The Message of Mary Jesus

Oakland's kangaroo courts plunged to her death from the Oakland Tribune Tower.

Mary Jesus, a longtime Oakland renter, had a message that she wanted to get out to the public at large, and she was willing to sacrifice her own life to do so.

On that fateful day, Mary Jesus stood high above the crowd down below, and gazed upon hundreds of people gathered on the sidewalks beneath the Tribune Tower, as they shouted out to her not to do it. Local attorney Bob Salinas was one of those in the crowd that tried to save her as he frantically yelled to her not to jump.

A moment before she died in a crushing pool of blood on the sidewalk seven stories below, Mary Jesus responded to the crowd by tossing down hundreds of copies of the suicide note that she wanted everyone to read.

All too often in American society, many people feel they are being pushed over the edge by greedy profiteers and the corrupt legal system that caters to their needs. According to Oakland attorney Matthew Siegal, Mary Jesus was one of those people that had been chewed up and spit out by Oakland's brutal eviction system.

"Mary Jesus had evidence that the appeal process was all screwed up," said Siegal. "The judicial system is biased against tenants and it chewed her up and spit her out. This case was not about rent: it was all about pushing her over the edge."

About 50 people came to an Oakland memorial on January 10 for Mary Jesus. "There were many people there that witnessed the suicide and were looking for closure," Siegal said.

Marion Vale of San Francisco was with Mary Jesus during her last evening on earth. and she states that Mary Jesus had taken her own life to bring attention to those that had forced her over the edge.

The suicide note mentions four names that Mary Jesus wanted exposed. In the suicide note, Mary Jesus starts by writing: "Mark Roemer, James Lewis and Dean Miller. They are the catalyst!" Alameda County Superior Court Judge Yolanda Northridge was the only other name mentioned in the suicide note of Mary Jesus.

As it turned out, Mark F. Roemer and James L. Lewis were the landlords that owned the apartment building where Mary Jesus resided at 1515 Alice Street in Oakland. Dean .Miller was the attorney representing the landlords trying to evict her, and Judge Yolanda Northridge had ordered her eviction from the home she had loved for so many years.

In her last act on earth, Mary Jesus had pointed her finger at these four individuals, who in her mind had apparently held the keys of life or death to the world that she had loved and cherished.

On January 20. 2005, I reached Juanita Moore, the court clerk for Judge Yolanda Northridge, to ask how this tragedy could have come about. Both the clerk and the judge declined to comment on what had occurred in their courtroom and ow it led to the death of Mary Jesus.

Also on January 20. 1 contacted Dean Miller at his residence in Piedmont and he confirmed that not only was he the attorney that went after Mary Jesus. but also that James Lewis and Mark Roemer are some longtime high school friends of his from Piedmont High. many years ago.

This trio of friends were the ones that Mary Jesus had named in her suicide note as the "catalyst" that led to her personal tragedy of eviction and suicide.

Mary Jesus had resided for 13 years at the beautiful Dunsmuir Apartments at 1515 Alice Street in downtown Oakland. The 29-unit apartment building, built in 1912, was loaded with beautifully crafted oak trim on the doors and the windows that added a look of elegance and old world charm to the spacious building.

The records show that the Dunsmuir Apartments were bought on January 16, 1998, for $1,320,000 by the landlords of Mary Jesus, listed as the Dunsmuir Apartments Limited Liability CX.

To get to the heart of the message that Mary Jesus had wanted so desperately to give to the public at large, one must first take a look at a press release that she sent out to media outlets on October 27, 2004, less than two months before her death.

Her press release reads as follows:

"This is a newsworthy story that the public would definitely be interested in. The Building I live in, in downtown Oakland, was purchased five years ago. I had already been living here for seven years. I was the manager for a brief period of three years, then fired without cause. They have harassed me consistently since. then. Even attempting to evict me in July of 2003, then again in September of 2004 I am very poor, so had to represent myself. It seemed to me that this particular judge (Yolanda Northridge) a Superior Court Judge in the limited jurisdiction, has a tendency to decide against Pro Per litigants. My case NEVER should have gone as far as it went, because the Oakland rental hoard had already stated that I did not owe the landlords any money. They sought to evict me anyway; the judge allowed their attorney to stifle my evidence. It was all totally illegal!"

