Eviction filed against transitional housing property in Stockton
STOCKTON — Christina Boula-Rodriguez laid out about a dozen business cards on a table.
The names on the cards are from city officials, code enforcement officers, legal representatives and advocates, who Boula-Rodriguez hopes become her lifeline to a way out of the desperate situation she and others have found themselves in.
“These are like the Bible to me,” she said with tears in her eyes. “These are the people who keep coming and telling me it’s going to be OK.”
Boula-Rodriguez is a resident of Urojas Community Services at 322 N. California St. On Wednesday, she was notified that V& N Patel, which owns the property rented by Urojas, has filed an eviction lawsuit against the organization and by default, the residents who live there.
The lawsuit comes after months of actions, warnings and citations from various agencies, including the Stockton Fire Department, code enforcement and the City Attorney’s Office, for Urojas and V & N Patel to address safety concerns, including a lack of a fire alarm system.
Other issues reported by code enforcement include leaking faucets, cockroaches, men loitering on the property when no men are allowed to be there, inoperable heaters and management periodically shutting off electricity.
Urojas Community Services opened in Stockton in May 2015 on the promise to provide safe transitional housing for women. Jasper Lowery, a reverend and executive director of Urojas, told The Record in December 2015 the program would assist women who are military veterans and single women with children in finding emergency, transitional and permanent housing, and accessing mental health care.
Lowery had spent more than two decades working in the mental health field in Oakland before moving to Stockton.
“God sent me here to help these families,” he said during that December interview.
By summer 2016, allegations of mismanagement, poor living conditions and code violations were being reported out of the Stockton facility. In September, Nina Lamfers, who moved into Urojas after leaving her sober living residence, described the conditions at the facility to this paper as “atrocious.”
Lowery said then that the code enforcement case brought against Urojas was initiated by a disgruntled man who had caused many disturbances, and that the residents weren’t doing enough to keep the property clean.
Urojas’ Stockton facility came into the spotlight after four people were killed in a four-alarm fire at a three-story apartment building the organization leased in Oakland on March 27. That building, too, had a long list of safety violations. And the building owner, Mead Avenue Housing Associates, was attempting to evict Urojas.
In Stockton, since August 2016 code enforcement has noted units occupied by people, including children, have had no smoke or carbon monoxide alarms, according to safety reports.