City attorney sues landlord, calls basement units ‘firetrap’
The San Francisco city attorney has sued the owner and commercial occupant of a building that illegally housed tenants in the unit’s squalid, hazardous basement for at least 11 years.
The suit, filed Tuesday in San Francisco Superior Court, is directed at Melissa Mendoza of Hillsborough, who owns the three-story unit in the Outer Mission, and the building’s master tenant, Ernesto Paredes of Daly City.
Mendoza and Paredes are accused of violating fire, electrical, plumbing and other municipal codes, failing to respond to numerous code violation notices and operating a public-nuisance building. The building, at 4680-4690 Mission St., houses the Clean Wash Center laundry on the ground floor.
City fire officials have referred to the building as “a death trap” and say fire code violations there were “egregious.”
The 20 people who were dwelling in the building’s windowless basement were discovered by firefighters responding to a nonemergency call late on Christmas Day last year. According to the lawsuit, the dank living quarters were rife with leaky pipes and exposed wiring and had a single functioning shower, a rat and roach infestation and “rooms” partitioned off from one another with drywall and wood planks. The only exit out of the basement was 200 feet from the farthest sleeping unit, the suit contends.
“The building was a firetrap,” said City Attorney Dennis Herrera in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “The living conditions were not only appalling and illegal, they were extremely dangerous. These people were basically stuck in a dungeon.”
Most of the people living there were adults, ranging from 30 to 40 years old, but one was a 12-year-old girl. The oldest was 72. Paredes was charging monthly rents of between $300 and $900 per unit, the suit says.
The first responders alerted city fire inspectors, who cited the building for a number of building code violations. By Feb. 14, the Fire Department ordered the building evacuated and mandated that Paredes pay the tenants $4,262 per unit to cover relocation costs.
“I applaud the city attorney for taking action to go after this slumlord,” said Supervisor Ahsha Safai, whose District 11 includes the property. Safai said his office worked closely with other city departments to help relocate the building’s tenants. Some tenants had lived in the basement for 11 years.
“You want to send a message that, if you’re going to try to take advantage of your fellow human beings, you’re going to have to pay the consequences,” Safai said.
Safai has also convened a working group to help the city better understand and address instances of people living in substandard housing. The supervisor said he intends to introduced legislation to create “a transitional subsidy that would help people so they can stabilize themselves.”
On top of seeking a court order to compel the building’s owner to bring it up to code, the city is seeking restitution for former tenants and civil penalties of $200 to $5,000 per violation, including $1,000 for every day of fire code violations.
Nineteen former tenants have sued Mendoza and Paredes for damages following their eviction from the basement. Neither Mendoza nor Paredes could be reached for comment Tuesday. Mendoza’s attorney was unaware of the city attorney’s lawsuit and declined to comment. An attorney for Paredes could not be reached.