WEB WANDERINGS
3/28/2012
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
-- Helen Keller
ILLINOIS WOMEN - YOU'RE MARCHING TOMORROW!
HERE'S WISHING YOU HUGE SUCCESS!
WE'LL ALL BE WITH YOU IN SPIRIT.
IMHO: Still no original State posters from any States except Illinois, Missouri and Wisconsin and only 31 days left.
Oh, well, I'm doing my part in spreading the word the best I can. Good luck to you all! But I've got a hunch that Illinois is going to set a very high bar tomorrow with their March. If so, I highly recommend all you April 28th State organizers get in touch with Heather McMeekan and get all the advice from her you can. She's the best!
Oh, well, I'm doing my part in spreading the word the best I can. Good luck to you all! But I've got a hunch that Illinois is going to set a very high bar tomorrow with their March. If so, I highly recommend all you April 28th State organizers get in touch with Heather McMeekan and get all the advice from her you can. She's the best!
Nancy Summers-Long
Wisconsin Lawmaker Introduces Law To Classify Single Parenthood As Child Abuse
http://chicagoist.com/2012/03/07/wi_grothman_parenthood_abuse.php
Photo via Grothman's website.
Wisconsin state Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend) has introduced a bill demonizing single parents by classifying them as child abusers. Senate Bill 507 specifically requires "the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board to emphasize nonmarital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect."
A third of Wisconsin parents are single parents , (interesting link, check it out) but this law affects even more than that. The way the law refers to "nonmarital parenthood" also makes this applicable to non-married couples, including same-sex couples. S.B. 507 reads:
Section 1. 48.982 (2) (g) 2. of the statutes is amended to read: 48.982 (2) (g) 2. Promote statewide educational and public awareness campaigns and materials for the purpose of developing public awareness of the problems of child abuse and neglect. In promoting those campaigns and materials, the board shall emphasize nonmarital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect. Section 2. 48.982 (2) (g) 4. of the statutes is amended to read: 48.982 (2) (g) 4. Disseminate information about the problems of and methods of preventing child abuse and neglect to the public and to organizations concerned with those problems. In disseminating that information, the board shall emphasize nonmarital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect.
Grothman isn't just some fringe nut-job. He's the assistant majority leader and a staunch ally of Gov. Scott Walker. Unlike Walker, Grothman is not up for recall because activists were unable to get enough signatures. State Rep. Donald Pridemore (R-Hartford) co-sponsored the bill. (He is not up for recall either.)
Grothman is not a fan of welfare policies. In a flyer detailing his family policies (embedded at the bottom of this post), he says, "The Left and the social welfare establishment want children born out of wedlock because they are far more likely to be dependent on the government." He touched on those issues after introducing SB507 last week. The Cap Times writes:
"I guess as long as this state is going to fund a group called the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board, at least that group could use the money that they have to publicize something that's politically incorrect, but I think has to be said in our society," Grothman said at a public hearing on the bill last week. Noting that 41 percent of children born in the U.S. last year were born to single parents, Grothman said: "It's a very politically difficult thing to deal with because over time you're having more and more families that are not old-fashioned families. There are even people who make fun of old-fashioned families."
State Rep. Chris Taylor (D-Madison) said this bill is an assault on women. "What this bill does is call out and chastise women who have babies and are unmarried," she told The Cap Times. Human Development and Family Studies Professor Dave Riley told The Badger Herald that family type has far less impact than the family process and that research shows that "leaving a conflictual marriage actually improves parent-child relationships."
SB507 is now with the Senate Public Health committee, and The Cap Times says it's not likely to get a committee vote, since the committee chair Pam Galloway (R-Wausau) is facing a close recall election.
And here is Grothman's stance on families, wherein he explains "How The United States and the State of Wisconsin are Working to Encourage Single-Motherhood and Discouraging Children in 2-Parent Families."
