An East Palo Alto family has sued the city’s largest landlord, claiming their rental home was so poorly maintained that they had to move out.
The suit against Equity Residential was filed Monday in San Mateo County Superior Court by lawyers with Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto and San Francisco-based Greenstein & McDonald.
Equity Residential owns 1,811 rental units in East Palo Alto, about 78 percent of those covered under the city’s rent-control law. It bought the apartments in 2011 after previous owner Page Mill lost them in foreclosure. The suit also names Redus Woodland, LLC, a short-term owner of the property from March 2010 to December 2011, as a defendant.
Community Legal Services lawyer Larisa Bowman said her office has heard numerous complaints from Equity tenants about substandard living conditions and lack of repairs, but the condition of the 1871 Woodland Ave. home stand outs for “the severity, for the scope and for the duration of the problems.”
The plaintiffs are married couple Ana Rubio and Gabriel Mendez, and his father Leonardo Mendez. They lived in the two-bedroom home with four children from 2007 to 2013, and during that time put up with bad weatherproofing, unsealed windows, a broken heater, exposed electrical wiring, rodent and cockroach infestations, mold, cracks in the ceiling and peeling lead paint, according to the suit.
Although they “repeatedly notified” their landlord about the substandard conditions, their complaints often were ignored or the repairs were done poorly, according to the suit.
The family eventually complained to the city of East Palo Alto and on Aug. 17, 2012, building inspectors visited the property and issued a notice of violation that required 29 corrective actions.
In the months that followed, only some of the repairs were made, according to the suit. During that time, Gabriel Mendez and his father were assaulted in the front driveway at separate times. The younger man was held at gunpoint and robbed in July; his father was beaten up in August and required hospitalization, according to the suit. The couple moved the older man into their home after the attack so they could take care of him.
“We tried everything we could, but Equity Residential never took our complaints seriously,” Gabriel Mendez said in a written statement.
The family is suing for breach of contract, negligence, breach of implied warranty of habitability, intentional infliction of emotional distress and other causes of action. They’re seeking $5 million in punitive damages against Equity, among other damages.
Through spokeswoman Kimberly Macy, Equity Residential said it could not comment on the lawsuit as it had not yet been served. Macy noted that in April 2013, the company did extensive improvements on the properties, including new exterior paint, interior upgrades and repairs.
Equity tenant Maria Salinas, who lives next door to the rental home vacated by Ana Rubio and Gabriel Mendez, told The Daily News that in the four years she has lived in her apartment on Woodland Avenue, Equity’s management team has worked to get things fixed as needed.
But about a mile away off Euclid Avenue, Jean Khabbaz said he and his fiancé Demita Perkins have struggled to get repairs done at their Equity rental. A porch light works intermittently and they had to wait too many months before a crack that let air in under their front door was fixed, he said.
Email Bonnie Eslinger at beslinger@dailynewsgroup.com; follow her at twitter.com/bonnieeslinger.
