With broken heaters, mold and fear of rats, these Sacramento County renters want laws to help
The Palms Apartments sits on a well-traveled stretch of Marconi Avenue in Sacramento County, a stone’s throw from the Arden Arcade branch of the Sacramento Public Library. On the west side of the complex, a boarded-up building is surrounded by a chain link fence.
Jacqueline Saffo, 71, lived in a unit there with her husband, Cory, until a fire last year forced them to make a hasty exit. They lost virtually all their possessions and would have been homeless, she said, if the American Red Cross had not provided shelter.
Saffo said the Palms landlord allowed them to move into an apartment in one of the complex’s neighboring buildings late last summer after they spent two days living in their car.
The heater in the unit has been on the fritz since they moved in, she said. Her landlord sent a contractor to get it working properly over Christmas, Saffo said, but after running it, she became ill and suspected a gas leak. Within days, a technician from the utility company told her a new unit would have to be installed and that he had no choice but to shut off the gas until then.
That meant the Saffos lost access not only to their heater but also to the stove, so they spent a week earlier this month unable to cook meals or warm their apartment. A new heater was installed late last week, Saffo said, and the gas was switched back on.
But Saffo landed in the hospital Tuesday with the flu, she said, and she was still there Wednesday. She said she felt her respiratory condition worsened because she couldn’t warm her home.
At a tenant rally Sunday, Saffo wheezed and coughed but was determined to speak. She said the property owner, Carson Avenue Partners, tried to push tenants out rather than work with them to properly make repairs. She said she’s looked for other housing but has found nothing else she can afford that she really likes.
“We’ve been on the list now for a year at a housing project,” she said. “Who wants to live in a housing project? We like it right here. It might not be much, but it’s ours, and we not going nowhere.”
Rather than remodel empty units and relocate existing tenants to them, Saffo and other tenants said, their landlord has told them they would have to move out so he could make major repairs to the two buildings in the complex.
California law doesn’t give apartment residents the rights and protections that renters have in 19 other states have adopted a model tenant law recommended by the American Bar Association, said veteran tenants attorney Joseph Tobener. During his 20 years of practice here, he’s represented more than 2,000 clients who often have waited months or even years to resolve health and safety problems.
Dan Wayne, one of the partners in the Carson Avenue business, said the Palms had been neglected for some time before the current owners acquired it out of foreclosure. Property records indicate the ownership changed last April.
“We took over with a plan to make repairs, renovate the property and provide a quality housing experience, as we do at many other locations,” said Wayne, who also operates Plenty of Places. “We have made a significant number of repairs and more are currently in progress.”
Wayne, in a December email, said he’s hired contractors to work on heating, flooring, walls and other issues but that some tenants have not allowed contractors access to do the needed work.
During Sunday’s rally, Palms residents said they’re fed up with incompetent repairs and they feel it’s a calculated strategy to get them to accept low-ball move-out offers. If they do, they said, they will likely end up homeless.
If politicians can help them solve the health, safety and infrastructure problems they’re facing at the Palms Apartments, the tenants said, they would probably also find a way to start lowering homelessness rates in California.
Some local California governments already are modeling how to do this, Tobener said.
Palms renters organize after waiting months for repairs
Saffo and two other Palms residents — Donald Holmes and Corina Lovelace — said their landlord began to make repairs after they banded togetherin a tenants association last fall and collectively pressed Carson Avenue Partners to address longstanding maintenance and habitability concerns.
Together, they marked the one-year-anniversary of the fire with the rally alongside their fellow tenants. The cause of the fire has not been determined, according to the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District.
Saffo relived that awful night during a Palms tenant association rally one evening last October, and she and other Palms residents shared what it was like to live inside the remaining building.
Their requests for repairs were unheeded, they said, including a mail center where every mailbox had a busted door. After TV reports on the rally aired, Saffo said, a new mail center was installed.
The complex grounds are far from safe, Lovelace said, because there’s not enough lighting after dark. A wrought-iron fence around the front of the complex might look imposing, she said, but the entry gate has no lock to prevent strangers from walking onto the grounds. The rear parking lot is equally as accessible from the street.
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Wayne said he now has security patrolling the property, but Lovelace and Holmes said the guards generally sit in a car. During the noon rally on Sunday, a guard stood in the parking lot.
They also noted that outsiders have managed to sneak through holes in the chain-link fence around the charred, boarded-up building and access units, and they asked Wayne to better secure it and hire people to clean up the grounds.
“There is constantly trash and debris being dumped outside our homes, and no one comes to clean it up so we’re sometimes forced to do it ourselves, especially when the trash is blocking our walkways,” they wrote.
There’s fuel for another fire, tenants say
On Sunday, piles of large palm fronds stood on the property, and residents said they have seen people burning for heat near the buildings.