WI State Sen. Glenn Grothman on Families
IMHO: This bill is aimed directly at single mothers and their children! But is there anything in this bill that goes after the persons who actually made these babies? Somewhere in there a MAN had intercourse with a woman and made her pregnant. WHERE IS HE IN ALL THIS LAW MAKING? IS ANYBODY GOING AFTER HIM TO PROVIDE FINANCIALLY FOR HIS CHILD. Does Grothman really think these are all "Virgin" births? Does he really, really believe we should be punishing women and children for what actually began with a prick? If anybody is to be blamed here, it's the men who stick it in whenever they can and then run like hell to avoid their responsibility! And what about the women who unfortunately marry an abusive man (if which there are far too many in this misogynist political and cultural United States) and have to leave him in order to protect herself and her children from physical and/or emotional abuse, and potentially even death? Are those men going to jail for committing violence against women and children? Damn, it looks to me like so many politicians are passing laws that are so horribly and violently misogynist that we should be putting the vast majority of THEM in jail. But if we can't do that, we women can at least band together in massive numbers and MARCH on all of our State Capitols on April 28, 2012! We have to show these political criminals that we will no longer tolerate their misogynist agendas.
MAKE YOUR POWER AT THE POLLS ABUNDANTLY CLEAR TO THESE POLITICIANS!
MARCH IN HUGE NUMBERS ON APRIL 28, 2012!
THEN VOTE THEM ALL OUT IN NOVEMBER!
MARCH IN HUGE NUMBERS ON APRIL 28, 2012!
THEN VOTE THEM ALL OUT IN NOVEMBER!
All new postings added today will go beneath this section.
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IMHO: I just gave myself a birthday present! I finally finished and mailed the complaint letter I've been writing to the Office of Fair Housing and Economic Opportunity in San Francisco, CA for the past two weeks. You only get one shot with these kinds of discrimination complaints and I wanted to make sure I got it just right. I think I did. Any feedback anyone would like to offer would be greatly appreciated. It's long but I think it will work. What do you think:
March 27, 2012
TO :
U. S. Department of HUD
Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity
ATTN: Adriana Windham
600 Harrison Street, 3rd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94107
FROM:
Leah Lenora Ward
The Surf Apartments
108 H Street, #509
Crescent City, CA 95531
Dear Ms. Adriana Windham,
I have been a tenant at The Surf Apartments of Crescent City, CA for the past six years. I turn 68 years old today and I am too old to be moving. Unfortunately, that is exactly what I am going to have to do because of my current living situation in this building.
I live in daily fear of being sexually and/or verbally accosted by male tenants in this building. I live in daily fear that my Hearing Dog might be attacked by a visitor’s dog while I am leaving or entering the building for his 3x daily walks. I live in an apartment complex that is frequently dirty in various areas, is extremely smelly in the hallways, and frequently littered with trash on the outside of the building. I live in a low-income building where the Resident Manager and the Maintenance man do very little to actually help the tenants; I live among tenants who are constantly complaining of the poor “quality of life” in this apartment complex, which is not conducive to an emotionally healthy environment for anyone.
I now carry a stun gun (legal in California) whenever I have to leave my apartment in order to feel at least a bit safe walking the hallways, riding the elevator and leaving and entering the building. This is NOT a living experience that is in any way physically or emotionally safe for me, so I MUST move both for my health and my emotional well-being. I have been on a waiting list since last September for another much cleaner, much better managed and much more comfortable low-income complex in Crescent City, The Seagull Apartments.
I have made numerous attempts over the six years I have lived here to resolve my various issues with Management to no avail. I have attached my most recent letter of complaint of late February, 2012. [Attachment 2] Since that date, there has been little to no improvement, as per usual when dealing with any level of Management for this senior low-income building.
My complaints, many of which are spoken of in my February 2012 letter, are against The Michaels Organization, their California branch office, InterState Reality Management, their management personnel, Mike Richards, Roxanne Cowee , Resident Manager Mary Berry and Maintenance man Gary Moore are as follows:
I have been aware of sexual harassment against the female tenants by male tenants since shortly after I moved here in March, 2006. If you were to speak with any number of randomly chosen women in this building, you would quickly discover that many of them have experienced numerous occasions of sexual harassment as tenants of The Surf Apartments, and among them would be Deborah McKinley in Apartment 406. I personally, however, have not experienced sexual harassment because as soon as I became aware of its prevalence in this building I acquired a legal weapon allowed by the State of California, a stun gun, and made sure everyone knew I carry it at ALL times.
