Residents allege the building was still fire damaged, unpermitted
Seven tenants last month sued their landlord, Mercy Housing California VI, for allegedly forcing them to live in an “uninhabitable” building that a fire had severely damaged weeks before.
The residents, represented by attorneys Aaron Darsky and Josephine Alioto, are seeking damages and injunctive relief.
“The goal of this lawsuit is to hold Mercy accountable for its absolutely horrible management style,” Darsky told Mission Local in an interview. https://d-410943868570225896.ampproject.net/2211250451000/frame.html
A fire started in the basement of 205 Jones St., a 50-unit, six-story affordable-housing building in the Tenderloin, in August, 2020. The fire climbed up the elevator shaft and damaged tenants’ rooms and the common rooms.
Residents were relocated, but two weeks later Mercy Housing told residents it was safe to return.
The lawsuit, however, alleges that “the Property was not safe to occupy by any stretch of the imagination.”
Residents moved back into 205 Jones St. to find a scene not unlike a “construction zone,” with numerous health- and building-safety issues still outstanding, according to the suit. As tenants entered and exited their units, remediators in hazmat suits and mask filters removed lead paint from the building’s walls, leaving lead-contaminated dust behind. A couple’s infant later tested positive for lead, according to the lawsuit.
A senior resident, David Baker, alleged he was “effectively trapped” in his fifth-floor home because the building’s only elevator remained broken for a year and a half. https://d-410943868570225896.ampproject.net/2211250451000/frame.html
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Mercy Housing, one of the largest nonprofit affordable housing developers in the country and a prominent developer in San Francisco, was allegedly warned of the issues verbally and in writing, the lawsuit says.
During the post-fire renovation, Mercy continued to receive plaintiffs’ rent and rent subsidies for the affordable housing property. This violates a state law that prohibits rent collection if a tenant alerts the landlord of a habitability issue in writing, and the issue remains outstanding for more than 35 days.
The building is owned and managed by Mercy, but is overseen by the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development. The city is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
The suit alleges that Mercy hurriedly moved residents back into the building before obtaining the necessary permits to fix the fire damage. Moreover, it alleges that Mercy had no permits to re-occupy the building.
Though the blaze occurred in August, 2020, Mercy Housing filed for permits to fix the building’s foundation that November; residents were moved back in September. A permit to address “fire damage” was filed in February, 2021.
Rat carcasses littered the hallway, per the suit, and “plaintiffs lived for a year with no flooring in the hallways or staircases, no hall ceiling, and no finishes on the walls.”
These conditions, specifically regarding the elevator, also amount to elder abuse, and violated a state discrimination law by failing to protect disabled residents, attorneys Darsky and Alioto allege.
One disabled resident who used the elevator to reach her sixth-floor apartment, plaintiff Lea Curry, says the situation forced her leave. The lawsuit claims that her departure is effectively constructive eviction.
While Curry was temporarily relocated, she alleges that workers did not dispose of food in her refrigerator at Jones Street, which was left to spoil following the emergency evacuation in August, 2020. As a result, the “kitchen was filled with rodent and roach feces, the refrigerator was destroyed…and the unit had a vile and pernicious smell.” According to the lawsuit, the situation overwhelmed Curry, who already had trouble breathing.
The workers also dumped Curry’s personal belongings and “looted her.” Curry said a laptop and hundreds of CDs were missing from her apartment. The “shocking” and disrespectful treatment, the lawsuit says, ultimately caused her to “abandon her belongings” and permanently move out in May, 2021.
Curry wasn’t the only tenant who purportedly dealt with vermin. Camal El Sherifi, a polyglot and chef who walks with a cane, had a pest infestation twice cited by the Department of Public Health in September, 2020. However, the infestation remained for months, he alleges. Sherifi, who is disabled, says the lack of an elevator harmed his emotional well-being; the conditions exacerbated his post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
During the renovation, four plaintiffs allegedly had to walk past lead and asbestos remediation to enter their units, and observed workers dressed “head to toe” in protective suits.
A North African couple, Mohamed Abid and Mouslih Nezha, took their then-18-month-old daughter, Zahrz, by the remediation regularly, “exposing her to harmful lead, asbestos and construction dust,” according to the lawsuit. A blood test revealed Zahrz had .03 micrograms per deciliter of lead. https://missionlocal.github.io/interactives/2022-fundraising-thermometer/#amp=1
Generally, any amount less than 5 micrograms per deciliter is considered normal for children, according to the University of California San Francisco. “However, even low levels of lead can be dangerous to infants and children. It can cause lead poisoning that leads to problems in mental development,” a University of California, San Francisco, article stated.
After learning about the blood test, Mercy Housing offered to relocate Abid and Nezha to another property, but it lacked a full-sized fridge, the lawsuit states. When Abid and Nezha moved into the replacement unit, they allegedly discovered cockroaches.
Following the renovation, 205 Jones St. racked up numerous city violations for substandard living conditions. In March, 2021 the city cited the building for an order of abatement, the most severe penalty a building violation can receive, in response to the inoperable elevator. The city revoked the order of abatement, which suggests remediation, in October of this year.
One building complaint involved plaintiff David Baker, 83, who lost heat in his unit, dropping indoor temperatures to 50 degrees at times. Central heating problems pervaded during the first five months of this year, as well as water outages, the lawsuit states.
The plaintiffs allege Mercy Housing was responsible for the August, 2020 fire, because the building’s alarm system had repeatedly gone off erroneously months prior. In 2012, a fire started in the basement as well, the lawsuit said. The fire alarm system was also replaced after the blaze, though the tenants allege that it remains faulty, and has sounded numerous false alarms.
“Defendants, as a pattern and practice, perform substandard repairs to cover up habitability defects in an unfair and/or bad faith effort to temporarily abate the Notices of Violation issued by the DBI and the DPH,” the lawsuit says.
The 205 Jones St. building is 94 years old, and utilized state funding to pay for retrofitting improvements that won the developer an Energy Retrofit Award in 2018, according to Mercy Housing. The building opened up applications to potential tenants that same year, based on the city’s affordable housing website. At present, two units are available, the site shows.
Mercy Housing declined to comment on the ongoing litigation.
Anne Stanley, a spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, wrote in an email to Mission Local that the department would not comment on pending litigation, either.
“I can confirm that we have record of the fire at 205 Jones Street and have received regular updates from Mercy regarding the relocation of tenants and mitigation/rehab efforts at the property since the incident,” Stanley said.
Darsky told Mission Local he expects to serve the papers to Mercy officially this week. Future dates regarding the case will be decided once Mercy responds.