“The trees are not maintained and the fronds that fall down are accumulating near the building, which is concerning given the history of the fire here,” they wrote in their letter.
They also sent photos to Wayne of a vast pool of water standing in the rear parking lot where elders in the complex often meet their para-transit drivers because it’s unsafe for those shuttles to stop in front of the complex on busy Marconi Avenue. The rainwater, they said, also has pooled on their walkways and seeped through a gap under one elder’s door and into her living room
These exterior maintenance, safety and security issues trouble Lovelace and Saffo as much as the problems they have inside their homes, they said.
Holmes, Saffo and Lovelace all had holes in the walls of their apartments where they believe rodents were entering. Holmes had one in his bathroom. Lovelace had a hole in her bathroom wall that led to the unit next door and two holes in her living room where she could reach outside. They finally got those repaired in December as well.
A mother of two, Lovelace said she wanted to enjoy visitation with two children at her home but their grandparents have custody and wouldn’t allow them to visit because they didn’t think the complex was safe.
Like Saffo, Holmes, Lovelace and other tenants have had problems with their heaters and gas shut-offs. Holmes and other tenants reported that the electrical wiring doesn’t work reliably.
Both Lovelace and Saffo have flooring problems. Each of the women stood in their living rooms, bent down and easily lifted up loose floorboards. Large areas of Lovelace’s living room and kitchen have had only sub-flooring since she moved there last March.
Saffo said the loose floorboards popped up and shifted as her 72-year-old husband walked on them, causing him to stumble. He is legally blind, she said, and she occasionally must use a walker.
Palms residents: Repairs lead to new problems
Both Saffo and Lovelace were relieved last month when their landlord sent contractors to install new flooring. However, they said, their relief quickly turned to dismay as they realized the workers were installing the new carpet and padding right over the existing flooring.
Lovelace said she asked the workers why they were doing this and they told her they had been instructed not to remove the existing flooring.
In Lovelace’s unit, it means the carpet has uneven elevations because part of the floor is covered by boards and other sections are not. Saffo said the boards continued to move beneath the carpet, but now, like her husband, she couldn’t see them.
She worried one or both of them would suffer a life-altering fall, she said, so she nailed down the new carpet and the boards beneath it.
Holmes, who was hospitalized with pneumonia in December, said he plans to have his unit tested for mold because he believes that is the substance he’s seeing on some walls. He and his relatives have cleaned it, he said, but it keeps coming back.
Saffo, who has lived in the Palms Apartments for about six years, said she recently got to walk through a one-bedroom unit right next door to her current apartment.
“It’s renovated all the way through,” she said. “It’s beautiful. It’s immaculate.”
She asked Carson Avenue Partners whether she and her husband could relocate to it, she said.
“They told me I’ve got to go and fax some paperwork with the reason why I want to move next door,” Saffo said. “He knows why. They’ve still got work to do to this place.”
In a Jan. 8 letter, Saffo made her appeal. On Wednesday, speaking from her hospital bed, Saffo said Wayne had approved the move, She and Lovelace expressed frustration, though, at the number of new problems that repairs have created.
For months, the Palms tenants said, the only representative they saw from Carson Avenue Partnerswould knock on their doors in the evenings and on weekends, offering what the tenants described as low-ball offers — $2,000 to $4,000 — to get them to move out that same day.
“This dude is walking around with $3,000, saying ‘Here, take this $3,000. Move out right now,’” said Holmes, who has lived at the Palms for about five years. “When you’re dealing with broke people who can’t hardly feed, themselves, $3,000 seems like a lot until they leave these apartments and go out and try to rent a room for a week. All that money is gone. Now you’re homeless. Now you’re sleeping in your car. Then what?”
Although the property sits within the county’s jurisdiction, former and current tenants said the representative told them the owner and the “city” had agreed to a redevelopment plan and all tenants would be forced to move out when that plan got underway.
After hearing this several times, former Palms resident Angel Sanchez said she and her daughter felt pressured to accept a move-out offer of $3,750 and a 21-day hotel stay.
“He made it sound like the city would take over the complex, and we would be evicted and get nothing,” Sanchez said.
They spent a chunk of the money that Carson Avenue Partners paid them to lease storage, rent a moving truck, buy gas and pay their security deposit and first month’s rent, Sanchez said.
Veteran tenant lawyer says CA laws hurt renters
If California had adopted key elements of the bar association’s model framework for tenant law, Tobener said, the Palms tenants would have had greater protections when it comes to move-out offers, tenant relocation and other issues they have faced.
Currently, he said, California’s 37-year-old Civil Code Section 1942.4 actually provides a layer of protection for landlords. Tenants cannot file lawsuits against property owners until a local code enforcement agency has issued a notice of violation to a property owner and given the owner 35 days to remedy the problem.
