San Diego Unseen: An Urban Portrait
Some members of the San Diego Square tenants association
- Kelly Davis
The residents of San Diego Square know how to throw a party. Dubbed “Movie and Munchies @ The Pool,” the shindig’s potluck included coleslaw, potato salad, fried chicken, chips and dips and a cake described as “to-die-for.”
“Black tie optional, deodorant mandatory” read the invite. The film was Seven Years in Tibet.
But then onsite managers showed up and quashed the good time. According to a recap of the event in a tenant-published newsletter, attendees were told that they couldn’t watch the movie in the pool area. The high-rise senior housing complex’s spacious recreational room was off-limits, too. And everything needed to be cleaned up by 8 p.m. So the party moved to the outdoor courtyard, where the sound from busses running along 10th Avenue made it impossible to hear the film.
“We are treated like naughty little children,” Curt Phillips, the party’s organizer, wrote in the newsletter.
San Diego Square provides 154 units of housing for seniors 62 and older who meet the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) definition of very low income (less than $28,700 annually in 2011).
The building, opened in 1979, was the project of Mavourneen O’Connor, the twin sister of former San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor. According to a permit filed with the city in 1978, Mavourneen envisioned a facility that coupled housing with recreational, legal and social services.
But current tenants say O’Connor’s Kind Corp., the nonprofit she founded to oversee the building, isn’t being very kind. Complaints range from bug infestations that go untreated to threats of eviction. Residents are told to take their issues to a social worker hired by the property manager, but neither they, nor CityBeat, could confirm that the woman is licensed by the state. Residents can’t use the building’s recreational facilities without permission from the Kind Corp. board of directors, and they can’t use the parking lot. The majority of the lot’s 28 spaces sit empty.
A resident who asked to remain anonymous said that when she moved in, she paid more for parking tickets than rent. “I wasn’t used to living in the city. I would forget about the street sweeping,” she said. Her car’s been vandalized three times.
San Diego Square sits on city-owned land that’s leased to Kind Corp. for $1 a year. The lease says the site must include “assistance and services for seniors, including but not limited to counseling, recreation, legal, medical and other services.” Those services aren’t being provided, residents told CityBeat.
Until April 2010, a portion of San Diego Square was occupied by Senior Community Centers, which provided those services, but Kind Corp. refused to renew the organization’s lease. Senior Community Centers has since moved to a new location, roughly 10 blocks from San Diego Square.
On April 29, 2010, and Dec. 16, 2010, city staff sent Mavourneen O’Connor letters reminding her that Kind Corp. was violating its lease. In January 2011, Kind Corp. board president Percil Stanford responded, saying that the San Diego Housing Commission was interested in purchasing the building.
In May, Stanford sent another letter, saying negotiations with the Housing Commission had broken off and Kind Corp. planned to survey existing nonprofits to see what kind of senior services they provided. He added that it would take time to rehab the portion of the building Senior Community Centers had occupied.
“The former tenant left the site in an unsanitary and unsatisfactory condition,” Stanford wrote.
This was news to Senior Community Centers President Paul Downey.
“This is categorically untrue,” he wrote in an email to CityBeat. “The facility was clean and sanitary when we left in April 2010, which we documented in video and photos.” Downey said that Kind Corp. never said a word about the condition of the property.
Two weeks ago, the city sent a letter to Stanford asking for an update. Jim Barwick, director of the city’s Real Estate Assets Department, said Kind Corp. hasn’t responded.
A woman who answered the phone at the Kind Corp. office said the only person who’d answer CityBeat’s questions was Carol Benninger, director of operations for Falkenberg / Gilliam & Associates, the property-management company Kind Corp. hired to manage San Diego Square.
Benninger said Kind Corp is “in the process of trying to get the senior center repaired and in a position where they can re-open it.” She said she didn’t know when that might be. As for parking, Benninger said there’s nothing in San Diego Square’s permit that requires it be provided.
According to documents obtained through a public-records request, the city’s Neighborhood Code Compliance Department cited San Diego Square on Oct. 18, 1993, for not providing parking. HUD followed a few months later, giving Kind Corp. one month to open the lot to tenants.
Three years of back-and-forth ensued between the city and Kind Corp. lawyers, with neither side backing down. In 1996, the city was poised to revoke San Diego Square’s permit after staff concluded it was the only way to force compliance. Why that never happened isn’t clear from available documents and the only other record addressing the matter is a Dec. 2, 2002, proposal from Kind Corp. attorney Edward Whittler: Each month, a single floor of the building would have access to the lot. That idea apparently didn’t fly.
Barwick said the city’s position hasn’t changed: “Common sense says if you’re going to build [parking spaces], the residents should use them. We were hoping that if the Housing Commission bought the property from Kind, all of these issues would be resolved.”
In December 2010, some three-dozen tenants met to discuss forming a tenants organization, something they’re encouraged to do under HUD guidelines. As a group, they figured, they’d have more luck getting Kind Corp. to pay attention to issues like those faced by Agnes Conti and Loren Baker.
To a meeting last week with a reporter, Conti brought a trap containing a dead bug over an inch long.
“Sometimes they’re even bigger than that,” she said. An exterminator told her she had a hole in her kitchen sink and that’s where the bugs were breeding. But, Conti said, management refuses to do anything but give her more bug traps.
“They intimidate us and try to make things as difficult as possible,” she said.
After being hospitalized last October, Baker, who’s in a wheelchair and relies on an oxygen tank, returned to his apartment to find someone had moved his furniture and possessions to his balcony. Management found bed bugs in his apartment while he was in the hospital but didn’t bother to tell him, said his nephew Rick Stephens. “It took me two days to find his medication,” Stephens said.
Curt Phillips, who organized the first tenants meeting, said subsequent attempts to reach out to other tenants have been thwarted by property management. In May, Falkenberg / Gilliam surveyed tenants to see if they wished to be represented by Phillips’ group and sent the results to HUD’s L.A. office. Out of 109 surveys, 74 residents checked “no.” A HUD director in L.A. sent Benninger a letter on July 6, determining that the group failed to meet HUD guidelines to be recognized as an official tenants association.
“The tenants do not want their representation or their interference,” Benninger told CityBeat. “They would be perfectly happy if those residents just all moved away.”
Phillips said he has signatures from 77 residents that contradict the survey’s findings.
Michael Kane, executive director of the National Alliance of HUD Tenants, said HUD’s L.A. office is “flat-out wrong.”
“There’s nothing in the regulations at all that says that 100 percent of the tenants have to be involved in the tenants group,” Kane said. “What the term ‘representative’ means is that it’s inclusive—that it’s open to everybody.”
Tenants associations are to be free from management interference, guidelines say. “How is sending an owners’ representative around with a petition being completely independent?” Kane asked. “[HUD] didn’t read their own regulations.”
No one from HUD responded to CityBeat’s questions.
A recent letter from Carol Galante, a HUD deputy assistant secretary, lays out the rights of tenant associations. Among them, property owners must provide a meeting space without requiring prior approval (Kind Corp. requires prior approval); management is not allowed to attend meetings or interfere with an association’s attempts to notify tenants of meetings.
“An enlightened owner would welcome the participation of residents in the governance of the property because it improves the community for everyone,” Kane said.
Write to kellyd@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.