The above press release referred to an Oakland rental arbitration board case that Mary Jesus filed against the two owners of the Dunsmuir Apartments, where she was fighting an illegal rent increase. Even though the Oakland rental arbitration board had ruled in her favor as of September 1, 2004, because of an improper notification by the landlord, four weeks later Judge Yolanda Northridge of the Alameda County Superior Court over-ruled the rent board's decision, and ordered Mary Jesus to pay the landlords $1,018.77 in back rent and to vacate her long-term residence of the past 13 years.

Mary Jesus felt crushed by this cruel, corrupt, heartless system in Oakland, after having done everything possible to defend herself from the rent increase imposed upon her by the greedy landlords.

Any way that one looks at this tragedy, Mary Jesus was overwhelmed by a four-some of professionals wielding great power over her. The four of them were unrelenting in their efforts to run her out of the home she had lived in for 13 years, and the eviction resulted in the violence of her death by pushing her over the edge.

It is no secret that Oakland renters have been up against a brutal eviction-for-profit system for many years. Nor is it a secret that Oakland renters have held several protests these past few years against landlords and judges that act together to evict renters. Indeed, Superior Court Judge Yolanda Northridge is not the only judge in Oakland that has come under the scrutiny of the public during these past few years, nor shall she be the last.

The tragic message of Mary Jesus is a testimony written in blood and death. It cannot escape our attention, not should it ever be ignored. She sacrificed herself to deliver her last message. The suicide note is her last testimony about a corrupt and brutal system in Oakland controlled by the rich and the powerful. Her suicide note stated:

"Mark Roemer, James Lewis and Dean Miller. They are the catalyst.

"Goodbye cruel world, and all that. Just look up the case, and you'll see why. Just listen to the August 31st 2004 Authenticated recording from rent adjustment. And everyone will say what they always say when something totally preventable wasn't prevented. `Why didn't anybody do anything.' A couple of people did, but they had no power, and those that did have power were more concerned with technicalities, than justice. Except for Yolanda Northridge, she just does this to people too poor to afford an attorney, and attorneys only take your case if you have money. It's all about money! The love of money is the root of all evil!

Mary Jesus

P.S. Just cremate me and I have no family.



PROFOUND IMPACT OF HER DEATH

The death of Mary Jesus had a pro-found impact on the deepest levels of my consciousness.

On December 20, 2004, 1 received a call from a dear friend, Sue Doyle. Sue works for a number of pro-tenant attorneys in Oakland that I happen to know. Sue told me the unfortunate news about the death of Mary Jesus. I felt stunned.

I had not seen Mary Jesus since the day I was wandering up and down Alice Street in Oakland on a warm Saturday afternoon, using a bullhorn to call tenants out of their sleepy apartments to sign a Just Cause (anti-eviction) petition. I was with Sue Doyle and John Reimann at that moment, and we were part of a group known as the Campaign for Renters Rights.

People streamed out of their apartments that day to join us and sign the petitions we had brought with us. Some of the landlords were screaming at us from their buildings and threatening to call the cops if we did not start moving along.

Sue Doyle had briefly met Mary Jesus that sunny afternoon as we were out collecting signatures for an initiative that rewrote Oakland's rent laws, and gave the renters some protections from unfair evictions and the eviction-for-profit system.

Once upon a time, I had resided on Alice Street in a lovely building for about eight years; and I lived directly across the street from Mary Jesus for much of that period. Of course, that was until some greedy landlord bought the property I resided in and immediately evicted me because I had the cheapest rents in the building. My anger at that bastard knew no bounds. To this day, I still miss the garden that I nourished for so many years in the backyard of the property.

Mary Jesus was a splendid character and was unmistakable in the neighborhood. She generally dressed all in black, with dark shades and long, flowing, dark hair. She seemed rather fierce in her own way. Not the type of person that I would want to get into a feud with.

We got to know one another a bit, and at times we went out for a bite to eat and a chat. At one point, I helped her to plant some new flowers and other plants in front of the building where she resided. She was the resident manager at that time.

In a crazy world that's gone totally mad, Mary Jesus was no crazier than any-one else; and it's a shame that the media pundits insinuated that she was a lunatic who lacked therapy, when they wrote the stories about what had occurred on December 10 at the Tribune Tower.

Neither therapy, nor the leather restraints and Thorazine at John George Psychiatric Pavilion, would have done a thing to keep the profiteers from evicting her from the home she loved, even though she had lived there long enough to be a part owner of the building by now.

