Renters complain of squalid conditions, file claim in West Oakland

Jarvis Jones during hearing with the Rent Adjustment board at the Oakland City Hall on January 27th 2013. Jones' is part of a group that is claiming slum like conditions in the west Oakland apartment building. Jarvis Jones during hearing with the Rent Adjustment board at the Oakland City Hall on January 27th 2013. Jones' is part of a group that is claiming slum like conditions in the west Oakland apartment building. Photo: Sam Wolson, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Sam Wolson, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 13 Caption Close Renters complain of squalid conditions, file claim in West Oakland 1 / 13 Back to Gallery

Tiffany Tate, a 28-year-old cook, has lived in a West Oakland apartment complex riddled with bedbugs, roaches, mold and leaky pipes for almost four years.

She claims the landlord will not fix up the decrepit Booker Emery building, so she and the other residents of the 55-unit complex have banded together and filed a claim with Oakland's Rent Adjustment Board.

"It is horrible," she said. "I got really, really sick because of the mold and bacteria. ... I have bedbugs. I got bitten by roaches."

Tate and 10 other tenants in the building, at 715 Peralta St., have accused the landlord, Ramdas Darke, of ignoring their complaints and refusing to clean up the apartment building near the West Oakland BART Station.

Steven Kennedy, an attorney for Darke and his wife, Mangal, acknowledged that there were problems at the Booker Emery building. The problem, Kennedy said, is that Ramdas Darke, who is 77, was sent by his family to a care home specializing in memory issues on Dec. 17.

Mangal Darke has already hired a new pest-control company and was "deeply distressed" by the complaints of some tenants, Kennedy said.

"Mr. Darke was very firmly in charge until his family essentially removed him from authority," Kennedy said. "We are not able to address the issue of what happened before Dec. 17."

But Tate's experience in her $685-a-month apartment underscores something larger in Oakland, resident and tenant rights group say. As the cost of housing in Oakland rises, they say, the poor and disenfranchised are forced to live in increasingly squalid conditions.

"I think the city of Oakland has a lot of time and seemingly lots of money to put in some communities and not in others," said Zora Raskin, an organizer with the East Bay Solidarity Network, a tenant rights group that helped Tate. "As Oakland gentrifies, they put money into certain people, but not people of a certain class or race who have been here."

Karen Boyd, a spokeswoman for the city, did not immediately return a call seeking comment. But on Monday, a hearing officer with the city's Rent Adjustment Board began issuing preliminary rent credits to Tate and the other tenants, saying they should be compensated for the pervasive bedbugs and other issues. The board's final decision won't be issued until next month.

Residents of Oakland, especially West Oakland, have been struggling for years with creeping gentrification. Housing prices are rising and many longtime residents of the city feel as if they're being squeezed out of the city or pushed into public housing.

"This is one of the last private, affordable buildings in the neighborhood," said Rio Scharf, another organizer with the solidarity network. "We're nervous because we've already seen the landlords raise the rent here."

Kanisha, a tenant who declined to give her last name, movedto a studio apartment in the Booker Emery building with her husband and four children seven months ago. At first there were roaches, then bedbugs. Pretty soon the ceiling in her bathroom started leaking, she said, and a giant hole opened up.

Kanisha went to Darke, who put down some bug spray and patched the hole in the bathroom, but the bugs came back and the leak is still there, she said.

Kanisha, who is unemployed, said she would love to move out of her $635-a-month studio, but she can't afford to live anywhere else in Oakland.

"With the income I got, no I can't" move out, she said. "Living on one income with kids, you can't find too much else around here. If I could, I would, for sure. I don't want to live in this dump, and that's what this is, a dump."

This story has been modified since it first appeared in print editions.