But 19 other states and the city of San Jose have adopted an ABA model law that allows tenants to sue without any involvement from code enforcement. For any lawsuit regarding habitability, he said, the landlord has to know about the issue and be given time to correct it.
The ABA legal standard gives renters a private right of action already afforded workers, fair housing plaintiffs and other types of consumers, Tobener said, and if they prevail in their lawsuit, many of the states allow them to collect attorney fees and both actual and punitive damages.
Many tenants already may wait weeks, months or even years before contacting code enforcement, Tobener said, because they believed their landlord would act in good faith or because they feared that their landlord would retaliate or that code enforcement would take an action that would end in them losing their home.
After California tenants finally contact code enforcement, Tobener said, they must wait until an inspector visits their unit, documents the issue and sends out a notice of violation to the landlord.
“Not all building inspectors are created equally,” Tobener said. “You might send out a public housing inspector, and they may not work hard to even get into the unit. It’s hit or miss.”
Then if the landlord corrects the problem within 35 days, Tobener said, the tenants cannot pursue a legal claim for damages. A landlord can operate negligently for years, he said, and escape any liability for health problems or other types of losses that tenants suffered.
Research over the last decade has found that unsafe housing conditions affect cognitive development and learning, Tobener said. His law firm’s website lists dozens of such studies.
To ensure tenants get reasonable and equitable offers for a buyout or temporary relocation, Berkeley and several other local California governments have established a formula that landlords must use to determine the size of such offers. They also detail the landlord’s financial responsibility when tenants are forced to find other lodging while the landlord makes major repairs.
Tobener said he has crafted a measure that he is proposing that San Francisco’s city and county leaders adopt.
Palms tenants push for repairs, hope for champion
The Sacramento Valley Tenants Union, a coalition that organized the Palms tenants association, said they have had to refer members to attorneys in the Bay Area because it’s challenging to find representation in Sacramento.
These cases take a lot of time and investigation, Tobener said, so they can be costly to pursue. An attorney doesn’t want to take cases where they aren’t certain they can get paid, he said.
The staff for Sacramento County Supervisor Rich Desmond, who represents Arden Arcade and other areas, referred questions to the county’s code enforcement department. Tenants can call 311 to report problems getting a landlord to address health and safety or maintenance issues.
Sacramento County prioritizes complaints related to health and safety — requiring, for instance, that inspectors be dispatched within 27 hours to investigate a lack of required utilities or collapsing roofs.
County spokesperson Kimberly Nava provided a report from the county code enforcement team for the Palms Apartments. It begins by noting that “all the tenants have been offered cash for keys to move out and/or relocation to a hotel for 21 days.”
Most of the tenants have refused, the inspector noted. In interviews, tenants said that the cash-for-keys offers don’t give them the time they need or enough money to pay expenses associated with a relocation.
The inspector’s report also noted that three tenants that refused entry to maintenance personnel to make any repairs, and two tenants removed smoke detectors that had recently been installed.
“Many of the major repairs will require building permits and the units to be vacated to be completed,” the inspector stated, and the owner had submitted a permit in December covering structural repairs to the roof, walkways and plumbing to repair clogged bathroom and kitchen lines.
The permit also said new electrical panels will be installed and there will be a complete rewiring of both buildings, and they also will receive new windows, doors, guardrails, appliances and light fixtures and new AC units.
The permit review process could take up to 30 days, the inspector stated.
Democratic Assemblymember Maggy Krell said she wanted to try and help the tenants get their current needs addressed and that she would think through the best ways that she as a state legislator could help all tenants in these situations.
“I am dedicated to doing what I can to helping these people and also thinking through a more systematic fix,” she said. “What it appears to me from this situation you’ve described is that there’s really insufficient enforcement of existing laws that are in place to protect tenants from unsafe and unhealthy housing conditions. I think the solution to that requires real, legal precision.”
Christina Sanchez, a grassroots organizer with the Sacramento Valley Tenants Union, said she has reached out to elected officials in the past but has found that, while elected officials will “listen to individual tenant cases, jot down notes,” they will not follow through on supporting what the tenant association demands as a whole.
“It creates division among tenants with some tenants feeling like their issues ‘may’ be addressed while others are ignored,” she said.
Angel Sanchez said there are decent landlords out there, and she found one in Bakersfield. She and her daughter had worked at the same hotel in Sacramento, and they had both been laid off, she said. The property owner in Bakersfield was willing to accept their unemployment payments as proof of income.
They’re living in a well-kept two-bedroom townhouse, Angel said, where they pay $1,200 a month in rent. Angel started a new job in December, she said, but her 30-year-old daughter was still looking for work.
If the Palms tenants are willing to move to Bakersfield, she said, she would definitely recommend her townhouse complex.
This story was originally published January 23, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the number of buildings in the Palms Apartments complex; there are two. This story has also updated references of Dan Wayne’s involvement in Plenty of Places and Carson Avenue Partners.