Other female tenants have not been so fortunate in their ability to protect themselves and have therefore been forced to endure numerous occasions of sexual harassment, and particularly from Victor Mansfield in Apartment 101. [More about Victor Mansfield below.]
· Denied protection by Management from Verbal Harassment.
I have however personally experienced verbal harassment from at least two male tenants and those are detailed in my February, 2012 letter. And it was my first experience with this harassment last September that caused me to begin my search for housing elsewhere. I am terrified of the male tenant in Apartment 410 and I do not have the slightest confidence in any level of the Management of this building, including the Resident Manager Mary Berry, to provide me the least bit of protection from him. In fact, when I first reported this tenant’s unprovoked and frightening verbal assault upon me last September, her response was to inform me that I needed to be more aware of the fact that many of our tenants “…have mental problems that we should take into consideration.” I’m sure that will be the first thought on my mind if I should ever run into this particular tenant in the elevator or in the hallways and he decides that is the moment to take his verbal harassment to the next level - physical harassment. (This incident was witnessed by Deborah McKinley, a tenant in Apt. 406 who has been verbally and sexually harassed in this building on a great many occasions.)
When I was recently verbally attacked in the Recreation Room by the barber who rents space in our building, the Resident Manager’s first words when she ran into the room after hearing the loud voices was to say, “Would you two please take this outside!” Right! I’m going outside with a six foot tall, 200+ pound, very angry man when I am five feet tall and 150 lbs. soaking wet. Of course! Needless to say, I refused to go anywhere with him.
I have had my service dog attacked by a visitor’s dog which was/is very unsocialized when the dog and its owner came out of the elevator as I was waiting for it. Because the elevator on the 5th floor opens directly across from the Resident Manager’s apartment, I immediately banged on her door. When she answered I told her my dog had just been attacked by the dog just entering an apartment down the hall. The visitor got his dog into the apartment then came back down the hall to talk with the Manager. In essence what she told him was that “he was to bring his dog up the back stairs in the future.” This was NOT sufficient help in my opinion and I was extremely angry. I very much need my Hearing Dog in order to enjoy a reasonable “quality of life” and she was not offering much protection for him. She did later post a reminder of the “House Rules” [Attachment 3] regarding visitors not being allowed to bring in their dogs, but that reminder was about as effective an action as any of her others since she has been the Resident Manager – virtually nil.
One dog on the first floor was poisoned a few years ago by an unknown tenant in the building who put some tainted meat in the hallway near the door where the dog lived. The dog died. Recently a tenant was actually seen by another dog owner spraying an unknown yellow substance on her 1st floor window screen as he walked by outside. Her dog lies on the back of her couch just inside that window and she was very fortunate that the window was actually closed. And just prior to this incident, her dog became very, very ill after eating a small portion of something out in the hallway near her door. Fortunately she was able to get most of it out of the dog’s mouth before he could actually eat it all and he survived after a night of extreme illness. The tenant she saw spraying her window was Victor Mansfield of Apartment 101, and it has long been suspected that he was the tenant who killed the first dog.
Mr. Mansfield is also one of the major perpetrators of sexual harassment in this building and he has had a large number of complaints filed against him by other tenants, mostly female though he has been known to physically accost other men. At the present time, he has a restraining order against him that was filed by Deborah McKinley in Apartment 404 for physically attacking her several months ago. Because there were no witnesses to the incident, the Judge issued Restraining Orders against both of them. Mr. Mansfield has violated that Restraining Order a number of times since it was issued and there are witnesses to at least one of those violations. This behavior of sexually harassing women on the part of Mr. Mansfield has been on-going since I moved here in March of 2006, and still, despite the many, many, many complaints against him in his file and specifically despite his physically accosting Deborah McKinley and then the recent violation of the Restraining Order, Management, continues to fail to attempt to evict him for his behavior. The women of The Surf Apartments are just expected to simply endure his offensive behavior because, I assume, Management does not wish to spend the potentially necessary expenditure for a lawyer if Mr. Mansfield were to fight an eviction. Management prefers to save their money while the tenants, particularly the women but also some men while watching TV in the Recreation Room, suffer sexual and physical harassment from this man.
