September 7th, 2007

A number of tenants have been evicted from apartments in the Newport News area after it was found that their vents and walls were clogged with asbestos, which is a cancer causing material that can cause a range of other health problems as well as deadly mesothelioma. One of the tenants had only been in the apartment for a matter of weeks when the notice of eviction was posted.

The tenants state that the eviction was carried out sneakily, with a note being stuck on the door stating that there was an asbestos problem and that the tenants had to move out. The tenant stated: “There was no knock on the door, like, ‘Hey we need to talk about this. It was very, very, very sneaky.”

When cameras were sent in to the Oyster Point Place apartments they found that the apartments were a mess, and that one empty apartment was filthy, covered in sheeting, and had asbestos warning signs all over the place. This apartment was close to the apartment of some of the tenants that have now been evicted.

One tenant stated that the management must have known about the problem all along, and should not have let the apartments. He said: “If they know about it now, they knew about it before. It's not right we weren't warned about this before we moved in here.”