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Lissa Ellegood, regional property manager at Cincinnati-based Heritage Hill Capital Partners , said what the complex is doing is "no different than when a resident would come into the office and give us a 30-day notice to vacate if they were a 30- day tenant. "

Despite that, the situation has caught the attention of community advocates and the city of Columbus. Not because it is illegal, but because of the timing and the vulnerable population involved.

Almost all of the residents are new Americans and refugees, many of whom don't speak English. 

"It would be nice if they would have given them six months heads up instead of 30 days. It's one of those things that is infuriating because it could be done in a way that doesn't negatively impact these families to this extent."

'Sad,' 'scared' and still without a new home

When Hassan got the letter, she gave it to her kids to read to her because she cannot read in English.

“I was sad,” she said. “I didn't know what to do. I feel scared. … I didn't believe it when I saw the paper. ”

She was given 45 days notice by the complex's new management, which, by Ohio law only has to give tenants on month-to-month leases 30 days notice.

Ellegood said that although she doesn't want to displace the tenants, it's "a normal everyday business-type situation." Heritage Hill Capital Partners took over management of the 250-unit complex on Dec. 16 and it clearly needed improvements, Ellegood said.

“The property, unfortunately, prior to us managing it, had been grossly mismanaged," she said, adding that the owners, who she declined to name, have already begun their planned $ 4.2 million in property renovations. “Unfortunately, we have to have units vacant in order to do that. "

Everyone living in the complex, built in the 1970s, will have to move eventually, but Ellegood said she's hoping to be able to give the next people who are given notice an option to move within the same complex - into a renovated unit. 

It's too late for Hassan's family, though. There won't be a renovated unit available by her move-out date, and she hasn't been able to find anywhere to go.

The complex is almost entirely occupied by refugee families and new Americans, said Dahir Ali, a community advocate who has been working with families to help them a find new place to live.

On Tuesday, Ali went with Abdi Osman and his family, who also got a notice to vacate by Feb. 28, to the apartment complex next door to see if they could move there. They were told the wait for a two-bedroom apartment - all the complex is taking applications for right now - was one year.

Everywhere Hassan has looked has a waitlist of three to six months, she said. 

The management company used a computer-generated report to see whose leases had been expired the longest, Ellegood said. Some people hadn't been on a year-long lease since 2016, she said, instead renting month to month. Those were the people who got the first 50 notices, with the first group being told they must leave by Jan. 31.

Dealing with a 'crisis situation'

Alyia Omar, 34, has not yet gotten a notice that she has to move, but she knows everyone must leave and fears she will be told to go at any time. She's a newer resident and has lived in the complex for eight months, after she moved to Ohio from Texas.

Omar said she's scared.

"I moved here very recently, and I'm trying my best to live here," she said, speaking through a translator as she poked her head out the door of her apartment. 

She and her three teenage sons are refugees from Yemen and moved to Columbus so Omar could find work.

Right now is an especially difficult time to find other housing, advocates say.

“It's a lot of families for the surrounding area to absorb,” Horne said. "There are only so many apartment complexes where they can go, so it's especially tough because there's so many other families already looking and there's a shortage of housing anyway."

Horne said he's not against the renovations, he just wishes there was another way to do them without displacing people.

"It's a crisis situation," said Ali, who has been going to the complex to help families apply for other housing.

Abdi Soofe, New American Initiative Coordinator with the City of Columbus' department of neighborhoods , found out about what was going on at the complex from community advocates.

Soofe has been working with the Legal Aid Society of Columbus, Jewish Family Services, Community Refugee and Immigration Services (CRIS), Ethiopian Tewahedo Social Services (ETSS) and other social service agencies to help people find somewhere else to go. They distributed flyers with information on other complexes renting to all 250 units in January.

Dahir Ali, a former case worker for Community Refugee and Immigration Services and now a community leader, is working with the refugee families at Whispering Oaks apartments that were given a 45-day notice to get get out. On Tuesday, Ali helped translate and fill out apartment applications for new apartments, many of which have a six-month to one-year wait list. Courtney Hergesheimer/Columbus Dispatch

Many are families Ali worked with years ago as a former CRIS case manager when they were resettled in the country as refugees fleeing war in Somalia. Many have lived at Whispering Oaks since then, only venturing out with their neighbors for groceries or work. 

"Most of the people were stranded, most were, 'Well, we have no language skills, we have no experience moving from one apartment to another,'" Ali said. "'This is the first time we're moving out since we settled here.'"

Losing more than a home

When refugees are resettled in the United States, local refugee resettlement agencies such as CRIS and US Together help find them housing and other resources. It may be hard for them to leave these homes because they have formed a community with their neighbors, most of whom are also refugees, advocates say.

Columbus has the second largest population of Somali people in the country, many of them refugees who were resettled here.

Osman's daughter Fadumo Ali, 17, said she was scared when they left their refugee camp in Ethiopia to come to the United States. People told her she wouldn't see any Somali people, only white people, and that if she left her house, she would be shot and killed.

She was delighted to find that it was the opposite, and that her home at Whispering Oaks, where she is surrounded by Somali neighbors, feels like she's back in the comfort of the refugee camp she lived in for much of her young life.

Beside the dumpsters outside the Whispering Oaks apartments on Monday are mattresses, couches and bed frames. They belonged to families who had to leave the apartment complex after their month-to-month leases were terminated by the management, who wants to renovate the buildings. Courtney Hergesheimer/Columbus Dispatch 

"If the people come back, we'll come back," she said.