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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:
-
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:
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.
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