A disabled tenant at\u00a0the Harriet Tubman Terrace apartments in South Berkeley is suing the building\u2019s management and owner along with 30 individuals over \u201cuninhabitable conditions\u201d and resulting injuries and damages.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The tenant, Jimmy Smith, claims that his apartment had \u201csubstantial defective conditions,\u201d including no heat, no hot water in his shower, a broken intercom, a reduction in amenities and general dilapidation and lack of maintenance.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Residents at the Harriet Tubman House \u2014 an affordable housing complex for older adults and individuals with disabilities \u2014 have made claims regarding the safety and maintenance of the building before, including that multiple units had no heat<\/a>, they weren\u2019t made aware of renovations and some residents were exposed<\/a> to asbestos.\u00a0<\/p>\n Smith explained in an interview that while he had been living at the complex for about eight years, the issues started to become apparent to him about four years ago, following renovations at the apartment complex.\u00a0<\/p>\n He said there were times when he would have to go without a shower, sometimes for weeks on end, and claims he was without heating for four years. He said this caused him psychological stress and turmoil.\u00a0<\/p>\n Smith also claims in the lawsuit that he suffered injury and damages due to the conditions of the apartment. This includes emotional distress, discomfort and annoyance, bodily injury, pain and suffering, loss of personal property, overpayment of rent and payment of out-of-pocket expenses.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt was very depressing,\u201d Smith said about the conditions in his apartment. \u201cI was paying for something that I should have been able to get, and they\u2019re trying to convince me that they\u2019re right in what they\u2019re doing, and I know that it wasn\u2019t right.\u201d<\/p>\n Smith said he had tried to address the hot water issues in his apartment with the owners about 10 times. When they were left unresolved, he eventually went to the Berkeley Rent Board.\u00a0<\/p>\n The lawsuit claims that after making requests for repairs and reporting the uninhabitable conditions to the owners, his requests were ignored, refused, denied or inadequately addressed.\u00a0<\/p>\n The city sent an employee from the Building and Safety Division to inspect Smith\u2019s apartment and found it to be substandard according to the lawsuit. The employee issued a notice to the defendants that the apartment was violating housing and building code.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, the lawsuit claims that the defendants \u201cfailed and refused\u201d to remedy the defects and continued to ask Smith for rent.\u00a0<\/p>\n He claimed this left him unable to maintain the apartment.\u00a0<\/p>\n The lawsuit outlines 13 legal causes of action against the defendants, including breach of contract, negligence and violation of the Berkeley Tenant Protection Ordinance.\u00a0<\/p>\n The manager of the Harriet Tubman Terrace apartments and Foundation Housing did not respond to requests to comment as of press time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A disabled tenant at\u00a0the Harriet Tubman Terrace apartments in South Berkeley is suing the building\u2019s management and owner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[121760,167338,167337,167335,121766,167336,143,145,144,32958],"class_list":["post-418378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-berkeley-rent-board","tag-berkeley-tenant-protection-ordinance","tag-building-and-safety-division","tag-foundation-housing","tag-harriet-tubman-terrace-apartments","tag-jimmy-smith","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-south-berkeley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418378","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=418378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}