BAY AREA STORMS DAMPEN HOUSING HOPES
Nearly seven weeks after flooding, residents of the 110-unit Coliseum Connections apartment complex still can't return home
OAKLAND >> Built four years ago over a neighborhood in distress, the Oakland Connections apartments was once a beacon of hope in East Oakland — a gleaming new development with millions of dollars in public funding. California Gov. Gavin Newsom even used it as the backdrop for the high-profile signing of 27 bills in 2021, promising to aid in the creation of 84,000 new homes across California.
The complex now sits vacant and uninhabitable — leaving more than 100 people teetering on the edge of homelessness.
The atmospheric river storm that hit the Bay Area on New Year's Eve inundated the $60 million Coliseum Connections apartment complex, frying the building's electrical room and boiler system. The damage has left nearly all of the tenants of the 110-unit building out of their homes and in a kind of purgatory — living in hotels and uncertain when they can return home. With repairs expected to take at least another six weeks, the project has devolved into a housing crisis, leaving taxpayers on the hook for at least $2 million in hotel fees, which are expected to be covered by federal emergency disaster reimbursements and grants.
The displacement is one of the most visible examples of how widespread flooding from last month's storms continues to impact the lives of Bay Area residents. More than 675 other people in the Bay Area have sought help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in recent weeks for help fixing storm-damaged property, including flooded basements and houses damaged by mudslides.
Oakland's housing director is adamant that Coliseum Connections can be salvaged. Oakland and Alameda County housing officials are considering additional allocations of about $2 million to pay for repairs at the building and to help the displaced residents.
“This is a pretty catastrophic event,” said Christina Mun, interim director of Oakland's Department of Housing and Community Development. “It's a pretty unique situation, and we're just trying to do what's right.”
The crisis represents a sad decline for Coliseum Connections, a development that was planned for 17 years, designed with the
goal of creating affordable housing near mass transit lines around the Oakland Coliseum, in a neighborhood at risk of decline. The city of Oakland provided a $12 million capital subsidy for the project, while also helping secure nearly $15 million in funding from California's Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program.
Half of the building's units were leased at market rate, while the rest were set aside as affordable housing and leased at roughly half the cost.
Josue Franco, 37, secured one of the market rate apartments and was among the first people to move into the building in April 2019.
“There was a lot of potential and hope for that building being right next to BART and being so centralized,” Franco said. “And now it's looking like we may have to find somewhere else to live.”
The crisis began with a historic deluge just hours before the new year, when 4.75 inches of rain fell over Oakland — more than had ever fallen in a single day since meteorologists began keeping such records for the city in 1970. Water poured into the building's below-ground parking garage, and residents said they saw at least a dozen vehicles submerged in several feet of water that evening. Another 10 inches of water flooded the apartments' front lobby as 71st Avenue and Snell Street transformed into slowmoving canals.
“We had never seen anything like that before,” said Jasmine Braggs, 39, who moved in shortly after the complex opened nearly four years ago. “When we'd seen all of that, it was very traumatic for a lot of us. We were in shock.”
Faviola Ramos, 32, had been at her mother's house when a friend warned her of the rising floodwaters. She arrived to her groundlevel town house to find “complete chaos” as tenants rushed in and out of the complex with water up to their knees. Some people tried rescuing their vehicles but couldn't navigate the rising waters.
“It was just crazy, everyone was worried,” Ramos said. “All the street was flooded — you couldn't ride through there at all.”
The apartment complex lost power during the storm. The next day, the building's owner told everyone to evacuate, offering each resident lodging at a nearby hotel.
Most imagined their stay there would last a week, maybe two. Seven weeks later, those residents are now living as wards of the city of Oakland in more than a half-dozen hotels across the East Bay — some as far away as Berkeley and Emeryville.
Two-thirds of the Coliseum Connection's households included children — among them Ramos and her two daughters, ages 11 and 8. She has repeatedly caught them weeping in their cramped Berkeley hotel room. Back home at their two-story, two-bedroom town house, the children had space to spread out and complete homework or paint and write poetry. Now they crowd together and study on a single table, in a room that includes only a small kitchenette.
“I don't know (how) to do it. It's stressful for them, as well as for me,” Ramos said. “They're just tired of being there. They want to go back home.”
Tache Daniels, 38, said she has spent at least $1,000 in added transportation and food costs over the past six weeks, because she no longer has easy access to BART or a full kitchen. She was among several tenants who complained of higher gasoline bills while making trips back to her apartment to grab mail and clothes.
“I don't have a stove — I hate living in a hotel,” Daniels said. “You're going from your home, where you have access to everything, to a hotel, where I'm living in this little amount of space. I can't think in that place. Mentally, I can't think in there. It's not home.”
Mun said the city is working to pay each tenant $500 in assistance guaranteed to them through a tenants' rights ordinance. The city said it will recoup that roughly $55,000 tab from the project's owner and developer, UrbanCore Development.
Complicating the repair process at the Coliseum Connections, however, is the fact that UrbanCore Development did not carry flood insurance for the property.
The company — which partnered with the Oakland Economic Development Corp. in building the property — pays BART $15,000 a year to lease the land for the apartments, along with 25% of the net profit earned from rent.
UrbanCore's President and CEO, Michael Johnson, said in an emailed statement that the company only carried flood insurance during construction of the building. BART “did not require it, since the property was not in a flood plain,” he said.
BART officials disputed that claim, arguing the company was required to carry flood insurance “for the entirety of the lease term, not just construction,” according to Alicia Trost, a BART spokesperson.
In the absence of any insurance plan, city and county leaders have been left to scrambling to help pay for repairs and to keep a new wave of residents from falling into homelessness.
UrbanCore Development and the property's managers, FPI Management, ran out of money to pay for the tenants' hotel stays on Monday, prompting Oakland's City Council to step in.
The City Council approved $2 million to pay for tenants' hotel rooms through the end of April — nearly 94% of which is expected to be reimbursed by FEMA. The rest will be paid using federal Community Development Block Grant funds.
Exactly what happens next remains unclear. Oakland housing officials are considering asking the City Council for up to $1 million in extra funding to get the housing project back on track, Mun said. Roughly a third of that could go to capital repairs, while the rest could go toward hiring a consultant to help the tenants weather the wait or find a new place to live.
Alameda County may be asked to help pay for another $950,000 in capital repair costs, Mun added.
“This is a learning lesson for us in how we mobilize in an emergency,” Mun said.
Whether residents want to return to the Coliseum Connections remains in doubt.
Many complained about poor management at the apartments, including maintenance requests for broken appliances or heaters that took weeks or months to repair, as well as lax security. During visits back to her apartment over the last month, Braggs said the stench of mold and decaying trash was overwhelming.
“It's so hard,” Braggs said. “You just want somewhere you can call home.”