Names have been deleted from this document because the intent is to focus on the issues. However, contact information is provided to public officials and agencies with responsibilities to investigate and resolve these and similar problems.

Routine, harsh treatment of citizens is never warranted. The stories which follow are not fiction. Even without names, they document real suffering and dying, hidden from the public: unmentioned to true extent in the media; ignored by public officials, political parties, and community organizations; scapegoating and retaliation against those trying to rise above injustices and inequities; and lacking fair representation in government, business, and community organizations, regardless of income, education, experience or dedication to the nation.

Calls to save these lives fall on deaf ears—among those in power and those in denial. As December and 2010 end, there are as yet no leaders, organizations, agencies, or businesses undertaking substantive efforts aimed at ending these nightmares, so characteristic of the experiences of women of color, invisible at the socio-economic bottom of the country.

There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, more stories like these.

Story #1: Homeless Fire Victims With Life-Threatening Health Risks

On November 10, 2010, a fire occurred in and damaged a second floor apartment in Sacramento, the cause uncertain, perhaps electrical wiring, perhaps some kind of heater used because of inadequate heat. The responding fire fighters extinguished the second floor fire and prevented the fire from spreading to the first floor or other buildings. Because of smoke and water damage to both 1st and 2nd floors and openings made to put out the fire, the fire captain declared the building uninhabitable.

The first floor tenants, an independent cosmetologist and her 18 year old daughter, were not at home during the fire. When they returned, they found themselves homeless, with the loss of most of their belongings. The teen has Maple Syrup Urine Disease, a diabetes-like disease which inhibits the absorption of protein and resulting in advanced osteoporosis and other serious issues for all of her life.

While they did not have renter’s insurance to cover their personal belongings, the mother quickly learned that rental property owners cannot collect or keep rents and deposits from uninhabitable apartments and that fires rendering property uninhabitable are considered to result in canceled leases. In addition, landlords/property owners are responsible to meet the displacement costs of their tenants who are left homeless by fires in circumstances like these. Yet, a month after the fire, in this instance, the landlord has offered no assistance, referred the tenant to the landlord’s insurance company which first said it would cover displacement costs and now denies the earlier statement.

From the inception of the tenancy of the mother and daughter, the landlord (who charged them a double deposit) has been informed of the daughter’s health risks, a terminal illness which is easily worsened by stress leading to coma and death.

In the meantime, while trying to find another place to live, the mother has had to rent hotel rooms with cooking facilities because her daughter’s illness requires a very special diet to keep her alive. The cost of renting hotel rooms has depleted the mother’s resources and hence her ability to get a new apartment, especially since the landlord is withholding refunds of deposits and rent. After nearly a month of uncertainty regarding the increasing possibility of their becoming homeless with no ability to remain in hotels, the mother had the letter below hand-delivered to the landlord’s residence.

Letter to Landlord

This letter is written to document your ongoing failure to comply with California laws requiring landlords to maintain habitable conditions in rental property and the failure of your wife, acting as your agent, to respond to the conditions caused by the fire in another tenant’s apartment which has rendered my daughter and I homeless since November 10, 2010. Although I have spoken with your wife more than once, she has offered no solution to ameliorate our being forced to live in hotels at my expense and at risks to my daughter’s health about which she has been repeatedly informed. Her sole reply is to say that the property is insured but no effort has been implemented to provide us with funds for displacement and moving, nor for securing any salvageable property. The consequence of your failure to act, if not immediately remedied, will be that we will lose the opportunity to secure other housing which is affordable and conveniently located geographically.

My most recent telephone calls to you and your wife have not received any response. Since you had not previously provided me with an actual address or phone number, beyond a postal box and answering machine, I have had to engage a private investigator to look for documented ways of reaching you and of getting messages to you. I have had a message left for you at your brother’s home after learning that you are in contact with each other, advising that an emergency condition resulting from a fire displacing tenants, needs your attention immediately. I have received no response from you.

I have secured your residential address from the Sacramento Assessor’s office and thus know this as your true address. As a result, I am having this letter delivered to your residence personally. I have contacted several advocacy organizations and government agencies working on tenant-landlord and disability issues and have begun the processes to bring about their communications with you regarding the inhumane and illegal treatment we are receiving.

Although you are legally obligated to know the following, I am including documentation that I am providing you with information regarding California laws concerning displaced tenants.

Repairs And Habitability

A rental unit must be fit to live in; that is, it must be habitable. In legal terms, "habitable" means that the rental unit is fit for occupation by human beings and that it substantially complies with state and local building and health codes that materially affect tenants' health and safety.

California law makes landlords . . .legally responsible for assuring that their rental units are habitable.

Landlord's responsibility for repairs

Before renting a rental unit to a tenant, a landlord must make the unit fit to live in, or habitable. Additionally, while the unit is being rented, the landlord must repair problems that make the rental unit unfit to live in, or uninhabitable.

