decades of concerns<\/a> regarding habitability, noise and rampant drug usage.<\/p>\nBSC subsequently repossessed the building after the sale fell through.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBSC regained control of Evans Manor on April 30, 2025 … It was then that we discovered deferred maintenance we were not previously made aware of,\u201d BSC spokespeople Joshua Fenton and Cam Lippincott said in a statement. \u201cWe have spent over $100,000 in maintenance on Evans Manor since we regained control of the building in April and will continue to address all concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lippincott also works for The Daily Californian.<\/p>\n
Despite a 2019 annual report indicating that BSC \u201choped\u201d to reopen Barrington Hall in 2025, the building was put back on the market for $12.5M this June through the Pinza Group.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The listing describes the building as a housing investment, advertising its development, location and income potential.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe current tenants are far under market providing for maximum rental upside upon move-out,\u201d the listing\u2019s description reads.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Selawsky alleged that Evans Manor tenants and visitors have suffered as a result of the building\u2019s conditions and have sought medical attention for coughing, allergies, asthma attacks, sore throats, headaches and flu-like symptoms, characterizing the environment as \u201can immediate, urgent and pressing health concern.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a place that when I go there for visits, and when guests visit, they feel sick afterward. I think it must be a nightmare to live with that every day,\u201d Selawsky said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Per inspection documents reviewed by The Daily Californian, multiple strains of mold, including black mold, were found in the units and common spaces during inspections by Hazardous Materials Assessment Inc. in July and August. The company recommended remediative containment, as well as the removal of impacted windowsills and flooring.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to Katherine Poltoratzky, the former maintenance manager for the Evans Manor tenants\u2019 union, BSC attempted to coordinate spray cleanings without evacuating residents until tenants protested this action. Poltoratzky claimed a worker from the inspection company expressly said it would not be safe to do with tenants in the building. BSC has not taken any further steps to clean the mold, according to Poltoratzky. A BSC spokesperson did not directly respond when asked if further remediation steps were being taken.<\/p>\n
Poltoratzky also echoed the ongoing health impacts on tenants in the building.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe mold is literally under the rug \u2014 so figuratively speaking, it seems like management thinks they can kind of keep it at that level, under the carpet,\u201d Selawsky said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In February 2024, The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Ridge House, a BSC student co-op, was also suffering from mold, asbestos and rodent issues, prompting inspections and concerns from the city. According to the report, a former BSC resident also claimed the Kingman Hall co-op building was impacted in 2023 from black mold and asbestos.<\/p>\n
According to Selawsky, residents have also experienced a shortage of hot water and water pressure issues in the rainier months. There have also been tenant complaints of ongoing harassment, with Selawsky and his clients formally requesting security cameras and police meetings, which have yet to be implemented.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a campaign of harassing people \u2014 I want to be very clear, I\u2019m not suggesting that management is behind that. I don\u2019t think they are,\u201d Selawsky clarified. \u201cBut people who are active (in the building) seem to be getting harassed one way or another, with sexual harassment or swastikas.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawyer also alleged that tenants have complained of rodent and electrical problems, as well as defective smoke detectors. Selawsky claimed that the building\u2019s conditions broke California\u2019s implied warrant of habitability. \u201cThere\u2019s a certain baseline level of health and liability conditions in a residential apartment building. (Not meeting that level) is a legal violation and a violation of the lease,\u201d Selawsky said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn California, you have to have a working heating system, you have to have an electrical system, you have a plumbing system, and it\u2019s supposed to actually work. If there\u2019s trash piling up, if there\u2019s rodents, these are potential habitability violations. \u2026 This is the law. Whether it\u2019s in the lease or not, you can\u2019t contract around it,\u201d Selawsky explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Weltz said when he moved into Evans Manor in 2016, the conditions were initially liveable.<\/p>\n