We now have two new tenants in Apartment 102 who work with toxic chemicals to clean swimming pools. They are dumping those chemicals into the dumpster of our building. Garbage is dropped down from a chute on the back stairs of each floor and any toxic fumes from these chemicals are now wafting upward toward tenants as they throw out their trash
Another tenant had already complained about this situation day before yesterday. He was told at the time he complained that she, the resident manager, Mary Berry, had already called Poison Control and determined that the chemical being dumped was safe around humans. However, since this was the first complaint she had gotten about the dumping of toxic waste and she had no knowledge prior to this complaint of the chemical, I am very unsure as to how she knew to call Poison Control in the first place. Her normal mode of operation regarding tenant complaints is one more of laissez faire “just say whatever they need to hear to get them out of the office” rather than one of practical and helpful “this is a problem I will definitely look into.”
Because of the resident manager’s “laissez faire” attitude toward tenant complaints, very few of the problems with other tenants that affect our quality of life in this building are dealt with in any way that truly helps alleviate the problems.
We have a number of tenants who have various relatives and friends living with them illegally; we have tenants who have frequent visitors with large, unsocialized dogs; we have tenants who are extremely noisy at all hours; we have tenants who are very filthy in their apartments and cause horrendous smells in the hallways; we have tenants who have relatives and caregivers coming into the building to assist them with daily living but frequently the Resident Manager has refused to give the caregiver a key to enter the building during the hours the doors are locked. This is a “reasonable accommodation” that should be offered to each new tenant as they move in. Instead, tenants have to either break the rules and make a copy of their door and apartment key for their caregivers OR just hope someone in the lobby opens the door for them.
(This rule of not making copies of keys for friends of tenants is quite regularly broken by the tenants who have absolutely no concern for the rules or their fellow tenants. It is the rule-abiding tenants who suffer from the unwillingness on the part of Management to actively make known to new tenants this much needed “reasonable accommodation” information.)
And no matter how many of us complain about anything, no matter how frequently we complain, no matter how seriously these situations are actually affecting our “quality of life” as tenants in this building, very little if anything is ever done.
As stated above, our complaints are going unheard and unresolved. Even writing letters of complaint to the district office in Lodi, CA to the higher-up supervisors does us no good. This has been true over the years that I have lived here. In 2007, after months of trying to get into a 1-bedroom apartment above the 3rd floor and having provided management with three different letters from my Physician, my Physiatrist and my Social Worker stating my need to make this move, I was finally forced to file a HUD complaint. [See Attachehment] Only then, after the Resident Manager at the time was fired, was I offered a 1-bedroom on the 5th floor. But it took filing a complaint to get it done.
And the situation on all levels of Management, despite the fact that a new Management Agency, The Michaels Organization at:
http://www.themichaelsorg.com/
took over management of this building perhaps a year ago, is still the same sad old futility of expressing our complaints to Management with the same sad old results. We file complaints with the Resident Manager, Mary Berry, to no avail; we speak with her Supervisor, Roxanne Cowee, when she comes to the building on her infrequent visits to no avail; we call the Lodi, CA Supervisors, Roxanne Cowee and Mike Richards, to no avail; we write letters to the same Lodi, CA Supervisors to no avail; we send copies of those letters to Crescent City Housing Authority to little avail though they did listen and helped where they could, as you will see in my attached two letters from them. I believe our only and final recourse is to file another complaint with your agency.
