Tenants Seek Landlord’s Commitment to Improve Conditions at Sojourner Truth Manor

By Ken Epstein

Tenants of Sojourner Truth Manor in North Oakland are scheduled to hold a meeting this Friday with the board and managers of the senior living complex where tenants will seek commitments from the landlord to resolve their concerns about the lack of building repairs and vermin infestation, as well as failure to communicate with residents and disregard and disrespect for tenants and their rights.

At this week’s meeting with board members and the staff of HumanGood, the private property managers that operate the site, tenants invited local political leaders who have expressed concerns about conditions the senior citizens are experiencing.

Tenants of the 85-unit housing complex at 6015 Martin Luther King Jr. Way have told the Oakland Post they are kept in the dark about what the management is planning or what repairs are underway.

They say management often does not respond to their complaints and concerns about needed repairs such as broken fixtures, flooding, and lack of heat or hot water in individual apartments or vermin and poorly functioning security and building elevators, while the complex’s community room has been out of operation for 11 years.

Of special concern are the lack of translation services for the many tenants who speak languages other than English, including Amharic and Tigrinya; and the failure to hire a new social services coordinator, a position that in the past offered community-building activities and provided information and support for residents.

Tenants also say they are experiencing elder abuse, including intimidation and retaliation for organizing and speaking out. Immediately after an article about their concerns was published in the Oakland Post they received a 22-page list of house rules and a new contract they were told they must sign, even though they already had recently signed an annual renewal of their contracts.

In a statement to the Oakland Post, HumanGood, the private management company, explained that they only took over responsibility for Sojourner Truth last year and have had to deal with conditions at the complex that had been deteriorating for years.

“Before we took over management last October, Sojourner Truth Manor was in need of serious repairs and rehabilitation, and we are committed to completing the important work needed within the community,” according to the HumanGood statement (printed in this week’s Oakland Post).

“We are focused on modernizing the community room, addressing needed repairs around the community, and we also expect to move forward with other construction projects around the campus,” the statement said.

An article in the Oakland Post in 2014 detailed the history of the community effort that created Sojourner Truth Manor in the 1970s.

Initiating the project were the National Black Business and Professional Women and the East Bay Area Club, which mentored youth and worked on career development for Black women, and even worked to get late Congressman RonDellums elected.

In 1971, realtor Ellen Winborn came up with the idea of housing for the elderly, pointing out that federal funding was available. The club embraced the idea and approached the U.S. Department of Urban Development three times before becoming the first corporation of Black women in the country to develop such a project, breaking ground in 1975.

Fifteen Black women became part of Sojourner Truth Housing Inc., a non-profit organization that received $1.8 million from HUD and the Mason McDuffie Investment Co.

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