Weltz alleged that a hole in a wall in his original room, caused by softening drywall due to a rain storm four years ago, has yet to be fully repaired. When BSC moved him into a different room in June in order to carry out repairs, Weltz claimed he found mold in his bathroom, as well as water damage and an active leak in the ceiling. Since then, Weltz said, he has been in a back-and-forth with BSC maintenance\u2019s staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been one non-issue to another \u2014 they say we\u2019re going to fix it, but there\u2019s a big problem with the piping, and we need to look into that first, and then we\u2019ll fix it in a month or so, and then they\u2019re like, \u2019Oh, well, we know that there\u2019s asbestos in the building and we\u2019re not trained to handle asbestos, so we\u2019re going to get trained,\u2019\u201d Weltz explained.<\/p>\n
BSC\u2019s maintenance staff initially told him they would be trained in June, but in September, they forwarded him to an outside contractor who informed him he would need to leave his room for multiple days in order for repairs to be carried out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was almost a month ago. … I\u2019m ready anytime, but I\u2019m waiting for BSC to reach out with the requisite documents \u2014 according to the Berkeley Housing Code \u2014 for relocation due to repairs. Unfortunately, I\u2019m in a circumstance where I don\u2019t have enough money to just pop off to a hotel,\u201d Weltz said.<\/p>\n
Upon reassuming management, Weltz claimed, BSC offered to rehouse student tenants in co-op buildings at market rate, which would double or triple their rent. The same offer was not made to non-student or working tenants, who, Weltz said, can not afford to leave or be evicted.<\/p>\n
Weltz also alleged that tenants had been frustrated with reviewing BSC Board of Directors meeting notes, which only refer to the complaints regarding mold, leaks, bugs and \u201ccapability concerns\u201d from Evans Manor as \u201csmall issues.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if the management company was being negligent, which they were, that ultimately comes down to the Berkeley Student Cooperative. It was their building that they were supposed to be maintaining, and they haven\u2019t been,\u201d Weltz said. \u201cWe\u2019re not being troublesome tenants. We\u2019re just asking for the basic decency of habitable living.<\/p>\n
Christian Fernandez, another resident and senior campus student, said his room had not been too impacted, with the exception of recurring mold on his windowsill, but living at Evans Manor required constant upkeep.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I washed the floors (after moving in), they were ridiculously filthy.\u201d Fernandez said. \u201cNo matter how much you clean, (the mold) comes back. \u2026 I try to maintain them myself. I feel like it\u2019s a lot of elbow grease living there. Sometimes I get concerned about my health as well.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fernandez says he declined BSC\u2019s offer to move him into co-op housing due to the attached rent increase.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to Selawsky, the building was legally prevented from being a co-op after its Barrington Hall years, and current residents lack formal representation with the board, with which Weltz expressed frustration.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think these tenants are exhausted with this situation, and some of them are getting sick, and they\u2019re really starting to feel hopeless. \u2026 They feel like the response from management is to close the doors that previously they had pretended were open,\u201d Selawsky said. \u201cI don\u2019t like the idea (that BSC) can hide behind being a cooperative, especially when this specific building is not really a cooperative. \u2026 I want people to understand it doesn\u2019t matter what you call yourself \u2014 it matters what you do, and right now they\u2019re not doing right by these people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Multiple residents at Evans Manor, an apartment complex owned by the Berkeley Student Cooperative, or BSC, have alleged…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[16238,16242,16239,16245,16252,16237,16241,16247,16244,16248,16250,16251,143,145,144,16240,16246,16249,8209,16243],"class_list":{"0":"post-19592","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-2316-haste-street","9":"tag-barrington-hall","10":"tag-berkeley-student-cooperative","11":"tag-cam-lippincott","12":"tag-christian-fernandez","13":"tag-evans-manor","14":"tag-eviction-defense-center","15":"tag-hazardous-materials-assessment","16":"tag-joshua-fetton","17":"tag-katherine-poltoratzky","18":"tag-kingman-hall","19":"tag-morgan-weltz","20":"tag-oakland","21":"tag-oakland-headlines","22":"tag-oakland-news","23":"tag-peter-selawsky","24":"tag-pinza-group","25":"tag-ridge-house","26":"tag-san-francisco-chronicle","27":"tag-victoria-associates"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}