The tenants of The Surf Apartments are being blatantly discriminated against as tenants of a low-income, senior building, and particularly the women. We are being forced to endure a living situation that no reasonable tenant in private housing would tolerate for long. But because we are poor, because low-income housing is so difficult to obtain, because so many of the senior residents are afraid to complain for fear of losing their housing in this low-income building, many of us have endured the very poor “quality of life” in this building for much too long. And most of us are just too old and physically unable to move. I am one of the lucky few who can and WILL move as soon as low-income housing becomes available elsewhere.
Any help your agency can give the tenants of The Surf Apartments would be greatly appreciated. We do need your help desperately. All our attempts to resolve these intolerable and blatant acts of discrimination in other ways have failed. You are our last recourse.
Sincerely,
Leah Lenora Ward
707-464-9473
rudyblue02@yahoo.com
http://thewomankindparty.com/web-wanderings.html
ATTACHMENTS TO MY HOUSING COMPLAINT MAILED 3/28/2012:
1. Picture of dangerously parked car by a tenant in our parking lot on 3/27/2012 at 3:00. This truck is owned by the tenant in #102 and he is also the tenant who is dumping dangerous toxic chemicals in our dumpster. I wonder if those chemicals are affecting his driving?
2. A Letter handed out to all Surf Tenants by Resident Manager Mary Berry on 2/17/12 after my angry concern about how she handled the situation with the visitors’ dog which attacked my Hearing Dog, Rudy. (This letter had the same nil results as anything else Mary Berry has handed out in the past. We still have the occasional visitor coming in with their dogs.)
3. My late February letter to Mr. Mike Richards, the Lodi, CA District Property Manager of The Surf Apartments re: a number of complaints regarding the management of The Surf Apartments.
4. A Letter from Megan Miller, Executive Director of Crescent City Housing Authority on 2/27/2012 in response to the letter in #3 above.
5. A response from Michael Richards, District Property Manager, dated 2/29/2012 in response to the letter in #3 above.
6. A brief note from Roxanne Cowee dated 3/6/2012 requesting my attendance in her office in 15 minutes to discuss my concerns. I refused to speak with her.
7. A Letter from Fair Employment & Housing Commission of California dated 3/6/ 2012 in response to the letter in #3 above.
8. A follow-up letter from Megan Miller, Executive Director of Crescent City Housing Authority, after our visit on March 7, 2012.
9. A copy of my first complaint to Fair Housing in October of 2007. (Because of this letter, I DID get a 1-bedroom on the 5th floor and the Resident Manager, Jan Munson, was fired. I am not including all the attachments to this letter, but I have them available if needed.)
March 27, 2012
TO :
U. S. Department of HUD
Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity
ATTN: Adriana Windham
600 Harrison Street, 3rd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94107
FROM:
Leah Lenora Ward
The Surf Apartments
108 H Street, #509
Crescent City, CA 95531
Dear Ms. Adriana Windham,
I have been a tenant at The Surf Apartments of Crescent City, CA for the past six years. I turn 68 years old today and I am too old to be moving. Unfortunately, that is exactly what I am going to have to do because of my current living situation in this building.
I live in daily fear of being sexually and/or verbally accosted by male tenants in this building. I live in daily fear that my Hearing Dog might be attacked by a visitor’s dog while I am leaving or entering the building for his 3x daily walks. I live in an apartment complex that is frequently dirty in various areas, is extremely smelly in the hallways, and frequently littered with trash on the outside of the building. I live in a low-income building where the Resident Manager and the Maintenance man do very little to actually help the tenants; I live among tenants who are constantly complaining of the poor “quality of life” in this apartment complex, which is not conducive to an emotionally healthy environment for anyone.
I now carry a stun gun (legal in California) whenever I have to leave my apartment in order to feel at least a bit safe walking the hallways, riding the elevator and leaving and entering the building. This is NOT a living experience that is in any way physically or emotionally safe for me, so I MUST move both for my health and my emotional well-being. I have been on a waiting list since last September for another much cleaner, much better managed and much more comfortable low-income complex in Crescent City, The Seagull Apartments.