Mary Jesus was targeted and the whole weight of the legal system was set in motion to push her over the edge.

Many landlords in Oakland have been cruel enough in their pursuit of profits to make many a soul in Oakland consider suicide as an escape from their greedy grasp. Believe it. I get calls and e-mails from desperate tenants all the time, and at times suicide seems like an option in a world where the rents are so high that people become convinced that they will never come up with the cash needed to move into some other slumlord's rat-infested hellhole.

Her landlords are lucky that Mary Jesus did not do to them what she had done to herself. That would have given the Tribune and the Chronicle something to write about; but that was not what her message was all about. Instead, Mary Jesus took her own life to expose the legal system that exists here in Oakland, and the greedy landlords that use the system to push their renters over the edge.

Eviction Defense Center, A Non-Profit Law Corporation
1611 Telegraph Avenue, Suite 726 (near 16th Street)
Oakland, CA 94612
Voice (510) 452-4541
Fax (510) 452-4875

Provides legal services to prevent evictions.


On October 18, 2004, I received an e-mail from V. Vale of Re/Search Publications, asking for help to stop Mary Jesus' eviction. I immediately responded, and sent off a good-sized list of attorneys' names and phone numbers, including the Eviction Defense Center. I gave instructions for Mary Jesus to take action as soon as possible to stop the eviction and to con-tact an attorney immediately for assistance.

I was happy to do what little I could to stop the profiteers from dumping her out onto the cold-hearted streets of Oakland. I live for moments like this.

Indeed, when V. Vale contacted me, he had no idea that I actually knew Mary Jesus, and was totally surprised that I knew a few things about her. I sent him a list of attorneys and instructions which he handed over to Mary Jesus. Vale also called some of the attorneys to see if he could line one of them up to help Mary Jesus in her time of need.

It felt good to hear back from Vale, and to receive a thank you for being there to help. I thought that I had done my part to help, and set my mind to other tasks. I did not see, I could not see, the dark future that was looming just ahead.

I cannot get the picture out of my head of Mary Jesus standing there high above the street, just before she plunged to her death. I keep thinking of what she mayhave been feeling those last few moments and days of her life. I keep wondering how her short life of 33 years finally ended so tragically atop the Tribune Tower.

I wish I could have done more to help keep a roof over her head and preserve her right to remain in her much-loved home.

It was somewhat of a comfort to learn that Mary Jesus spent the last evening of her life with Vale and his wife Marion in San Francisco. These two had tried their best to help her fight the eviction proceedings that ended up pushing her over the edge. They had offered her shelter from the storm when she needed it the most.

I can't help but cry when I think of the last few moments of Mary Jesus, and what she must have been going through as she gazed upon the crowd of 200 onlookers that witnessed her death. I can't help but think about her final hours as she made copies of her suicide note and the message she wanted the people to read.

The message of Mary Jesus is splattered with the blood of her ultimate sacrifice — a sacrifice that ensured her voice would be heard loud and clear.

She is pointing her finger at the land-lords, the judges and the legal system that pushed her over the edge. I call for an immediate and thorough investigation into the cases that Mary Jesus refers to in her message to the people.

It will be up to each and every one of us to take the message of Mary Jesus to heart, and to do whatever is necessary to make certain that the injustices that pushed her over the edge will be exposed and held accountable.

May Mary Jesus rest in peace, and may her troubled soul find some happiness in the next dimension of reality, far removed from the greedy landlords and war criminals that have wreaked havoc on the American people and the world at large.

Lynda Carson may he reached at (510) 763-1085 or tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com



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A Prophetic Warning About Deadly Effects of Eviction
Editorial by Terry Messman / Street Spirit
"I worry all the time like I never did before. I ain't got no home in this world anymore." — Woody Guthrie

Shortly before Christmas, Mary Jesus found that she had no home in this world anymore. Her land-lord had raised the rent and then evicted her from the Oakland apartment she had lived in for 13 years. After her release from a brief stay at John George Psychiatric Pavilion, Mary Jesus found herself alone on the stark streets of Oakland, with no home in this world.

Although she had fought a valiant and lonely struggle against the eviction, she found herself homeless at Christmas time, just as the Biblical Mary and Jesus were without a home on the first Christmas.

