The nightmare that plagues hippies in a Miami hostel

Paraíso Shawnee owner Cathy Chasser at her Miami, Florida hippie shelter in a file photo Barcroft Media / Barcroft Media via Getty Images

An escape from the busy modernized world that Miami has become.

This is how Shawnee Paradise is advertised, a small property with a tree house,

and tents where the rent ranges from $ 300 to $ 600 a month.

Owner and landlady Cathy Chasser, a 69-year-old woman with purple hair, promises on her website that the house emits a “magical energy” that will allow guests to develop their creativity as well as celebrate special events in their garden.

However, far from being the peaceful and spiritual commune that it promises to be, the tenants who leave this property report that they have been scammed, mistreated, harassed and that Chasser has even stolen some of their belongings, according to the local newspaper

Chasser, who prefers to be named after the Shawnee Native American tribe, was reported in the media four years ago when the Miami mayor denounced her for not having building permits for her tree house.

At the time, the headlines defended the "

grandmother

" who wanted to "feel the rain and hear the thunder from her wooden balcony" in her land full of plants and waterfalls. The authorities insisted that the infrastructure was not stable or safe to be habitable and threatened to evict her. Shortly thereafter, the scandal was amplified by a complaint of an illegal rental business. She maintains that what she requires of her guests cannot be considered a rental contract, since she only asks them to participate in property expenses.

Shawnee tenants have confirmed that not only were they required to pay rent, but they were required to post a bond that was not returned upon departure.

Brandon Hudspeth, a guest who stayed with her for 10 months, recounts that the landlady charged him $ 300 to have a tent in her garden.

He says he couldn't afford anything else at the time with Miami's rising property prices.

Huspeth recalls that during the pandemic he was a few weeks late with the payment of rent and Shawnee threatened him several times with eviction.

While looking for another place to live, the landlady encouraged him to leave with repeated power outages and even confiscated a package that came to him by mail, a federal crime in the United States.

"It contained a laptop that I needed to work," explains Huspeth, who was never able to get the package back.

Shawnee assures that his tenant was "obsessed with destroying it" and that he simply told the mailman that the person did not live at the address and that the package was lost.

After several months of interviews and research, here is my story on "Shawnee's Paradise," an allegedly dream-like commune in North Miami that for some tenants turned out to be a nightmare.https: //t.co/ESV26NfY8h

- Joshua Ceballos (@JoshCeb) October 13, 2020

Brandi Barreto is another former Shawnee tenant.

In 2016, he testified in the trial against Chasser for running an illegal shelter and detailed how the owner charged him $ 450 a month to live in a

on the property.

Barreto recalls that Shawnee's other guests used to abuse drugs and that one tenant died of a heroin overdose on the property.

In addition, he complains that Shawnee, who has a raccoon as a pet, poisoned his cat with an anti-rodent treatment that he used on the grounds.

However, the landlady assures that she does not remember Barreto and denies the episode of her cat, but admits that there was an overdose that ended the life of one of her guests.

Narjess Al-Awady, another young ex-guest, relates that in addition to paying $ 500 a month for a room, she swept and cleaned to help with the Shawnee communal environment;

but it ended up becoming an obligation.

“After a while, he took advantage of that.

At 5 in the morning he would knock on my door, like a non-stop alarm, and look out the window while I was sleeping, telling me to work, ”he says.

Chasser excuses herself by saying that she was only trying to help Al-Awady because she "suffers from depression," as does Huspeth, who has mental problems, according to her.

This newspaper has tried to contact the owner, but the number on her website is false and the number on her rental ad on the

website

is offline.