I have made numerous attempts over the six years I have lived here to resolve my various issues with Management to no avail. I have attached my most recent letter of complaint of late February, 2012. [Attachment 2] Since that date, there has been little to no improvement, as per usual when dealing with any level of Management for this senior low-income building.
My complaints, many of which are spoken of in my February 2012 letter, are against The Michaels Organization, their California branch office, InterState Reality Management, their management personnel, Mike Richards, Roxanne Cowee , Resident Manager Mary Berry and Maintenance man Gary Moore are as follows:
- Denied protection by Management from Sexual Harassment:
I have been aware of sexual harassment against the female tenants by male tenants since shortly after I moved here in March, 2006. If you were to speak with any number of randomly chosen women in this building, you would quickly discover that many of them have experienced numerous occasions of sexual harassment as tenants of The Surf Apartments, and among them would be Deborah McKinley in Apartment 406. I personally, however, have not experienced sexual harassment because as soon as I became aware of its prevalence in this building I acquired a legal weapon allowed by the State of California, a stun gun, and made sure everyone knew I carry it at ALL times.
Other female tenants have not been so fortunate in their ability to protect themselves and have therefore been forced to endure numerous occasions of sexual harassment, and particularly from Victor Mansfield in Apartment 101. [More about Victor Mansfield below.]
· Denied protection by Management from Verbal Harassment.
I have however personally experienced verbal harassment from at least two male tenants and those are detailed in my February, 2012 letter. And it was my first experience with this harassment last September that caused me to begin my search for housing elsewhere. I am terrified of the male tenant in Apartment 410 and I do not have the slightest confidence in any level of the Management of this building, including the Resident Manager Mary Berry, to provide me the least bit of protection from him. In fact, when I first reported this tenant’s unprovoked and frightening verbal assault upon me last September, her response was to inform me that I needed to be more aware of the fact that many of our tenants “…have mental problems that we should take into consideration.” I’m sure that will be the first thought on my mind if I should ever run into this particular tenant in the elevator or in the hallways and he decides that is the moment to take his verbal harassment to the next level - physical harassment. (This incident was witnessed by Deborah McKinley, a tenant in Apt. 406 who has been verbally and sexually harassed in this building on a great many occasions.)
When I was recently verbally attacked in the Recreation Room by the barber who rents space in our building, the Resident Manager’s first words when she ran into the room after hearing the loud voices was to say, “Would you two please take this outside!” Right! I’m going outside with a six foot tall, 200+ pound, very angry man when I am five feet tall and 150 lbs. soaking wet. Of course! Needless to say, I refused to go anywhere with him.
- Denied Protection of our Pets by Management:
I have had my service dog attacked by a visitor’s dog which was/is very unsocialized when the dog and its owner came out of the elevator as I was waiting for it. Because the elevator on the 5th floor opens directly across from the Resident Manager’s apartment, I immediately banged on her door. When she answered I told her my dog had just been attacked by the dog just entering an apartment down the hall. The visitor got his dog into the apartment then came back down the hall to talk with the Manager. In essence what she told him was that “he was to bring his dog up the back stairs in the future.” This was NOT sufficient help in my opinion and I was extremely angry. I very much need my Hearing Dog in order to enjoy a reasonable “quality of life” and she was not offering much protection for him. She did later post a reminder of the “House Rules” [Attachment 3] regarding visitors not being allowed to bring in their dogs, but that reminder was about as effective an action as any of her others since she has been the Resident Manager – virtually nil.
One dog on the first floor was poisoned a few years ago by an unknown tenant in the building who put some tainted meat in the hallway near the door where the dog lived. The dog died. Recently a tenant was actually seen by another dog owner spraying an unknown yellow substance on her 1st floor window screen as he walked by outside. Her dog lies on the back of her couch just inside that window and she was very fortunate that the window was actually closed. And just prior to this incident, her dog became very, very ill after eating a small portion of something out in the hallway near her door. Fortunately she was able to get most of it out of the dog’s mouth before he could actually eat it all and he survived after a night of extreme illness. The tenant she saw spraying her window was Victor Mansfield of Apartment 101, and it has long been suspected that he was the tenant who killed the first dog.
