Dozens of renters displaced by a monstrous blaze in their downtown building Monday quickly received a letter from their landlord announcing their leases had been “terminated.”
The renters could make an escorted trip to their scorched apartments to retrieve their belongings and return their keys, receiving a refund on their security deposits, said the letter. It came from Commonwealth Management, a company registered to prominent Oakland landlord Ted Dang, who’s owned the building at 1770 Broadway for decades.
But lawyers who provide legal assistance to renters under a contract with the city say the letter is “invalid.”
“A fire is not a legitimate event that terminates a lease or gives the landlord the ability to terminate the lease,” said David Hall, managing attorney at Centro Legal de la Raza.
Depending on the cause of the fire or other findings, the landlord may be required by city law to cover temporary relocation costs for the residents and guarantee them the right to return once repairs are complete, Hall said.
Centro Legal and the city of Oakland are advising residents to refrain from signing any legal documents before speaking with an attorney.
Dang and Commonwealth Management did not respond to multiple requests for interviews.
When the three-alarm fire broke out just after 7 a.m. Monday, more than 60 firefighters rushed to the scene to extinguish the blaze and evacuate tenants from over 40 apartments. The fire was out by 8:40 a.m., and the Oakland Fire Department red-tagged the property.
Three residents were sent to the hospital for smoke inhalation injuries and have since been released, said OFD spokesperson Michael Hunt. A firefighter also suffered a minor injury from heat exposure.
The ground floor of the property has a few local businesses, including Stanley Petey Cox’s — better known as Mistah F.A.B’s — Dope Era shop. The storefronts were boarded up Tuesday morning.
In a video he posted online, Cox said he’s staying hopeful despite the destruction of a cherished community store he’s built over eight years.
“I’m not letting none of that make me become discouraged, become hateful,” he said. “I’m yearning to see what tomorrow brings.” The fire occurred on the first day of a series of comedy, music, and other events he’s hosting, called FAB Week.
The city administration, mayor’s office, and Red Cross have responded to the fire and its impacts with “urgency,” said Hunt. “Nobody wants to see a population of people who are reliant on affordable housing be displaced for a long time.”
While the property isn’t subsidized affordable housing, it’s an older rent-controlled building where many tenants are paying below-market rates or have Section 8 vouchers.
The city has established a temporary shelter at the Willie Keyes Recreation Center at 3131 Union St. for displaced residents. The shelter, where 17 people are currently staying, will be staffed around the clock and open “until further notice,” the city said in a press release.
“We’re going to keep working with our community partners to make sure these residents are not left behind,” Mayor Barbara Lee said in a statement.
Some tenants and supporters have begun launching fundraisers for impacted residents — including several tenants who are employees of sister restaurants Jaji and Parche near the building.
“I barely escaped with my life, but I lost everything I owned in the flames,” wrote tenant Saron Hanson on their fundraiser. “Now, I am left without a place to call home and am facing the overwhelming challenge of starting over from scratch.”
According to the tenant and news reports, the blaze may have been ignited by a resident charging a car battery that exploded. In 2024, city records show, someone submitted a complaint about a “scooter and bike chop shop” run on the property, where lithium batteries were charged.
However, the fire department has not yet determined the cause of Monday’s flames. Inspectors are still “peeling back debris,” speaking with tenants, and examining the units, Hunt said.
A history of fires at 1770 Broadway
Mistah F.A.B.’s Dope Era shop on the ground floor of 1770 Broadway was also affected by the fire. Credit: Darwin BondGraham/The Oaklandside
Just under two years ago, another fire broke out at the five-story building at Broadway and 19th Street. But that incident was confined to just one unit, according to Hunt, and resulted in OFD placing the property on fire watch for only four days.
A subsequent investigation turned up other compliance issues, though, and the city issued the owner a notice of violation.
Those issues were resolved by the time the city re-inspected the property in October 2024, said Hunt, and another investigation of the building in September 2025, prompted by a habitability complaint, found no violations.
Historical newspaper records reveal that another fire in the building injured eight tenants in 1993. Dang already owned the property at the time. That fire was caused by “electrical overload,” according to a 1994 San Francisco Chronicle story.
The year after that fire, Dang ran for mayor of Oakland, finishing second to Elihu Harris.
Dang, an Oakland Chinatown native, was one of the founders of East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation, or EBALDC, one of Oakland’s most significant nonprofit affordable housing developers.
Dang served on the organization’s board through at least 2024, and received a “lifetime achievement award” at EBALDC’s 50th anniversary celebration in the fall.
In an interview with the organization, Dang said EBALDC grew out of a feeling that he and his co-founders had of ”an obligation to give back to our community.” They were educated and entered the workforce during a time of social upheaval and civil rights organizing, including among Asian Americans in Oakland.
But in at least a few instances, Dang’s development and rental businesses have run into “controversy over legal or political questions,” noted the 1994 Chronicle article.
After restoring his Broadway property following the 1993 fire, Dang told a reporter he intended to keep some of the units vacant, because he was choosy about whom to rent to.
“I will not accept welfare tenants, or people who are not working, or people who have some other problems,” he said at the time. “I’d rather leave them vacant. I’ve been that route…we end up evicting them.”
Court records show Dang has been a party to numerous lawsuits in Alameda County over the past several decades, sometimes as the plaintiff and sometimes as a defendant.
Dang owns 1770 Broadway through a company called 19th & Broadway Associates, incorporated in 1984.
He and his family own at least 16 other properties in the Bay Area, many around downtown Oakland, Chinatown, and Adam’s Point, according to public records and a San Francisco Chronicle database
Hall, the attorney from Centro Legal, said several tenants he spoke with — some of whom have children and some of whom are elderly — are eager to move back to the centrally located building, and were distressed to receive the letter notifying them their leases were terminated.
The incident is the largest single instance of displacement in the city since the New Year’s 2023 flood at the Coliseum Connections property in East Oakland. Residents there were unable to return home for months.
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