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It was about a year ago, according to Ocean View Gardens tenant Desiree Lambert, that water began to drip from her living room ceiling whenever it rained. One day the drip from the weak spot turned into a pour. In December of 2003, the weight of the water sent plaster crashing onto her sofa, leaving a hole in her ceiling the size of a basketball. 

Desiree Lambert is grateful that last month her ceiling was patched and the roof repaired, but she is not happy that it took her landlords over a year to do it.  

“The people at Ocean View have the attitude of ‘We’ll do something, but we’ll do it on our own time and when we get ready,’” said Lambert, who has a three-inch ring binder and a computer disk in which she has saved copies of the numerous letters she sent the managers of Ocean View about her ceiling and other maintenance issues.  

Ocean View Gardens is a 62-unit Delaware Street affordable housing complex built in 1982. The homes are currently rented to residents who earn 50 to 60 percent of the Area Median Income, roughly between $40,000 and $46,000 per year for a family of four. AF Evans Company of Oakland owns and operates the complex, leasing the land for the site from the City of Berkeley. 

On Jan. 20, Lambert and a few other disgruntled Ocean View residents complained about conditions at the housing project during a Redevelopment Agency discussion on extending Ocean View’s ground lease from the city. The residents charged that both the city and AF Evans representatives had been unresponsive to complaints about alleged substandard conditions in some of the housing complex’ units. The City Council (in its role as the Redevelopment Agency) ex-tended the lease, but asked the city manager’s office to return to its March 23 meeting with a follow-up report on the tenants’ complaints. 

Stephen Barton, Berkeley housing director, said that the Ocean View owners promptly responded to the complaints voiced at the Jan. 20 meeting, adding that some repairs were made the weekend following the meeting.  

But Lambert is not appeased. She said Ocean View management has ignored her complaints for years. Along with her leaking ceiling, Lambert said the walls in her living room have also suffered rain damage. Lambert said that about a year ago she killed 23 wasps which had swooped into her home through another hole near her ceiling fan. It took a year to repair the hole, according to Lambert, while the project’s management periodically sent someone over to spray for the wasps.  

In 1996, Lambert’s brother fell down the staircase leading to Lambert’s door when one of the steps collapsed. This matter was settled out of court, but Lambert said the incident could have been avoided if Ocean View’s managers had listened to her when she first began to complain about the wobbly staircase.  

The management at Ocean View says that Lambert may have been responsible for her own distress. Cynthia Neal-Wood, community manager at Ocean View, said that Lambert has been very uncooperative. Neal-Wood explained that Lambert does not allow maintenance workers in her unit when she’s not home, and would frequently cancel appointments that she would schedule for contractors to work on her unit.  

“You have to comply with the residents but the resident as well has to comply with the management,” Neal-Wood said. 

Neal-Wood had a similar complaint about Lennita Williams, another resident who spoke out at the Jan. 20 City Council meeting. Neal-Wood said that Williams has also repeatedly refused to allow maintenance workers to enter her home.  

Williams says that the plumbing in her kitchen and bathroom needs repairing. She said that dinnertime and bath time are dreaded hours of the day for her and her 21-year-old daughter Christina. The kitchen sink has little water pressure. When she twists the handles to turn on the water at full force, it just drizzles out of the faucet. Using water from her bathroom sink, she fills pale yellow plastic container with hot water and cleans her dishes in it. 

Williams also keeps a big blue bucket nearby. When she or her daughter takes a shower or bath the water in the tub won’t drain. She has to use the bucket to scoop out the water. Sometimes, she says she just showers at a friend’s place so she won’t have to face the back-straining chore. 

The pipes underneath Williams’ bathroom sink leak. She uses a white plastic bowl to try to keep the cabinet from getting too wet. But there’s not much help for the bathroom floor. The pipe behind the toilet leaks too. The linoleum floor is soaked, cracked, and weakening, and Williams says she’s afraid she or her daughter may fall through the floor on day. She has placed towels, pajama pants, and sheets on the floor around the base of the commode to try to soak up the water.  

“We grab whatever we can find,” she said.  

Williams admits that she has at times refused to allow workers into her home. She said she’s doesn’t trust them and is afraid they may vandalize her home. She says that individuals claiming to be maintenance workers sometimes show up without any uniforms or identification. In addition, she says that part of her distrust comes the fact that a number of years ago, an Ocean View maintenance worker was dismissed for stealing items from apartments while he was inside doing repairs.  

Lambert said she, too, has the same distrust of the housing project’s maintenance workers, and adds an additional problem: Maintenance workers, she says, sometimes ask tenants to wait home all day for repair personnel to come, avoiding giving even the four-hour window normally given by such utilities as PG&E or the cable company. 

For her part, Manager Neal-Wood said that residents have no reason to distrust the management or the maintenance workers. She feels Lambert is just being uncooperative. 

Lambert, meanwhile, feels she is just being demeaned. 

“They do not take the residents of Ocean View seriously,” she said, adding that she thinks the residents are not respected because Ocean View is subsidized housing.  

Williams also thinks she and other tenants are being taken advantage of because of their low income.  

“They don’t care because we’re poor people,” she said. “They know we can’t afford to get good lawyers.” 

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