Mr. Mansfield is also one of the major perpetrators of sexual harassment in this building and he has had a large number of complaints filed against him by other tenants, mostly female though he has been known to physically accost other men. At the present time, he has a restraining order against him that was filed by Deborah McKinley in Apartment 404 for physically attacking her several months ago. Because there were no witnesses to the incident, the Judge issued Restraining Orders against both of them. Mr. Mansfield has violated that Restraining Order a number of times since it was issued and there are witnesses to at least one of those violations. This behavior of sexually harassing women on the part of Mr. Mansfield has been on-going since I moved here in March of 2006, and still, despite the many, many, many complaints against him in his file and specifically despite his physically accosting Deborah McKinley and then the recent violation of the Restraining Order, Management, continues to fail to attempt to evict him for his behavior. The women of The Surf Apartments are just expected to simply endure his offensive behavior because, I assume, Management does not wish to spend the potentially necessary expenditure for a lawyer if Mr. Mansfield were to fight an eviction. Management prefers to save their money while the tenants, particularly the women but also some men while watching TV in the Recreation Room, suffer sexual and physical harassment from this man.
- Denied protection by Management from Exposure to Toxic Waste:
We now have two new tenants in Apartment 102 who work with toxic chemicals to clean swimming pools. They are dumping those chemicals into the dumpster of our building. Garbage is dropped down from a chute on the back stairs of each floor and any toxic fumes from these chemicals are now wafting upward toward tenants as they throw out their trash
Another tenant had already complained about this situation day before yesterday. He was told at the time he complained that she, the resident manager, Mary Berry, had already called Poison Control and determined that the chemical being dumped was safe around humans. However, since this was the first complaint she had gotten about the dumping of toxic waste and she had no knowledge prior to this complaint of the chemical, I am very unsure as to how she knew to call Poison Control in the first place. Her normal mode of operation regarding tenant complaints is one more of laissez faire “just say whatever they need to hear to get them out of the office” rather than one of practical and helpful “this is a problem I will definitely look into.”
- Denied reasonable “Quality of Life” by Management:
Because of the resident manager’s “laissez faire” attitude toward tenant complaints, very few of the problems with other tenants that affect our quality of life in this building are dealt with in any way that truly helps alleviate the problems.
We have a number of tenants who have various relatives and friends living with them illegally; we have tenants who have frequent visitors with large, unsocialized dogs; we have tenants who are extremely noisy at all hours; we have tenants who are very filthy in their apartments and cause horrendous smells in the hallways; we have tenants who have relatives and caregivers coming into the building to assist them with daily living but frequently the Resident Manager has refused to give the caregiver a key to enter the building during the hours the doors are locked. This is a “reasonable accommodation” that should be offered to each new tenant as they move in. Instead, tenants have to either break the rules and make a copy of their door and apartment key for their caregivers OR just hope someone in the lobby opens the door for them.
(This rule of not making copies of keys for friends of tenants is quite regularly broken by the tenants who have absolutely no concern for the rules or their fellow tenants. It is the rule-abiding tenants who suffer from the unwillingness on the part of Management to actively make known to new tenants this much needed “reasonable accommodation” information.)
And no matter how many of us complain about anything, no matter how frequently we complain, no matter how seriously these situations are actually affecting our “quality of life” as tenants in this building, very little if anything is ever done.
- Lack of ability to work with Management regarding these problems.
As stated above, our complaints are going unheard and unresolved. Even writing letters of complaint to the district office in Lodi, CA to the higher-up supervisors does us no good. This has been true over the years that I have lived here. In 2007, after months of trying to get into a 1-bedroom apartment above the 3rd floor and having provided management with three different letters from my Physician, my Physiatrist and my Social Worker stating my need to make this move, I was finally forced to file a HUD complaint. [See Attachehment] Only then, after the Resident Manager at the time was fired, was I offered a 1-bedroom on the 5th floor. But it took filing a complaint to get it done.
