This thread covers the primary actions involving our Tenant Union.
If you have questions about any of these action items, please schedule a quick zoom meeting with a member of the Steering Committee here. We were elected to help Members achieve the goals they voted for, so please don’t hesitate to book a meeting!
Task Assignments
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Ask Code Enforcement if the tenants need to give the Cal-Villa HOA a notice about the cockroach issue before contacting them or if it is enough for them to have notified their landlords months to years ago.
– They have been responsive over the phone in the past: (209) 937-8813
Edit and finalize the draft letter intended for Cal-Villa tenants to sign and send to Stockton Code Enforcement. Once signature collection begins, it will not be appropriate to make heavy edits. @Bozzii
Create a document for Cal-Villa tenants outlining the roles of tenants, landlords, single-unit owners, and the HOA.
Clarify the rationale for requesting a Code Enforcement investigation into the HOA, noting its responsibility for common areas and lack of responsiveness.
Provide an overview of WCUTU and the Cal-Villa Tenant Association.
Emphasize the importance of collective action.
Include a link to an online form for adding names & collecting survey responses and a link to the Letter Toolkit.
Prepare Letter Toolkit
Create a paper signup sheet to gather names, addresses, signatures, and dates, with a brief explanation of the purpose at the top. -@chima
Develop an online signup form allowing tenants sign on to the letter and to upload evidence of infestations and communications with landlords. @chima will work on form on.
– A short paragraph to go on top of the form that summaries the reason for the petition
Produce a printable map to identify units that have not yet been contacted. Should have 4 unit numbers on each building, have the address be very visible. The plan is to hand these to folks who say they will knock on their neighbors doors so they can track which doors they are responsible for. - @HipGnosis
Recruit tenants to discuss the letter campaign with neighbors and friends, using maps to avoid overlapping efforts.
Text Messages
Create a text message asking people to sign the Cockroach petition (Google Doc)
I’ve written out a rationale for the one-page explainer, if anyone wants to look that over today. I just wrote down what I knew about the situation in the simplest way, highlighting as to why it’s the HOA’s responsibility and not the tenants’ to deal with the cockroaches.
Looks great! I just added a paragraph at the end connecting HOA fees and rents back to the maintenance like we had talked about. Let me know if you get a chance to look over the WCU/Oakland part.
Just called code enforcement. According to them the entire parcel would be flagged if they had a prior report on file and we would need as many individual property numbers as possible so the code enforcer can check them all.
They said it would take up to 10 business days to get this all addressed.
My understanding is that we would need to get as many signatures and unit numbers affected as we can and inform code enforcement. This would trigger the “warning” for the parcel and if they don’t fix the problem it would escalate from there.
Here is a link to the first draft of the petition. I think we should always put the signatures on the back of the letter so there is no question of whether people were signing onto our letter or something else.
1.Working Class Unity here, with the help of your tenant’s union we are almost at enough signatures to call out code enforcement about the cockroach problem. Hopefully it won’t come to that and this petition will be enough to scare the land lords into doing their job. Sign your name here:
2.Working Class Unity here, with the help of your tenant’s union we have been conducting a survey asking tenants on whether or not management has been using our rent money to maintain a habitable living space as many tenants have come forth and to say management has not been upholding their end of the deal. We need you to take the survey and add your name so we can either get management to do their job or take it up with code enforcement. Add your name here:
Last month, @Adri_Martinez and I went to Stockton Code Enforcement (CE) to drop off the Letter to Code Enforcement About Cockroach Infestation. We spoke to Annie Swaim, the Code Enforcement Supervisor. I included some notes about the meeting below. I will outline ideas about what to do next in the following post - would appreciate others’ feedback as well on how we should proceed.
Safety Concerns
The primary takeaway was Code Enforcement saying they had safety concerns about entering the neighborhood; even sworn officers are apparently told not to patrol the area.
Previous proactive efforts, like the Neighborhood Betterment Teams, were previously pulled out of CalVilla.
Resource Limitations
Adri brought up the fact that this issue is widespread and asked whether CE would be willing to do a wider investigation. Annie turned down this idea because the department is understaffed and would likely involve a larger presence than they are willing to have in the area.
I asked if they had resources (pamphlets or even language) that we could forward to landlords to pressure them on our end. CE seems not to have those kinds of things prepared. We were told to just look up the regulations online.
Code Enforcement’s Current Plan
Alfredo Gomez is the Code Enforcement Officer in charge of the CalVilla region.
They are going to ask if it is safe to go in. If it is not, he will contact landlords and tenants by phone.
He will contact all the petition signers. I am not sure if he will be able to contact the people that did not leave their phone numbers.
He will be contacting the landlords of every unit in affected buildings. So as long as one unit is affected, the owners of all four units in the building will be called. We were not told the details of what will be discussed, but I assume they will be given a warning and time to address the issue.
Annie did not think this would be a legal issue for the HOA, but she needed to look at the actual language to make a final determination. She said usually this always comes down to a landlord issue, since the roaches can be kept from coming inside.
Guidelines for Tenants
Tenants should maintain cleanliness in their units to prevent pest issues.
Annie also told us to tell tenants to directly contact Code Enforcement, but we will not be doing that since we do not want this issue to die in CE’s hands.
Unfortunately, it does not seem like Code Enforcement is interested in working with us. However, we can still use the threat of Code Enforcement fines to help us pressure the landlords. If/when CE contacts them, we can follow up and ask if they want to join other landlords/single unit owners to get the HOA to deal with the issue. Otherwise, they may have to pay fines because it seems like they cannot fix the issue on their own.
We need to follow up with CE and tenants. Now that we submitted their names, we do not want them to be in the dark about the process (at least, not more in the dark than we are).
We should also give everyone a chance to submit their name to put additional pressure on Code Enforcement. We dropped off the one-page explainer with a link to an online form to sign on to the letter to code enforcement.
Reach out to Alfredo Gomez and ask him if there are any updates about the CalVilla cases.
Follow up with the tenants whose information we dropped off letting them know whatever progress has been maid (call or drop off information).
Drop off the one-letter explainer and QR code to our online form for signing the cockroach letter to the remaining units (we only did it to the units in the middle before).
Send a text message that Peter drafted to tenants that did not sign yet.
After CE speaks with landlords, we should try to recruit them into pressuring the HOA. This will take any pressure off of the tenants (important).
Find out when the next HOA Board Meeting is. You have to go to CalVilla and check out the notice in front of the main office.
Try to recruit a single-unit owner to submitting taking care of the cockroach issue onto the next meeting’s agenda. (Reach out to @WCU_Steering or @Adri_Martinez for the contact list).
Attend the next Board Meeting. Tell them we have submitted X number of signatures to Code Enforcement.
We should finally have a meeting with as many people from CalVilla.
Set a date for a larger meeting at CalVilla.
Design flyer to drop off.
Drop off flyers and text about the meeting three-five days before.
Research current HOA board members. We need to know who they are, their work and personal lives, their social lives, etc. so we can figure out which relationships to leverage when we are pressuring them.
Research landlords for the units where people sign the cockroach letter. For the same reasons as the HOA members.
Issues to discuss
Talk about the role of the HOA and landlords.
Update about the cockroach issue (they may have more updates from CE).
Questions about HOA. They are supposed to give tenants HOA rules.
Provide resources we have (Handbook?! :O).
Temperature gauge on what types of actions people will be comfortable taking if CE does not come through.
emoji on the top right of the table when you hover over the table.