Welcome to another episode of the top-rated game show, “Who Can Really Afford to Rent in the Bay Area?” I’m your host, It Beats the Heck Out of Me.
On the last episode, the audience got to play the role of a distressed renter attempting to survive while living in poor conditions and working for low wages.
On today’s episode, the audience gets to play the role of a distressed renter attempting to survive in a city where a landlord will brazenly demolish your apartment before you can move out.
Here’s you’re living situation: For 22 years, you’ve rented a unit attached to the back of a two-story home near Lake Merritt. Your minor son is living with you when a new owner buys the property. They tell you they’re moving in, so you start looking for another place to live.
While you’re scouring ads on Craigslist, standing in open-house lines and paying $25 to $40 for rental applications on the places you’re interested in, you learn the new owner has submitted plans to build more rental units on the property. And that, in reality, they’re not moving in.
The new owner wants you gone by Christmas Day. But because you decide to fight the eviction into the new year, the new landlord eventually cuts off your electricity, heat and water.
If you rent in the Bay Area, this could happen to you — even in cities like Oakland, where ordinances are in place to protect tenants from unscrupulous landlords.
My faithful audience, it’s time to answer the question that’s worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,800, which is the average monthly rent in Oakland, according to the website Rent Jungle: What would you do?
Now, let me tell you what happened to Jahahara Alkebulan-Ma’at, who refused to leave the apartment he had lived in for two decades.
March 15, Alkebulan-Ma’at went to court to negotiate a resolution with his new landlords, said his attorney, Joe Colangelo. Because one couldn’t be reached that day, the sides agreed to return to the negotiating table five days later. But on March 16, the locks of Alkebulan-Ma’at’s apartment were changed, Colangelo said. He had no way to get all his stuff, which was still inside.
On March 17, a construction crew began knocking down exterior walls of the add-on unit, and on March 22, the entire unit was demolished.
And get this: Alkebulan-Ma’at, 64, never officially moved out. Some of his personal belongings were removed before the demolition and put into a storage container in the driveway of the brown shingle house that was built in 1910.
All this happened after Alkebulan-Ma’at and his young son lived without lights and water. Shutting off heat, electricity and water on a tenant is inhumane and, according to Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker, also illegal.
That’s why the city of Oakland filed a lawsuit against the owners, Eugene Gorelik and Jessica Sawczuk, alleging they illegally destroyed the unit. The lawsuit charges Gorelik and Sawczuk with violating Oakland’s Tenant Protection Ordinance and California’s Bane Act for harassing, threatening and unlawfully evicting a tenant.
“We have a severe ongoing housing crisis in Oakland, and it is especially onerous when a landlord abuses, threatens and wrongfully evicts tenants in the midst of this crisis, because they have no place to go,” Parker told me.
The lawsuit sends a message to landlords that Oakland won’t allow them to harass and intimidate their tenants. (Please, don’t hold your applause.) And just because landlords have a property stake, it doesn’t mean they can indiscriminately put people out on the curb like they’re cigarette butts.
“The housing problems that have been widely documented in San Francisco have now spread across the bay, and longtime residents and longtime families of Oakland and other neighborhoods and cities are being forced out,” said Colangelo, an attorney with the Eviction Defense Center, a nonprofit that defends low-income tenants.
Colangelo represented Alkebulan-Ma’at, who didn’t return my calls, in negotiations with Gorelik and Sawczuk, who also could not be reached for comment.
In Oakland, tenants can’t be evicted without reason. In other words, landlords can’t kick someone out because they want to, oh, renovate a property before selling it for a quick profit.
“In Jahahara’s case, they tried to claim that his unit was not covered under the rent ordinance, because it was either fully or partially illegal,” Colangelo said. “And that turned out not be the case. The city never made that determination that his unit wasn’t covered.”
The property, at 369 MacArthur Blvd., has seen better days. The shingles are warped in patches, and there appears to be paint splattered on the exterior.
From the sidewalk, a lumpy dirt pathway leads to the porch. A few windows have been boarded, but peering inside I could see that the first floor had been gutted. A Black Lives Matter poster is wedged between a porch column and a power line for floodlights.
The house is currently listed for $399,000. But according to Redfin, a real estate database, the house was listed for $600,000 in March 2016 before selling for $500,000 two months later. Soon after, according to the lawsuit, Gorelik and Sawczuk approached Alkebulan-Ma’at, saying they intended to move in.
In April, the house was placed back onto the market for $399,000. According to Redfin, a sale is pending, but no purchase price was listed.
Colangelo told me Alkebulan-Ma’at still hasn’t found a permanent place to live and, as of last week, he was still trying to coordinate with Gorelik and Sawczuk so he could get the rest of his belongings.
How long will it take? C’mon, folks, you know my name: It Beats the Heck Out of Me. Have a good morning, and please join us next time on “Who Can Really Afford to Rent in the Bay Area?”