And the situation on all levels of Management, despite the fact that a new Management Agency, The Michaels Organization at:
http://www.themichaelsorg.com/
took over management of this building perhaps a year ago, is still the same sad old futility of expressing our complaints to Management with the same sad old results. We file complaints with the Resident Manager, Mary Berry, to no avail; we speak with her Supervisor, Roxanne Cowee, when she comes to the building on her infrequent visits to no avail; we call the Lodi, CA Supervisors, Roxanne Cowee and Mike Richards, to no avail; we write letters to the same Lodi, CA Supervisors to no avail; we send copies of those letters to Crescent City Housing Authority to little avail though they did listen and helped where they could, as you will see in my attached two letters from them. I believe our only and final recourse is to file another complaint with your agency.
The tenants of The Surf Apartments are being blatantly discriminated against as tenants of a low-income, senior building, and particularly the women. We are being forced to endure a living situation that no reasonable tenant in private housing would tolerate for long. But because we are poor, because low-income housing is so difficult to obtain, because so many of the senior residents are afraid to complain for fear of losing their housing in this low-income building, many of us have endured the very poor “quality of life” in this building for much too long. And most of us are just too old and physically unable to move. I am one of the lucky few who can and WILL move as soon as low-income housing becomes available elsewhere.
Any help your agency can give the tenants of The Surf Apartments would be greatly appreciated. We do need your help desperately. All our attempts to resolve these intolerable and blatant acts of discrimination in other ways have failed. You are our last recourse.
Sincerely,
Leah Lenora Ward
707-464-9473
rudyblue02@yahoo.com
http://thewomankindparty.com/web-wanderings.html
ATTACHMENTS TO MY HOUSING COMPLAINT MAILED 3/28/2012:
1. Picture of dangerously parked car by a tenant in our parking lot on 3/27/2012 at 3:00. This truck is owned by the tenant in #102 and he is also the tenant who is dumping dangerous toxic chemicals in our dumpster. I wonder if those chemicals are affecting his driving?
2. A Letter handed out to all Surf Tenants by Resident Manager Mary Berry on 2/17/12 after my angry concern about how she handled the situation with the visitors’ dog which attacked my Hearing Dog, Rudy. (This letter had the same nil results as anything else Mary Berry has handed out in the past. We still have the occasional visitor coming in with their dogs.)
3. My late February letter to Mr. Mike Richards, the Lodi, CA District Property Manager of The Surf Apartments re: a number of complaints regarding the management of The Surf Apartments.
4. A Letter from Megan Miller, Executive Director of Crescent City Housing Authority on 2/27/2012 in response to the letter in #3 above.
5. A response from Michael Richards, District Property Manager, dated 2/29/2012 in response to the letter in #3 above.
6. A brief note from Roxanne Cowee dated 3/6/2012 requesting my attendance in her office in 15 minutes to discuss my concerns. I refused to speak with her.
7. A Letter from Fair Employment & Housing Commission of California dated 3/6/ 2012 in response to the letter in #3 above.
8. A follow-up letter from Megan Miller, Executive Director of Crescent City Housing Authority, after our visit on March 7, 2012.
9. A copy of my first complaint to Fair Housing in October of 2007. (Because of this letter, I DID get a 1-bedroom on the 5th floor and the Resident Manager, Jan Munson, was fired. I am not including all the attachments to this letter, but I have them available if needed.)
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MAXINE SAYS:
BLUE SAYS: I'm sorry today's Web Wanderings was so short. My internet service has been going down on and off all day. I wonder if it's because I haven't yet paid my $30.00 overdue bill? Best not be. I'm already mad at Charter. That would be icing on the proverbial exploding cake. I'll make up for today's briefness tomorrow. Have a good evening, all, and hopefully we all wake up well-rested to a bright, sunshiny day. In Sisterhood, Blue
Just below the Web Wanderings link on the top border, there is a new link titled "Contributors." It's not finished yet, but it will be in the next few days. It's my way of saying a heart felt "Thank You" to all the wonderful women who take the time to scour the Internet for news of vital importance to women and share their findings with me. I couldn't do these pages without them. You all are AWESOME!