\u201cThroughout the nearly two-month elevator outage, Defendants failed to comply with any of these requirements, jeopardizing the health and safety of their tenants,\u201d the Oakland City Attorney\u2019s Office wrote in the lawsuit filed Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The legal complaint<\/a>, naming Mosser and CEO Neveo Mosser as defendants, details how several tenants were allegedly impacted by the delayed repairs. A fourth-floor tenant with lung disease and asthma has difficulty walking or talking, the suit says. She was allegedly relocated by Mosser to La Peralta after she dealt with similar elevator outages \u2014 and was once trapped for hours in an elevator \u2014 at another of the company\u2019s properties in San Francisco.\u00a0<\/p>\n During the 52 days the fixtures were inoperable, this tenant \u201cwas forced to climb four flights of stairs to get home, an ordeal that required her to stop and rest for ten to fifteen minutes between each landing just to recover her breath,\u201d the city alleges in the lawsuit.\u00a0<\/p>\n She visited Mosser\u2019s San Francisco office to ask for accommodations. According to the city, she was offered a smaller lower-floor apartment but was asked to pay the same rent and a new security deposit. She declined. A few months later, after the tenant told Mosser that litigation would be coming, according to the lawsuit, they moved her to another building in Oakland, though allegedly didn\u2019t provide any relocation funds. At that property, on E. 18th Street, she again found elevator troubles, the city says.<\/p>\n Another tenant, Kathy \u201cKit\u201d Vaquilar, is quoted in a city press release saying the outage was particularly difficult because it occurred during the hot summer months.<\/p>\n \u201cI had to plan every trip up and down the stairs, which, at my age, would take about 10 minutes every time,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the lawsuit, Oakland blames the outages at La Peralta on \u201cavoidable delays,\u201d claiming Mosser failed to pay its contractors who service elevators. Chronic elevator issues existed before the 52-day period the lawsuit focuses on, according to the city attorney.<\/p>\n \u201cIn just one year, from 2024 to 2025, the Oakland Fire Department freed tenants trapped in La Peralta\u2019s elevators fourteen times,\u201d the city claims.\u00a0<\/p>\n Reached by phone this morning, a Mosser employee directed us to email a property manager with the company. We requested an interview but did not hear back from him today.<\/p>\n The Mosser Companies was founded by the Mosser family in San Francisco in the 1950s. Today, the corporation owns and manages more than 3,000 housing units in California, according to the city and Mosser. It\u2019s especially active in San Francisco, where it owns dozens of buildings. Over the past decade, Mosser bought<\/a>, and then sold<\/a>, a number of Oakland properties, as well.<\/p>\n Mosser has run into financial troubles<\/a>, including foreclosures, over the past couple of years.<\/p>\n The city attorney alleges that it was only after media coverage of the lengthy outage last summer that Mosser took action and notified tenants the elevators would be fixed. The city claims Mosser said in this notice that tenants would have access to on-site help with groceries, laundry, and packages in the meantime, but never provided this service.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, a group of tenants at La Peralta also sued Mosser<\/a>, making similar allegations about habitability, broken elevators, and mistreatment by the landlord. Their lawsuit, which is ongoing, alleges that Mosser has a history of neglecting elevator issues at many of its properties.<\/p>\n Ethan Silverstein, an attorney at Movement Legal<\/a> who\u2019s representing the tenants, said he\u2019s pleased to see the city filing suit too.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m very happy the city is enforcing its laws,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n![\"La](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/La-Peralta-Mosser-apartment-building.jpg\")
A group of tenants has filed a separate lawsuit against Mosser that details similar accusations around broken elevators and mistreatment. Credit: Darwin BondGraham\/The Oaklandside<\/p>\n