Tenants Chilled By EBALDC

Tenants Chilled By EBALDC

By Lynda Carson December 21, 2007

Oakland - It's a few days before Christmas, and Oakland is having one of it's chilliest nights of the year, with temperatures sinking below 44.1 degrees farenheit by midnight on this cold damp chilly thursday evening.

Theres a freezing chill in the air at Effies House, and the hallways feel cold enough to safely store ones milk and dairy products in them without concern of warming or spoilage.

Without warning, at around 8:30pm on December 20, the heat suddenly turned off throughout the 4 floors of this 21 unit building, and the tenants have no way to turn the building heat back on again as the chill sinks ever deeper throughout the depths of the night.

Nowhere to be seen, the building's resident manager Rodney Winters, remains out of sight and oblivious to the plight of the tenants as the wintery chill sets in for the night.

With toddlers, infants and little ones residing in the building, one can only imagine what kind of trauma a young mother has to go through when trying to explain to some 4 and 5 year olds waking up freezing cold in the middle of the night, why the heat was turned off.

Effies House is owned and operated by the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC), and lately it's been more than the cold air thats got the tenants chilled out this evening.

During the week of December 17, the tenants of Effies House were alarmed to find that they continue to be under pressure by EBALDC, to fill out an 8 page survey thats jam packed full of questions of a very personal nature.

In recent months, this is now the third time that the tenants of Effies House have been approached by EBALDC staff to fill out some intrusive surveys, and the tenants have become quite chilled by the whole affair.

The latest includes 8 solid pages of very personal questions, such as; "what is the current balance in your primary savings account, how many credit cards do you have such as Visa, MC or store cards and how much debt do you owe, what country were you born in, do you pay off your credit card balance each month, do you have medical debts, do you play the lottery, buy money orders, go to pawn shops, do you send remittances to family members in another country," and the personal list of questions seems endless.

This pisses me off said one tenant at Effies House, claiming she feels like this is some kind of interrogation form, and that she refuses to fill hers out. Another tenant said she thought it was some kind of eviction notice posted on her door when first spotting it, and promptly tore it to shreds when seeing that it was another intrusive survey that EBALDC wanted her to fill out. Another tenant felt that EBALDC staff should fill out these intrusive forms and share them with all the tenants at Effies House.

It implies on the survey that EBALDC wants to ensure anonymity for any of the tenants who are dumb enough to fill out these interrogation forms, but the front page of the form directly asks that the tenants list their apartment number, and the name of the building they reside in on the form. So much for remaining anonymous.

In a call made to EBALDC's property manager Ed Isana, when asked why EBALDC is putting pressure on Effies House tenants to fill out these intrusive surveys (3rd time now in recent months), Isana ducked the question and said it's all voluntary. "It's just a survey," Isana said. "The tenants have the option to say no, and do not have to fill out any of the forms if they decide not to."

In a building that includes some immigrants that can barely speak english, how voluntary can something like this appear to be when the landlord keeps slipping these surveys under their doors, or continues to post them like an official notice on the tenant's door.

When asked who EBALDC shares the information in the surveys with, property manager Isana had no comment and stated that he had to run to a meeting. At the bottom of each page of the latest survey forced upon Effies House tenants, in big bold letters it lists New England Market Research, Inc., and when asked about this research company, Isana said that he was not aware of who they are, nor was he aware that their name was listed on the surveys before hanging up.

A search of New England Market Research, Inc., turned up a website and a post office box located in Richmond, Vermont. For a fee, this company claims to specialize in various forms of market research that helps it's clients in knowing how their customers think.

It's not hard to figure out how a building tenant thinks on a cold freezing night while the heat is turned off a few days before Christmas, and landlords do not need to spend a small fortune on surveys to figure that one out.

To shed a little more light on the subject of getting chilled out by EBALDC, a week ago EBALDC had some new lights installed on 4 flights of outside exterior stairs at Effies House, and they are shining brightly day and night.

To the concern of some tenants residing in Effies House, the new lights appear to be tapped into the electrical lines of one or more of the tenants apartments in the building, rather than from the landlords electrical outlets.

Numerous calls made during this past week to the resident manager of Effies House asking where the electricity is actually coming from to power the 4 flights of new exterior lights remain unanswered, and the resident manager said that he would get back to me on that.