A Report on the Struggle @ Effies House

A Report on the Struggle at Effies House.

From Monday June 16, 2003

Turn-out was light for the 12 Noon-1pm Protest to Save Effies House, but, the story got out into the public light to expose what the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation was doing to it's tenants.

Their plan (EBALDC) is to partially demolish rental units to open new access areas to some outside exterior stairs that were built improperly. To do this the landlord plans to tear down dividing walls between existing rental units.

Tenants would lose at least 140 square feet of footage to the landlord, and still have to pay rent the same amount of rent, tenants say.

The Fire Marshal stopped the botched stairway project which the City of Oakland now refuses to sign off on, and the tenants are demanding that the landlord must rebuild the stairs correctly rather than to implement their new plan to steal rental space they already occupy for the new proposed project.

The result of the new plan if successful would mean that the tenants would have to pay for space that they no longer would occupy. If landlords are allowed to charge rent for space the tenants do not occupy, this would be the start of a whole new market concept most landlords would love to be a part of say's one of the affected renters at Effies House.

The demo crew showed up around 10:30 am to secure the parts of the rental units scheduled for demoilition as the begining start of the project.

The demolition crew was stopped in their tracks by one of tenants who jammed the machinery of the gears set into motion.

For the tenants to comply with the law, the landlord was granted entry into the units with the demo crew. State law requires tenants to grant entry into units after being served a 24 hour notice, but, theres nothing in the books that say the offending landlord cannot be tossed out by the tenants after they gained entry to the rental units.

One of the tenants recorded the event on tape as the crew entered one of the rental units. Once all (demo crew/landlord) were inside the tenants apartment she asked if everyone was inside, then immediately ordered them to turn around, chased them out & threatened to call the police when the crew began to object to being tossed out of their new job site to start demolishing the tenants home.

There was some shouting going on about who has the right to do what, and the tenant finally got them out and shut the door in their face as the screaming from the demo crew faded into the distance of the building hallways.

The struggle at Effies House was covered on KPFA's June 16 evening news, made it onto the news wire, and one of the tenants was interviewed by someone at Chan 7 ABC News.

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