Calls for repairs to Fuji Towers
Fixing 40-year-old building could cost up to $14million, administrators maintain
SAN JOSE — For the past three years, Dorie Green has lived at the Fuji Towers apartment complex with hot water shutting off constantly in her studio, she says, elevators broken beyond repair, and severely outdated sewage and electrical systems.
“We, the residents, are really having a hard time,” said the 62-year-old Filipino immigrant. “How many years are we going to stay in this world? We want to enjoy our time and our lives in a nice place.”
Forty years after it opened as an affordable housing complex for seniors on North Fifth Street in Japantown, residents say the building desperately needs to be rehabilitated and modernized — an undertaking that administrators at Fuji
Towers estimate could cost up to $14 million.
Green and nearly 150 other residents shared their concerns at a meeting Thursday at the Wesley United Methodist Church, calling on local and federal housing officials to help revitalize the complex, while keeping it affordable.
To many in the closeknit community, Fuji Towers carries special cultural significance, having been built in 1976 to house lowincome Japanese-American residents.
Since then, it has diversified considerably throughout the decades, housing predominantly Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, South Asian and Latino immigrants.
The complex, which operates as a nonprofit, is composed of 140 units, with an estimated 200 residents.
Officials at the nonprofit Fuji Towers say they have applied for additional U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funding subsidies to ensure ongoing affordability and cover the building’s necessary improvements.
If Fuji Towers does not receive this additional assistance, conditions at the complex are likely to worsen, said general manager Frances Almazan.
“We run the risk of becoming a slum, basically. It’s an uncontrollable phenomenon that we can’t help because we don’t have the income to provide them with quality living,” she said.
Janice Charles described Fuji Towers as a “blessing” for her brother James Charles, who lived at the complex up until his passing in July.
He was one of the only African-American tenants in the building, and the community welcomed him, she said.
At the same time, “there’s been no improvements made in the (past) 40 years. Not that the building has not been maintained well, but it needs to be brought up to the standards of today’s time,” Charles said.
Currently, the complex offers affordable housing rentals to very low-income seniors at about 50 percent below market value. A studio at the complex, for example, costs $514-$647 per month. But a decadeslong HUD contract, which offers significant rental assistance to tenants, is set to expire in January.
The issue has highlighted what community leaders are calling a shortage of affordable housing, in a region where monthly rent for an apartment exceeds $2,000 per month.
There are 46 senior developments throughout San Jose, which collectively offer an estimated 4,000 senior affordable units, according to the city’s department of housing.
Only one other complex, Jeanne d’Arc Manor on Fifth Street, is HUD funded.
Fuji Towers submitted an application in June to be considered for HUD’s Rental Assistance Demonstration, a program that allows public housing agencies to control public and private debt and equity in order to reinvest in the public housing stock, according to HUD.
As part of this program, units become Section 8 housing under long-term contracts that must be renewed by law. Residents allot 30 percent of their income for rent. Twenty-eight units at Fuji Towers would be covered under this program.
Management also submitted an application to receive Tenant Protection Vouchers to cover the remaining 112 units. These vouchers ensure that lowincome residents are not displaced as a result of loss of subsidy assistance.
Ed Cabrera, the region’s HUD spokesman, said, “HUD is working diligently to assure sufficient funding is available to process these vouchers and to minimize potential displacement of tenants to the greatest extent possible. While we are working to assure that the vast majority of residents receive assistance, that is still our goal and not yet a certainty.”