Being evicted felt like the end of her life to Mary Jesus. As a disabled woman living on General Assistance, she saw nothing ahead but a destitute life on the dead-end streets. She told her friend V. Vale: "If I'm evicted tomorrow, I have no choice but to kill myself. I have no resources, no savings, no money, and nowhere to go."

She took her own life on December 10, 2004. To compound the tragedy, Mary Jesus died in despair because she owed her landlords only $1,018.77. The economic gap between rich and poor in America is rapidly becoming an unbridgeable chasm. There are two entirely separate classes of people: those who could come up with $1,000 in an emergency, and those unable to come up with it if their very life depended on it.

In her suicide note, Mary Jesus quoted a Biblical passage: "The love of money is the root of all evil." She was exactly right. The love of money turned out to be a death sentence for her. Her death stands as a permanent indictment of the greed of landlords and the inequities of a court system biased in favor of those with money and high-priced lawyers.

The suicide of Mary Jesus is a prophetic warning of what Mohandas Gandhi once declared: Poverty is the worst form of violence. Her shocking death occurred because she lost her struggle against the same economic forces that have sentenced so many Oakland tenants to desperation, eviction and homelessness.

Low-income tenants in Oakland have been besieged with a wave of rent hikes and evictions over the past several years, and tenant groups have long been warning that unjust evictions and resultant homelessness have grown to life-threatening dimensions. Virtually every housing agency, tenant attorney and homeless service provider in Oakland has warned that rent increases and evictions now amount to a form of "economic cleansing."

But just as Mary Jesus was a fighter in life, she continued her fight against the forces of greed and injustice even with her death. As Mary told V. Vale, "It's better to die on your feet than live on your knees." And as Elizabeth Day wrote to Street Spirit about her death, quoting the poet Dylan Thomas: "She chose a very public way to kill herself — she did not go gentle into that good night!"

She deliberately chose to end her life from atop the most prominent tower in Oakland, a newspaper building, a place where the press could scarcely ignore her suffering, the way they largely ignore the suffering of homeless people every day.

She took her suicide note to the top of the mountain, as did the prophets of old, and showered hundreds of copies down to the public gathered below. Then she plunged to her death and gave us all an unforgettable warning about how the avarice of landlords can join with the heartlessness of the court system to extinguish the lives of the poor.

Upon hearing of her death, Robert Mills, a longtime homeless activist and a student of Gandhian nonviolence, said that it was a self-immolation like the Buddhist monks who set themselves on fire to protest the Vietnam War. Just like those monks, Mary Jesus died to warn us how heartless this system has become.

She died to tell us that the love of money is the root of all evil, and that profiteering and evictions are lethal.



DEATH DURING THE HOLIDAY

Her unbearably sad death is made even more haunting because it occurred only two weeks before Christmas, a season when people try to stir themselves to remember the poor among us with sporadic acts of compassion. But Mary Jesus died of homelessness and heartbreak two weeks before those holiday meals for homeless people were held this year.

She died at Christmas time, a holiday for a mother who herself was reduced to homelessness and forced to give birth to a son, also homeless, born in a rude stable.

She died in the season of love and corn-passion. Mary Jesus died because a ruthless economic system, and the avaricious land-lords who benefit from it, have made greed for profits the crowning value of all. Love for money has replaced reverence for human life as the highest value of our society. A country which places its highest value in money will sacrifice the lives of any of us to support landlords in their legalized pursuit of higher profits.

When I first heard of the death of Mary Jesus, I immediately flashed back to the beautifully radical words of the Magnificat uttered by Mary to greet her son's birth: "God has pulled down princes from their thrones and exalted the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things, the rich sent empty away." (Luke 1:52-53)

Those words from the Magnificat have inspired poor people in Latin America with their revolutionary call for justice for

the poor. Liberation theologians cite Mary's words to show that God has made a "preferential option for the poor."

But in this world governed by ungodly greed and uncaring landlords and courts rigged for the rich, the legal system has made a "preferential option for the rich."

When landlords calculate their profits, raise their rents and order their evictions without ever calculating the human costs of their actions, I wonder if they are ever reminded of another businessman in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

This seasonal masterpiece is a profound indictment of the unconscionable greed of landlords, moneylenders and evictors. Ebenezer Scrooge, an avaricious business-man, is warned that his greed and exploita-tion of the poor are sealing his doom, wrap-ping him in ponderous chains made of the tools in trade of greedy landlords — "cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel."