The landlord has this duty to repair because of a California Supreme Court case, called Green v. Superior Court, which held that all residential leases and rental agreements contain an implied warranty of habitability. Under the "implied warranty of habitability," the landlord is legally responsible for repairing conditions that seriously affect the rental unit's habitability. That is, the landlord must repair substantial defects in the rental unit and substantial failures to comply with state and local building and health codes.

The law is very specific as to what kinds of conditions make a rental uninhabitable. These are discussed in the following paragraphs.

Conditions that make a rental unit legally uninhabitable

There are many kinds of defects that could make a rental unit unlivable. The implied warranty of habitability requires landlords to maintain their rental units in a condition fit for the "occupation of human beings " In addition, the rental unit must "substantially comply" with building and housing code standards that materially affect tenants' health and safety.

A rental unit may be considered uninhabitable (unlivable) if it contains a lead hazard that endangers the occupants or the public, or is a substandard building because, for example, a structural hazard, inadequate sanitation, or a nuisance endangers the health, life, safety, property, or welfare of the occupants or the public.

A dwelling also may be considered uninhabitable (unlivable) if it substantially lacks any of the following:

• Gas facilities in good working order

• Heating facilities in good working order

• An electric system, including lighting, wiring, and equipment, in good working order.

As you know, neither my daughter nor I were at home when the fire occurred in the other tenant’s apartment. According to the responding fire department, the fire may have been associated with a heater of some kind. I do not know if this was a legal device or if it was in use because of building heating problems. In either case, we have no direct or indirect responsibility for the fire. In both cases, you, the landlord have a responsibility to provide immediate displacement assistance to us because the fire department notified you that the building was uninhabitable. Yet, for more than 3 weeks you have not only failed to meet your responsibility but are ducking it. Meanwhile, my financial resources are being drained by the need to stay in hotels which have cooking facilities because of the special diet required for my daughter. Even when this information has been conveyed to your wife, there has been no action on your part.

Additional considerations: Destruction, such as the magnitude caused in the apartment we rented from you, with smoke and water damage, terminates the tenancy, however, California law provides time for the removal of personal property from the premises. Deposits under this circumstance are to be refunded and the landlord is responsible for covering the displacement costs of the tenants. In your case, according to your wife, you have insurance on the building. Your non-responsiveness raises the issue of whether you are collecting insurance payments for the fire and planning to withhold the displacement assistance, including payment for hotel rooms, added food expenses above what would have been had no fire occurred, and moving expenses for any usable belongings in the uninhabitable premises. For the record, not only have you refused to address these matters brought repeatedly to your attention, you have failed to provide any letter or other document outlining your intentions of addressing the matter.

Where the place is uninhabitable in any respect, the law allows the tenant to move without any notice, under Civil Code 1942. The landlord is not entitled to being given the opportunity to fix things or to require the tenant to move back in. This is especially true following a life-threatening event like a fire.

Fires kill more Americans than any other natural disaster combined, and 84 percent of civilian deaths occur inside people's homes. Fires are also responsible for billions of dollars in property loss, according to the US Fire Administration. Your non-responsiveness to the aftermath of the fire has given rise to concerns about our safety in your property.

One of the most important rights of renters who become displaced is the right to take advantage of "loss of use" coverage provided by the building owner’s insurance policy. Loss of use, or "additional living expense" coverage, pays for the cost of living in another home or temporary lodging. A renter may use this coverage under the following circumstances:

• Damage covered under the insurance policy makes the apartment uninhabitable; or

• A law enforcement agency or a disaster relief organization ordered the evacuation of the building.

In our situation, the responding fire department declared the building uninhabitable and you are failing to respond to a lawful order.

Loss of use coverage also reimburses the tenant for living expenses that exceed those that the tenant would normally incur while living in the rented apartment. Covered expenses include temporary housing, the cost of temporary storage and moving, laundry costs, and the cost of some meals. I will also incur additional expenses for deposits that should be refunded by you.

If this matter cannot be immediately resolved so that I can obtain other reasonably priced housing, this matter may be taken to Small Claims Court. Because of the unreasonable, inhumane nature of your failing to assist us in any way, I am beginning to collect the required documents for court, though preferring to settle this matter between us.

Please respond to this letter in writing only.

Yours truly,

Tenants: Name Withheld from this document

On 12/7/10, the tenant was contacted by the wife of the property owner, told to contact the landlord’s insurance company and then informed that all of her concerns should have been addressed by renter’s insurance and thus she will be provided no assistance of any kind. No mention of returning her deposits and rents have been made nor of the fact that a tenant cannot insure the landlords property.

