Houston woman’s startling eviction suggests how vulnerable tenants are. Experts say it was illegal.

Samayah Winston was visiting a pregnant friend in Florida when she received a text from the neighbor watching her apartment. It was a picture of Winston’s front door: Her keypad door lock had been replaced with a deadbolt. No one had notified her or given her the key. She later found her belongings hurled into a dumpster. The 32-year-old had paid her rent, but apparently that made no difference. Over the next few days, she was plunged into a Kafkaesque world in which her lease agreement, rent receipts and the lack of any eviction proceeding were insufficient to deter an escalating series of actions that left her homeless and living in her car. But law enforcement agencies she called expressed confusion over whose jurisdiction her situation would fall under. Ultimately, no one came to her aid in a case legal experts say blatantly violated the law and shows how vulnerable tenants are to actions landlords may take outside the courts.

Winston is just one of a number of renters who have recently become homeless after getting locked out of their homes unexpectedly. While illegal lockouts are rarely reported and hard to track, court filings by tenants trying to regain access to their apartments have increased significantly in recent years. Management at Winston’s building, Adorable Pointe Apartments, referred questions to its lawyer, Keval Patel. Neither Patel nor the building’s owners — the pastors of Grace Church International, Alice and Ayo Ajim — responded to requests for comment. Winston felt optimistic when she moved in at Adorable Pointe — west of Loop 610 near the Houston Flea Market. It was the first apartment she’d rented herself after years of living with family, in student housing or crashing with friends. And the place was inexpensive. The Philadelphia native was taking virtual classes at Pennsylvania Western University while living out of state and supporting herself as a substitute teacher. She was in graduate school to become a court mediator. She also had plans for a side business helping people focus on their breathing as a form of meditation. The building she’d moved into was owned by a pair of pastors with churches in Houston and the Bronx in New York. Grace International Church’s website advertises plans to open a church in Nigeria and boasts of “ministry assets currently worth over $15M” and a chain of freestanding emergency rooms in the Houston region, Grace ER. In July, Texas Health and Human Services announced it had fined Grace ER for multiple violation allegations.