Many landlords today, if they only had eyes to see, might turn around and see an equally weighty and terrible chain of bad karma that they are forging. Fof those who place intolerable burdens on the backs of their tenants, and extort every last cent until their renters are penniless, and then evict them, the chains of karma must be a horrible burden, even if unseen.

Asked to make a charitable donation, Scrooge refuses, saying that the homeless must go to prisons and poorhouses. When told that many cannot go there and many others would rather die, he replies, "If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

Mary Jesus did precisely that. She could not bear the thought of prolonged homelessness, of shivering through cold December nights in alleys or being hopelessly exiled to shelters and Dickensian poorhouses. So she died and decreased the city's population of low-income renters.

Her death symbolizes the elimination of legions of poor people who have been evicted and have ended up homeless, of have been forced to move out of the city. Her violent death shocks our consciences and brings vividly to mind the fate of all the multitudes of those evicted and now homeless people that are so bitterly complained about by business owners and politicians, and criminalized by the police.



DEAD END STREET

National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC)
1012 Fourteenth Street NW, Suite 610,
Washington, D.C. 20005
Tel 202/662-1530; Fax 202/393-1973
info [at] nlihc.org
http://www.nlihc.org


In December 2004, the same month that Mary Jesus committed suicide, the National Low Income Housing Coalition released a report showing that California topped all states in the income needed to afford an apartment. This nationwide survey of rents found that a full-time worker making the federal minimum wage could not afford a one-bedroom apartment in 3,062 of the nation's 3,066 counties!

Mary Jesus, who was permanently disabled and living on G.A., made far less than the minimum wage. Losing her housing in the most expensive state in the nation was a life-threatening blow.

In the song "Dead End Street," Ray Davies, the masterful songwriter for The Kinks, described the gnawing desperation of poor tenants who feel pushed to the very brink of extinction by landlords:

"What are we living for?
Two-room apartment on the second floor.
No money coming in,
Rent collector's knocking, trying to get in.
We are strictly second-class,
We don't understand
Why we should be on dead end street.
People are living on dead end street
I'm gonna die on dead end street."



WEEP NO MORE, MY LADY

"Weep no more, my lady," as Judy Garland once sang so passionately. Mary Jesus has now escaped the pain and greed and injustices of this life. She is beyond tears now. We who still remain can weep for her, but that will never bring her back.

Only one thing would have saved her life: justice. Justice is hard to find in a nation ruled by the power of money and the unquestioned belief that the pursuit of profit is more sacred than the lives of human beings trampled down in the mad rush for more money.

Since homelessness has created so much suffering and so many premature deaths in the Bay Area, why are landlords permitted to engage in a frenzy of rental profiteering that leads directly to the loss of housing? Housing is not some commodity or luxury to be cynically exploited for maximum profit. It is a human necessity, necessary for the preservation of life and health. More than that that, housing is a human right, according to the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights.



A DREAM OF A MEMORIAL

I dream of a memorial for Mary Jesus, a memorial that reminds the public about the suffering of all poor renters. Would a memorial show Mary in her flowing black clothes, her dark, cascading hair, her punk-rock fire and attitude and intelligence? Perhaps it would be a sculpture of her tiny figure atop the Tribune Tower, accompanied with a plaque showing her eviction notice and her last words: "The love of money is the root of all evil!"

But no. The only memorial worthy of Mary's sacrifice is justice. Perhaps, in her name, the landlords could give up their assault on the Just Cause for Eviction law. Perhaps, before they raise the rents to unbearable levels, they could consider the human faces of tenants and their children, their lives and hopes and dreams.

Perhaps they could remember that they hold the lives of renters in their hands when they make their cold calculations about real estate and profits and money.

Perhaps they could simply remember Mary Jesus, in life and in death.



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If She Hadn't Been Evicted, She Would Still Be Alive
V VALE (http://www.researchpubs.com) / Street Spirit
A remembrance of Mary Jesus from a friend who gave her refuge on her last night on earth



I'm known as a punk rock book publisher in some circles; and for this reason Mary Jesus called me up, out of the blue, back in 1999, wanting me to publish a book by her. She called late at night and we talked for several hours. She told me she had been a hard-core punk rocker starting at age 15 when she ran away from home, and began telling me anecdotes about the punk underground scene.

