help with the transition,” Parisi told residents in Spanish.

On William Hilton Parkway, Chimney Cove residents have forged a community that watches out for one another. One member is Jose Villanueva, a painter on the island recovering from heart surgery who has lived at the apartments for two years with his wife and teenage son. Villanueva can often be found since his surgery sitting in a chair shaded by trees outside his apartment or tinkering under the hood of his car. Villanueva told a reporter that he could not afford to move unless he gets his approximately $1,300 deposit back.

“They told me if nothing is broken, I’ll get the deposit back,” Villanueva said. “I have nowhere to go yet.”

Doralic Delgado, who lives with her sister and their children, said she was told she would not be getting her deposit back.

“Nothing is broken,” she said.”They told me they are using it to clean the apartment after we leave.”

Both have to be out by the September deadline.

Maria Hernandez, a single mother who lives in an apartment with her four children and 2-year-old granddaughter, can knock on any door and find a familiar face. She has lived there for almost two years and has always paid her rent on time, she said. Her world has been turned upside down since she came home from work on Aug. 12 and saw an eviction notice on her door

“When my 7-year-old asked where we are going, I said I didn’t know,” Hernandez told a reporter in Spanish. “We shouldn’t be afraid, we aren’t criminals.”

In April, when her lease was up, Hernandez said she made an appointment to renew it. Instead, she was given a month-to-month contract written in English.

“She (the woman in the leasing office) never advised us that they were going to take it away,” she said. “She gave me a contract and never said it was month-to-month. And, they won; I signed without looking.”

When she later asked the woman why she was never told that the new contract was month-to-month, Hernandez said she never received a response.

Though Hernandez was able to find a three-bedroom apartment for rent in Bluffton, she is worried how she will be able to afford the more expensive monthly rent of $2,218 in addition to moving costs, deposits and application and administration fees. Currently, she is paying $1,400 per month.

Chimney Cove was meant to be her fresh start. Instead, she is starting all over — again.

“I told my neighbors that this was an act of intimidation,” Hernandez said. “There are people who are desperate because they work hard, get to their homes to see this and they don’t know where to go.”