Co-Op Residents Hold Rally Over Health and Safety
Saturday May 26, 2007 | SF Bay Area
About 25 residents of a subsidized housing development in the Bayview-Hunters Point district in San Francisco held a rally today outside the Oakland office of a management company that they allege has ignored their concerns about health and safety issues.
Theresa Howard, who has lived at Northridge Cooperative Homes on Ardath Court for 10 years, said, "We shouldn't be living there" while work is going on to upgrade the development, which was built in the early-1980s. Alicia Schwartz, an organizer with the Bayview Hunters Point Organizing Project, said the construction work that's being done at the behest of the Alton Management Corp. is necessary but Alton and contractor Icon Builders are going about it in the wrong way.
Schwartz said residents of the 300-unit complex say they've experienced nails being shot through their walls by powerful nail guns, equipment falling off roofs, gas leaks that have gone undetected for days and large open trenches that have caused injuries.
Schwartz said Icon, which is based in Scottsdale, Ariz., has been cited several times by the California Office of Safety and Health Administration, the San Francisco Police Department and the city's Department of Building Inspections for health and safety violations.
Today, the residents carried signs and chanted slogans outside Alton's office at 2934 Telegraph Ave. Many of them wore hard hats to illustrate the danger they believe they're being exposed to during the construction work.
Howard said, "I want to be moved until the work is done."
Alton principal Alfred Reynolds said "there's nothing haphazard" about the work being done at Northridge, which began in March, and that it "is moving forward" and is expected to be completed in March.
However, Reynolds admitted that "it's not the smoothest job" and said "we jumped on the contractor (Icon)" when residents lodged complaints and inspectors found health and safety violations.
He said, "We're doing our best to accommodate residents' concerns" and said Alton has moved residents to empty units nearby while work is done. But Howard alleged that Alton reneged on a promise it made to residents before the work began to give them money so they could live in hotel rooms off site during construction.
Janis Jinks, another resident, said, "We don't have advanced notice when they will do work, so we're living in a construction zone and we're inconvenienced."
After their rally, the Northridge residents went inside Alton's offices to deliver a list of demands. The demands included forcing Icon to protect the health and safety of workers and residents at the site, demonstrating "transparency and accountability" to Northridge residents and requiring that residents of units in the worst units be moved immediately and given priority for relocation to a completed unit.
Afterward, Schwartz said Alton officials "were really hesitant to put anything in writing" but agreed to a written plan to relocate residents affected by the construction work.
Schwartz said Alton officials also made a verbal commitment to move Howard to a unit that doesn't have mold or mildew. She said that if Alton officials don't live up to their commitments within 24 hours residents will resume their protest at the firm's office.
(© 2007 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. In the interest of timeliness, this story is fed directly from the Associated Press newswire and may contain occasional typographical errors.)