Story #2: Government Delivers The Final Blow In The Last Stages Of Cancer And Lupus

After years of physical abuse while undergoing chemotherapy, followed by years in safe houses hiding from death threats from husband who quit working to avoid alimony; and robbed of her home, financial resources, and retirements by husband until his death, this woman of color has been stripped of social security and other benefits by IRS and the social security administration to compensate for actions of the husband she fled and hid from to stay alive.

After a long period without contact with this woman, whom I knew had already been given last rites, I sent her a copy of my latest article in BlackCommentator.com from Issue #404  titled “The Scrooge Story is a Cruel Myth”. Here is her response and our subsequent communications, absent her name.

Dear Suzanne:

Thank you for sharing your article with me. It hit home rather quickly.  I know I have disappeared over the last year, mostly because of depression and self imposed isolation.  2010 has been the hardest year, and I thought I had some tough times.

 Let me catch you up and perhaps you will understand while I have isolated. I left my husband because of abuse, I did not have money to hire a lawyer and used McGeorge Law school to help with the divorce. With me going in and out of chemo and my husband doing all he could to make life difficult for me. It was tough when he raided the retirement accounts and cleaned out the bank accounts, quit his job so he would not have to pay spousal support. And then because McGeorge started a bifurcation of my marriage, I was responsible to pay for his health insurance. I learned on December 31,2009 that he had contracted stomach cancer and cirrosis of the liver, on that day they removed his stomach and the next day my granddaughter was born.  Because he was not employed, I still had to pay for insurance, and the house we bought during the marriage; he stopped making the mortgage payments. He either spent or squandered the monies he illegally took. 

My cancer became worse with tumors in my lungs and I have been on chemo for the last 8 months. On June 12th my house was foreclosed, and I was not permitted to retrieve any of my possessions and on June 15th he passed away. Because I was still his spouse I had to pay for his funeral. I had to borrow money, and then surprise the IRS put a garnish on my social security for taxes not paid on the money my husband took from the retirement accounts. They also seized my bank accounts. Yesterday, my daughter, who I live with and who has been helping me with my bills, was laid off. 2010 has been so tough that I find it hard to do anything without crying.

It is funny that people who were once close friends, and knew what I was going through, stopped calling and have disappeared from my life.  So it has been easier not to let myself get emotionally hurt by just isolating.

Dear __________:

I think you should send your story to elected officials. If you give me permission, I will do it for you. I believe you are entitled to more consideration that you have received, though I understand the emotional fatigue. I will help if you allow me to do so. much love, Suzanne

I would not know how to contact an elected official and the house has been resold.  Life is just hard right now. Thanks for listening to me vent. You are more than welcome to use my story to talk about how women and the poor are the invisible people in our society.

Story #3: Winners Or Losers: All Receive Retaliation

After a two year struggle with a mortgage company, with the help of important women elected officials, many community organizations and caring friends/associates, I succeeded through the Conciliation Process of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development to get a modification of my mortgage and a conciliation agreement in October, 2010. The process had been long and tiring, in large part because the only way to stop the false claims of the mortgage company that I constantly “failed to submit requested documents” (despite having submitted more than 400 pages of documents, hand carried to one of their offices) was to establish a process in which I gave my documents to the HUD investigator who gave them to the mortgage company’s attorney who gave them to the mortgage company.

When all the documents in both the mortgage modification and the conciliation agreement had been signed, the HUD investigator, who worked on the case, noted that the long nightmare was finally over. I was not convinced and I was not wrong. Within the week after all papers were signed, the mortgage company sent me a letter threatening to cancel the mortgage and to withdraw from the conciliation agreement because I had “failed to submit all of the original copies of the documents.” This threat was made knowing that our process precluded me from giving the mortgage company any documents directly. They did not check to see if their attorney had the papers they were looking for or if HUD had them, they simply sent me a letter of intimidation with no justification. I did not have the papers they were looking for. Their attorney had them. I received no apology from any representative of the company or their attorney—which is not unusual for today’s banks/mortgage companies, especially in the treatment of women of color, women who are single heads of households, senior citizen women, poor women and probably among them disabled women. I immediately notified the HUD investigator that the mortgage company had resumed its retaliatory strategies. She made excuses for the “error.”

The first payment on the new mortgage was due on November 1. Recognizing that the mortgage company was hunting for some basis to cancel the mortgage, I sent the payment with special, documented handling and notified the HUD investigator that it had been sent and of the process. Two weeks later, I received a letter from the mortgage company notifying me that I am $1600 and one year  delinquent in the payment of my escrow account—on a mortgage not yet a month old! I notified the HUD investigator that this was incorrect and improper and that the mortgage company was now trying to recover money that had been agreed as not recoverable in both the mortgage modification and the conciliation agreement. The HUD investigator tried to persuade me to accept the statement and terms of the mortgage company’s notice, despite its inaccuracy. I refused and asserted that I see this as the ongoing retaliation of the mortgage company. If I allow their statement to be unchallenged, I will then be delinquent from the first day of the new mortgage which will have credit and other implications for me, as well as providing ammunition against me which can be used to ultimately take away my home—their intent for the last two years, during which false statements were made to HUD in order to deny me a modification previously. I endured extreme, daily harassment which began to affect my health as noted by my doctor in a letter to the mortgage company. I was never allowed to know anything about the complaint of discrimination which I filed. While investigating discrimination, only the defendant is kept informed by HUD. The complainant is denied all information. (EEOC and OCR operate the same way.)

