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Slumlord ordered to return refugee's possessions

by Lynda Carson (lyndacarson [at] excite.com)
Local Slumlord Gets Cornered In Oakland Court Room, For Trying To Rip Off a Refugee And His Family, From Central America!
Slumlord ordered to return refugee's possessions
By Lynda Carson 5/22/02

Oakland Ca-During a Tuesday mid afternoon packed court room, landlord friendly Oakland Judge, James E. Richman, stuns slumlord by ordering the return
of the possessions of a refugee family's belongings after a recent eviction. Such items as the family's clothing, plus the childrens school papers and books
were listed as some of the possessions being witheld.

Local slumlord Robert Miller who held hostage the possessions of Pedro Santay and family after evicting them, was demanding sixteen hundred dollars for their
return. On Tuesday, May 21, the Judge ruled that this amount of money was way out of line, and instead ordered the return of the items for only forty six dollars.

Outside, jubilant activists and protesters were on hand to celebrate the tenant victory, and greet Pedro Santay and his family as they left the court room. The two dozen tenant activists with media in tow, showed up outside to demonstrate their anger at the weak rent laws and lawless landlords who take advantage of them.

Inside, pro-tenant attorneys from Bay Area Legal Aid, and the Eviction Defense Center were on hand to represent Pedro Santay in his efforts to regain possession of the families belongings with a Motion to Compel.

It was joy and smiling faces for the attornies and friends of Pedro Santay as they left the court room with their victory in hand. Many were surprised because
the Judge is known to be landlord friendly, and anti-tenant.

In disbelief, dressed in a beige sports jacket and black trousers, Robert Miller with little to comment on when I asked what did he expect to get out of this hearing, stated the old axiom that only a fool would try to represent himself in court without an attorney. Indeed, Miller was referring to himself as the fool since it was he who was the one in court without legal
representation, and he quietly slipped out of the building trying to avoid the press waiting outside.

His name is Robert Miller, a.k.a., Bobby the Weasel, and he is known as an Oakland slumlord with a bad reputation. An ex-Oakland cop, Robert Miller had the Pedro Santay family residing in slum-like conditions in a location where the stove and heater were broken, lead paint exposed on the bathroom walls, excessive mildew throughout the apartment, and a severe cockroach infestation getting ever larger.

As a result of Oaklands weak rent laws, the Pedro Santay family became homeless after being evicted, and their possessions were held hostage by a greedy landlord trying to profit from their misery. This scenario landed in the courts after the hard work of activist's who decided that this rent scam went to far.

With weak rent laws and a corrupt City Hall, one horror story after another unfolds about the situation for Oakland renters, and Robert Miller is only the latest in a
string of bad landlords to hit the light of day. Tenants find it hard to tell who the good guys are any more in a system that evicts for profit. With even some of the
so-called non-profits getting caught up into the act of evicting the poor in the name of creating housing for the poor, and then going as far as to use Restraining Orders in an effort to gag the activist's for exposing the wrong doing, activist's vow to continue to expose the worst of the landlords in Oakland.

Click below for stories about a "Berkeley, Non-Profit" gone bad in Oakland.

NPO Attacks Renters Right To Organize

http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/03/118108.php

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Non-Profit Rent Scam Going On

http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/02/116088.php


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