Immigrant Tenants Harassed By Employee of Property Co. Hired by Wells Fargo.
Causa Justa :: Just Cause prevented the illegal eviction of a group of tenants living in a foreclosed apartment building in East Oakland owned by Wells Fargo.
The tenants had been living on the property for over a year, some tenants longer, and had good relations with the previous owner.
Then the previous owner lost the property through foreclosure and Wells Fargo took over. Not surprisingly, that’s when the trouble started.
In late September, one of the tenants got in touch with Street Level Health Project who in turn contacted CJJC.
Housing counselor Patricia Zamora provided support to the tenants after they received threats and were harassed by an employee of Western Management Properties, Inc. – the company hired by Wells Fargo to manage the property.
The tenants informed us that Yolanda Navarro, assistant business manager for Western Management Properties, Inc. told them they had to move out by October 1, or face I.C.E. agents.
This appears to have been an attempted illegal eviction and scare tactic as there was no eviction notice given to the tenants.
Furthermore, the relocation amount that had originally been offered to the tenants was lowered by Navarro, making it less possible for them to move out if they chose to.
Navarro assumed the tenants were undocumented based on nothing more than their appearance and English language capacity. She threatened that ICE would be called if they didn’t move out by Oct. 1.
She also apparently urged them to get social security cards, it seems, by any means possible. “She …told us we had to get valid social security cards and told us to buy them if we didn’t have them and that this was needed for us to receive relocation money. She said this without even knowing our residency status and without ever even discussing the matter of our documents,” the tenants stated in a letter of complaint.
The tenants say Navarro did not inform them they could continue to live on the property nor did she tell them who or where they could pay their rent. There was only one letter sent to them in Spanish, which was to let them know the locks would be changing.
CJJC housing counselor Zamora contacted Navarro by phone and Navarro told her that the tenants were supposedly involved in illegal activities, and that that was why Wells Fargo did not want to continue renting to them. There was no basis for this discriminatory allegation. Navarro then told Zamora on the phone that “if I.C.E. comes then, oh well.”
The tenants wrote: “This is simply more lies and harassment from Ms. Navarro in an attempt to intimidate, and scare us into leaving and thus illegally evicting us. Ms. Navarro, as the main agent who communicated with us, did not tell us that we could continue to live on the property and did not tell us where we could pay our rent. Ms. Navarro was the only one who communicated to us in Spanish and she abused her power by leaving out this crucial information and threatening us with calling I.C.E..”
Navarro stated to Zamora that it was “not possible” for the tenants to remain living there because they needed a contract.
According to the tenants: “We all have individual verbal rental agreements from the previous owner. We paid rent and have some receipts. A verbal contract is a valid contact in the state of California. Wells Fargo does not care to respect this law and right.”
The previous owner did not always give the tenants receipts as a familiar pattern we have seen among landlords in Oakland.
Added the tenants: “A foreclosure is not a means of eviction in Oakland.”
Zamora helped the tenants write a letter describing the harassment they faced from Western Management Properties, Inc to Wells Fargo. An attorney for Wells Fargo responded but ignored the charges of harassment.
Wells Fargo has requested that the tenants pay the months of rent they missed (through no fault of their own) or that the tenants provide them with an offer to help them relocate and move out.
The tenants do not feel safe under living in apartments owned by Wells Fargo and managed by the Western Management Properties, Inc, whose harassment, they say, has been relentless, and want to move out.
Currently, Wells Fargo is close to selling the property to Ha B Banh and Thu Minh V and any talk of relocation that was once on the table with the bank are no longer on the table right now. We hope to resolve the situation for the tenants with the new owners so the tenants can get back to their lives.