She was very intelligent, witty, charming and acerbic — absolutely full of ideas and opinions on everything wrong with society and the world. So I listened. Every couple months she would call me up, always late at night, and we'd talk for hours. She was very entertaining.

Mary Jesus continued to call me every couple months. When she first called me, she had told me that she lived in an apartment building in Oakland, and that she was the manager of the building. Her apartment was her refuge from the world and she almost always stayed at home. The only place she could normally afford to go was the public library.

We finally met in person in June 2001. The S.F. Art Institute hosted a book release party celebrating my new book, Real Conversations, featuring Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jello Biafra, and others. The event was so hectic I could only spend a couple minutes with her. She asked me to sign her book, which she had splurged on for the occasion.

At some point, her beloved apartment building was sold to investors or real estate speculators who apparently terminated Mary Jesus as manager, but I didn't find this out until last year when she started telling me her about tenancy problems.

Around August 2004, she told me she was in danger of being evicted: "My new landlords want to evict me because I'vebeen here a long time and they think my rent is too low — they think they can get two or three times what I'm paying."

But she was intelligent, proud, and liter-ate; and she told me she was confident she was going to win if things went to court, because she was in the right, and because she had started spending weeks at a law library learning the laws, and was deter-mined to get a jury trial for her case. She believed in justice and her own honesty.

If I had life to live over again, I would have immediately said, "NO! You need to get a lawyer right away. There are pro bono (free) lawyers." But I just listened to Mary Jesus and silently applauded her determination to argue her own case in front of a jury and judge.

Later, after the case had" progressed to her appeal, I tried to help her find legal representation. It then became obvious that if your case has already gone to court, no free lawyer will touch you with a ten-foot pole.

When she finally called, she said, "If I'm evicted tomorrow, I have no choice but to kill myself. I have no resources, no savings, no money, and nowhere to go. I live on permanent G.A. (about $336 a month) and am classified as `totally disabled.' It's better to die on your feet than live on your knees."

I invited her to stay at my place. She said, "But I love my apartment — I've been here 13 years. It's full of all my beautiful things. I can't start over. I just can't."

Finally the day came, December 8, 2004, when Mary Jesus called late in the afternoon and said, "I'm in the loony bin. Last night I set fire to my apartment and tried to hang myself in my closet." She seemingly joked, "It's not so easy to kill yourself." But I was just on my way out, and couldn't talk to her then, and just quipped back, "At least you have a place to stay tonight." She left a phone number — the pay phone in the ward, which netted no answer the next day.

But that afternoon Mary Jesus called while I wasn't home, and talked to my wife Marian. Mary Jesus asked if it was still okay if she stayed with us. Marian said, "Yes," and Mary Jesus turned the phone over to a hospital administrator who merely asked for Marian's name and address, then handed the phone back to Mary Jesus. She apparently released Mary Jesus to her "custody" — oddly early, in retrospect, after a suicide attempt.

Mary Jesus came over and spent the night. Foolishly, I assumed she had gotten "suicide" out of her system, and had no idea that when she left for Oakland the next morning, she would throw herself off the Oakland Tribune Tower, or I wouldn't have let her leave. She left with a list of errands we had helped her plan out the night before, in order to get her life back on track: cashing a money order at the post office, putting in a change of address notice, getting a new G.A. card (all had been lost in the staged fire).

I learned another lesson: If someone threatens to commit suicide, you had better take the threat ultra-seriously, and do anything you can to make them feel 100 percent safe and secure. I wish I had told her, "Listen, whatever it takes to get you into a new apartment, we'll take care of it. Don't worry about not having money. We'll take care of it." We can always find money for what has to be done.

When somebody kills herself, especially someone smart, intelligent, sarcastic and funny, it makes you feel very disturbed. I felt I knew Mary Jesus quite well through our lengthy phone calls over six years, yet had spent almost no time in the same room with her, ever. If she hadn't been evicted, I feel she would still be alive today, living a mostly reclusive life in her beautiful apartment-refuge, and hopefully writing her manuscript.

If indeed the act of eviction killed her, then something is wrong with the social system that inadequately protects low-income persons from being evicted from apartments they've inhabited a long time. Maybe a mandatory legal defense procedure with a tenant defense lawyer must be instituted? I don't know. But there is something very wrong with this picture.