Miami Profiteers Abuse Alameda Renters

Miami Profiteers Abuse Alameda Renters

Minorities Being Run Out Of Alameda

By Lynda Carson August 21, 2004

Protests at Alameda City Hall are becoming a normal ritual lately because so many low-income families are being threatened with forced relocation due to a lack of fair housing laws that could be used to protect them.

A large segment of poor and minority families in Alameda have been taking a beating this past month from a Miami based corporation that is evicting a minimum of 1,200 people from their housing units in the City of Alameda.

It seemed like just another warm summer day in late July on the island of Alameda when the residents of 400 out of 615 rental units were shocked to discover that eviction notices were posted on their doors telling them that they are being evicted.

To the young mind of Destiny Thomas, it was as if someone had dropped a bomb on her whole community and blew it apart. "This is terrible," said 19 year old Destiny Thomas, who has lived at the Harbor Island Apartment complex all of her life. "It's all about issues of habitability. The guys that own this place are slumlords that have let the property become run-down while they charged us market rate rents, and now they are forcing us all out of our neighborhood. They are destroying our community."

Harbor Island as it is affectionately known by it's renters is a large group of 10 buildings of rental housing units that were bought by Mark and Ian Sanders of the Fifteen Group out of Miami, Florida, back in 1996. The brothers then waited until the neighborhood area surrounding the Harbor Island Apartments became gentrified with some fancy expensive single family homes and they recently decided that the time was right to dump the community from their housing units to maximize their profits by renovating the apartment complex and bringing in a whole new group of higher income renters into the area.

"I still can't believe that this is happening to us," said long time renter Lorraine Lilley. "We are the last holdout of diversity in Alameda, we are people of color and you will not find a more diverse area in this city. After 25 years of paying rent here and raising two kids, I feel as though I should be part owner of this complex by now, and instead I'm being tossed out upon the streets like some kind of used piece of junk thats not wanted anymore."

"We are community, a huge family that helped one another raise their kids through the years. We watched the kids go to college and have been members of the local PTA, and other community groups of Alameda. Everyone is depressed and angry by what has happened to them and you just can't push people around the way they are treating us. Theres nothing good about these evictions and these two brothers have no idea as to how much pain and suffering they have really created," said Lilley.

The 1,200 renters of Harbor Island were first served eviction notices dated July 22, and they received 30-day, 60-day or 90-day notices to evict. The notices claimed that major renovations were soon to take place at the apartment complex, but as of yet no plans have been submitted by the Fifteen Group to the planning department of the City of Alameda, and no permits have been granted by the city to renovate the property.

Protesters from Harbor Island and the surrounding areas have been showing up at recent City Council meetings in Alameda to demand that the evictions be halted, but as of yet little more than lip service has been offered by city officials to denounce the evictions and no effort has been made through the years to enact a Just Cause Anti-Eviction Ordinance to stop these kinds of tragedies from occurring in Alameda.

As recent as August 17, after arriving home from a bizarre protest at Alameda City Hall that involved a shouting clash with the followers of the Lindon La Rouche Political Party, the renters of Harbor Island discovered a new packet of offerings shoved through their doors from the Sanders brothers as an enticement to lure them out of the property.

The new offering in the packet was being upped from $750.00 per unit to $1,000.00 per unit if they moved out of their units by November 3, 2004. At this point there were only 250 renters left at Harbor Island out of the original 1,200 that received their eviction notices in late July.

The visions of armed men from the Sheriffs Department coming by to do the dirty work of the landlords is enough to shake the heart of whole communities being gentrified by the mercyless schemes of the rich. These visions of violence against their families terrorize most renters from their housing without a fight ever taking place in the courts.

In their mid thirties, Mark and Ian Sanders, owners of Harbor Island and the Fifteen Group located in Miami, own or operate at least 14,700 rental housing units across the nation, have aproximately 375 employees, and pull in more than a $100 million a year between them. Their geographic focus includes, California, Alabama, Texas, Georgia, Florida, and they want to pull out of Virginia, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado.

Not shy of exposure and somewhat proud of who they think are, the Sanders brothers have left a trail of displaced renters in their wake as they continue to build their profiteering empire to ever greater heights in an effort feed their never ending desire for more.

In the March 2004 issue of Multi Family Executive Magazine, a cover story called the, "Aiming for the Majors, Fifteen Group Knows Practice Makes Perfect," by Miriam Lupkin and Mark Sanders, CEO, Fifteen Group, it reveals that these two brothers were willing to do what ever it takes to make it to the top.

In their own words these two brothers have no qualms about sharing their strategy with the world at large. The following quotes are from the above mentioned story, and may be found at the web sight listed below.

http://www.multifamilyexecutive.com/Pages/MFE%20Pages/2004/apr/onlinecover/cover0404.asp

Buying risky deals in "undesirable" neighborhoods became the company's business plan. The company looked for communities that were on the wrong side of the tracks, had true working-class areas with minorities and immigrants, and were in cities with job growth, says Ian.

"These guys are ground-floor kind of guys," says equity partner Rotter. "They are not afraid to roll up their sleeves and get to work," even if that means sticking their hands in the toilet.

Who better than Mark and Ian Sanders or their equity partner Rotter could better sum up the dirty toilet schemes of these brothers that view minorities and immigrants in working-class areas as being the equivalent of undesirable neighborhoods?

If ever there were two racist dogs that were out to maximize their profits by exploiting the working-class minority and immigrant populations of America, it appears that Mark and Ian Sanders take the cake!

The Sanders brothers have established and specialize in a brutal policy of non-negotiations with their renters after taking over properties and if the renters are a little late in coming up with the rents the eviction notices start flying, as can be gleaned by the following quote below from the same story mentioned above.

"At first, it was difficult to convince on-site and senior management people not to negotiate with residents, but the policy has worked out. We are collecting more money with lower occupancies because the people are paying," says Ian. "We can't be in the free housing business. It's taken several months to change the culture of on-site and senior management people, but now we file eviction notices very quickly."

Indeed they do, as one can tell by the latest group of 1,200 victims in Alameda that are now facing homelessness due to their brutal policies.

Calls made to Beverly Johnson, the Mayor of Alameda, in an effort to get her side of this tragedy have been returned, but at a time when I was not in and I found her voice on my message machine.

Regina Tillman, a long time renter at Harbor Island Apartments, is originally from San Francisco and has resided there since 1978 when the rents were only $117.00 a month for a two bed-room unit, and the complex had two swimming pools then.

"It's a modern day lynching going on here," Tillman said. "A modern day lynching of a community. Their destroying the future of a community and all the families that have resided here for so many years. This makes me want to cry. I've been here for 30 years and none of us were prepared for these evictions. These two brothers are wreaking havoc on the community. I met the Sanders brothers recently in a meeting with their attorney, and I look at them as the Satan brothers. They do this to people all over the country and have lost their souls along the way."

The renters that remain at Harbor Island are determined to somehow remain in their homes and figure out how to fight the Sanders brothers as best as they know how.

Activists urge everyone possible to contact Alameda City officials to demand the evictions at the Harbor Island Apartments must be stopped immediately.

Lynda Carson May Be Reached At; tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com or 510/763-1085