LEWISTON – Becky Hopkins misses her apartment the most at about 8 p.m., when it’s time to put her 5-year-old to bed.

The mother and son say their prayers, then Hopkins lies next to the boy and rubs his back until he falls asleep.

It usually takes less than a half-hour before a car pulls into the motel’s parking lot or Hopkins needs to turn on a light to find a pen, a sweatshirt or something else in the cluttered room.

That is all it takes: the sound of a car, a dim light. And the boy is up again.

It has been nearly 10 weeks since Hopkins, her son and 18 other families moved into the Chalet Motel on Lisbon Street. They were placed there after the roof of their apartment building at 64 Oxford St. collapsed in a rain storm.

According to Sue Reny, who manages the low-income tenement for S&S Realty Group of Gray, the problem was caused by contractors who accidentally allowed concrete to seep into the building’s piping.

The contractors were hired to pour a concrete floor in the center of the L-shaped building. In the process, Reny said, concrete got into the pipes connecting the building’s roof drains to the city’s storm sewer.

As a result, the rain backed up onto the roof and caused it to collapse. The owners of the building initially told the displaced tenants that it would be two weeks before they could move back in.

But the damage was worse than expected.

“We started with the insulation, then the Sheetrock. Then we had to replace all of the wiring,” Reny said. “Eighty percent of the building had to be gutted.”

Reny now hopes the apartments will be ready before Christmas, but she has warned the tenants that it could take longer.

Hopkins had no idea what was about to happen when she heard water dripping from her kitchen ceiling in the middle of the night on Sept. 4.

The 23-year-old single mom stuck a trash can under that leak, just as another one started in the living room. Within minutes, she had pots and pans, an empty cooler and the container for her son’s blocks scattered around the apartment.

“If I had known the ceiling was going to collapse, I wouldn’t have wasted my time with the buckets,” she said as her son, Austin, ran in circles around the lobby of the Chalet Motel. “I would have been packing up my stuff.”

By the time firefighters arrived and evacuated the building, it was too late for Hopkins to cover her furniture, pull up her rugs, pack up her books and take down the photographs of her son that were taken at Sears.

All of it was ruined by the water. Most everything else has been put in storage.

‘A room and a door’

At first, Hopkins was excited about her temporary stay at the motel. She imagined swimming in the pool and hanging out in the hot tub.

But it didn’t take long for the excitement to wear off.

She misses cooking. She misses having drawers and closets for her clothes and her son’s toys. She misses sleeping through the night.

Her son also misses home.

“I like a room and a door,” the 5-year-old said.

According to Reny, five of the 19 families have been moved to other low-income apartments in the city. The others have decided to wait.

Tania Garland, who lives two doors down from Hopkins at the motel, was offered an apartment on Bartlett Street. She turned it down because she believes Oxford Street is safer for her son.

In the meantime, she has tried to make the best of the situation.

“I brought my microwave here and I brought over my VCR. But it’s still not home,” she said. “I constantly have to go out for take-out food, and I spend about $10 a week just for laundry.”

Hopkins, Garland and the others have been told that they might be able to file a lawsuit against the contractors who poured the concrete. But they know that will be a long process. And, for now, it isn’t a priority.

“I just hope we can get back in for Christmas,” Garland said. “Just the other day, my son asked me, ‘How’s Santa going to find us?'”

lchmelecki@sunjournal.com

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