I have no intention of letting the mortgage company subject me to the same mistreatment again which began to create medical problems for me in the past and surely will do so again if allowed to continue. It seems that the real goal is to kill me and simplify their taking the house. Even in “winning” a mortgage modification and conciliation agreement, no one in the mortgage company is accountable for mistreating me and lying to HUD which is a federal offense. How do these organizations get such immunity?.

The HUD investigator was notified of this information in mid November, after which she wrote me that she has referred the matter to the attorney of the mortgage company. Nearly a month later, I have received no information on the status of my complaint nor any indication that my assertion of retaliation is being examined In any way. What is the point of prohibitions against retaliations when there in no enforcement and no consequences for violations? It is an affront for an enforcement agency to repeatedly claim that acts of retaliation are “mistakes.” Who exactly are the enforcement agencies representing?  Why is the victim of retaliation expected to accept “mistakes” which are in violation of legal agreements. Why are there no consequences for the perpetrators of these acts?

There are still unresolved, unaddressed issues which were uncovered while compiling information and materials about the actions of the various mortgage companies which had purchased my mortgage during the years, actions about which I had never been informed. To be honest, I am uncertain that the mortgage company that I pay is lawfully entitled to receive payments from me because I am uncertain about who is the true title holder. There are many of us in this circumstance, likely because of some kind of fraud committed against us.

Underlying Issues: Employment Discrimination, Fabricated Reason to Deny Teaching Credential. Open Assertion of the Intent to Bankrupt which Ultimately Blocks Employment, Refusal to Investigate Discrimination Complaints by Multiple Agencies—Municipal, State and Federal:

Like Shirley Sherrod, every day many of us are cheated out of positions of influence and authority with impunity as unqualified cronies, even lovers, are hired over better qualified, highly qualified women of color in a wide array of careers, particularly when they speak up for others and themselves against injustices.

Each time, complaints are filed, but they are ignored. Instead, efforts are launched to discredit the person who objects to discrimination. These practices are so widespread that masses of people have been intimidated against filing complaints or speaking out for fear of lasting “black-balling.”

Since speaking out against racism and sexism in higher education 17 years ago, I have been denied any full-time employment despite more education, experience and skills than many who have gotten the jobs, including people with criminal histories, without any degrees or with active substance problems. Organizations, such as many national women’s organizations, refuse to address the issue of racism + sexism uniquely experienced by women of color, deeming it unimportant. While they may have photos of women of color on their websites, they are selective about the kinds of women of color they allow among them—the kind who will not speak up for most of those in their own groups, especially at the grassroots/working class levels.

The process is ongoing. For example, after I pointed out that although the State of California refused to give me teaching credentials for which I had met all requirements, I was a scorer in English and Spanish of the C-Best test which grants teaching credentials for individuals with bachelor degrees because I have a master’s degree and have met all requirements but my dissertations for two doctorates in education at different institutions, my test scoring jobs mysteriously ended.

When I complained about bias in the hiring of holiday entertainment at an airport, in which cronies fill the hours they want before the application deadline and whatever is left is all that is available to the rest, my band and I were reduced to a single performing opportunity, compared to other bands who perform for 10 or more (some up to 20). Note, my band and I have produced 10 CDs, while few of those hired have anything close to that. The bias is so extreme that the airport pays non-professional 13 year old musicians more than it pays me and my band. Yet both the airport administration and a local political representative refuse to see a problem or pattern.

Year after year, problems like these 3 Stories are identified and brought to the attention of appropriate officials, enforcement agencies and the public. Just as stories of Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Phyllis Wheatley, LaDonna Harris, Lillian Smith, Alice Walker and Michelle Wallace and others must be told and re-told, so too these current stories merit repeating. These 3 stories reinforce the notion that if one is not a part of the solutions, one is part of the problem. No one has the right to live lavishly while others are dying from deprivation. Nor will force and fear keep a starving person from fighting for food by every means necessary. As 2011 begins and the draconian cuts in social services are implemented in order to maintain the rich and powerful in control, more and more people will suffer starvation, joblessness and homelessness unless leaders of new social concepts and opposition arise.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Columnist Suzanne Brooks is the founder and CEO of International Association for Women of Color Day and CEO of Justice 4 All Includes Women of Color. Click here to contact Ms. Brooks.