Harbor Island Apartments Evicts Its Tenants
31 July 2004 -
Fifteen Asset Management, LLC; a
Miami-based building management agency, owns and runs the Harbor Island
apartment complex in West Alameda. The Harbor Island apartment complex
lies near the old Air Base in Alameda. About 60% of the more than 600
units in the 18 buildings are occupied by poor working families, elderly,
and disabled. More than 300 school children live there. About 25% of the
families received Section 8 Federal rent assistance.
Without warning or indication to anyone in city government, on Tuesday through Thursday, July 20th to July 22nd, 2004, Fifteen Asset Management, LLC told tenants to get out.
This crisis means hundred could go homeless. Most are too poor to simply pick up and move, even if they could find affordable housing. The managers have said nothing about compensation or financial help.
These articles give voice to the tenants whose lives are turned upside down by this crisis.
More material is being added as soon as The Alameda Report can post it.
- 31 July 2004
Tenants rally at Harbor Island Apartments to answer questions and begin
to organize. Many are anxious because they can't afford to move and
many feel they could not find housing at all. Even people with leases
receive eviction notices. The apartment management offers no help or
remuneration. A rally begins at the apartment complex and quickly moves
to Chipman Middle School Auditorium nearby. Many people vow to fight.
Vice Mayor Tony Daysog offers his full support.
- 3 August 2004
Tenants packed the City Council chamber Tuesday to explain the
crisis and demand that officials stop the evictions. More than 50
speak, describing the abysmal neglect of the complex and the crisis
produced by surprise evictions that come without any offer of help.
The Council order staffs to study the problem. Thursday, August 5th,
2004, city officials will meet privately with the complex owners,
and perhaps one representative of the tenants to be selected by the
Police Chief.
- 17 August 2004
- Tenants packed the City Council chamber again on Tuesday to ask the
City government what it was doing to resolve the eviction
catastrophe. About 40 to 50 residents, who have now formed a
tenants' association, filled half the Council chamber and waited
from 6:30 PM for about 2 hours before the Mayor and council
starting calling those who had submitted speaker slips. The
tenants wanted to know what the City has done or is planning to do
to save their homes. The response: nothing. Council members are
still waiting to hear their options from staff. An angry Vice
Mayor Daysog said he did not trust the staff to come up with
solutions that council could consider.
Meanwhile, the owners have extended all eviction notice to 90 days,
though they have never explained why the rush since they have no
schedule for refurbishing the complex. They have offered some
tenants $1,000 to move, a sum hardly adequate for moving and
securing a decent apartment.
- 15 October 2004
- Federal Judge William Alsup, responding to a case filed by the Alameda City Attorney's office, has ordered the lawyer for the Fifteen Group, Mark Hartney, to spend two days at the Harbor Island apartment complex evaluating how employees treat tenants. "If they are mean, nasty and rude, you go see Mr. Hartney," Alsup told tenants. The judge said that if the lawyer's claim of fair treatment "is a bill of goods then there will be trouble in River City." The City of Alameda will also have attorneys at the apartment complex to monitor treatment of tenants.
- Click here to read the press release by the Harbor Island Tenants Association. It describes conditions the tenants face and actions you can take to help them.
