An Oakland homeless shelter was left in shambles. Who’s to blame?

Moldy mattresses and bogs. Crumbling ceilings. Cigarette butts, damaged furnishings, and thick dust smeared on flooring and partitions. 

No person was residing on the Lake Merritt Lodge anymore however the place was in shambles. And the proprietor of the constructing was furious.

“It’s an total large quantity of destruction,” she advised The Oaklandside in January.

The yellow Harrison Avenue property, throughout from Lake Merritt, was initially a boarding home for women within the Nineteen Twenties. It grew to become transitional housing for homeless Oaklanders in 2021. 

This was peak pandemic — a time of immense tragedy but uncommon momentum in California for native governments, flush with COVID aid funds, to make large strikes to accommodate homeless folks. Some cities and counties quickly turned empty resorts into shelters the place residents had their very own protected rooms. 

The lodge, beforehand renovated to be used as a enterprise college dormitory, shortly grew to become Oakland’s most fascinating shelter for a lot of unhoused residents. The non-public area and every day meals had been preferable to the small sheds or growing older infrastructure or packed congregate rooms accessible at different shelters and transitional housing. 

The association: Town of Oakland leased the lodge from the non-public proprietor, Mahnaz Khazen, an actual property dealer desirous to see the property put to make use of for the group. Then the town entered right into a contract with the service supplier Housing Consortium of the East Bay (HCEB), to function the shelter program. The nonprofit was accountable for medical care and social work, housing counseling, safety and different applications. Khazen’s small staff was nonetheless concerned, offering the meals and upkeep within the frequent areas. 

This system served round 100 Oakland residents in fragile circumstances — unhoused individuals who had been older or who had an underlying medical situation. 

Final November, the lodge closed. The shelter program and its shoppers relocated — to a model new residence tower on Martin Luther King Jr. Manner in Uptown. 

Left of their wake was excessive disarray. Hazardous situations, property injury and massive payments. Plus loads of tensions, accusations and bitterness about how issues ended up — all of it elevating questions on who, precisely, is in cost in terms of metropolis companies for Oakland’s most susceptible.

Tensions between the property proprietor, nonprofit and metropolis

In November 2024, a few weeks after the constructing was vacated, Khazen’s upkeep workers confirmed us across the lodge. They’d tales about every room.

On this one, the bathroom overflowed consistently. In that one, there was a pitbull susceptible to peeing within the hallway. In one other, a lady with extreme psychological well being challenges had three canines who by no means left the unit. 

“It was unhappy for her and unhappy for the animals,” mentioned the upkeep staffer, who remembered shopping for the resident an enormous bag of pet food. Opening the door to a different vacant unit, she mentioned they’d beforehand encountered “hundreds of roaches.” 

“This system cleaned it, however there’s mildew,” mentioned the staffer, who didn’t need her title on this story for worry of retaliation from individuals who lived or labored on the lodge. “We most likely must take away the entire wall.”

The injury not solely made property proprietor Khazen marvel who would pay to repair up her once-stately constructing, but in addition left her feeling like an unwitting “slumlord.”

In response to Khazen, her workers was barred by the HCEB from getting into shoppers’ rooms.

“They’d not enable us,” she mentioned. “I insisted I must have a walk-through at the very least as soon as a month or week. There have been a number of back-and-forth arguments, they usually lastly allowed us. These had been actually hearth and questions of safety we had been coping with.”

Hearth alarms would go off steadily, which Khazen attributed to residents smoking of their rooms and typically “cooking medication.” Numerous the rooms we visited in November had tampered-with or lacking smoke alarms. Khazen shared a health care provider’s word a tenant obtained in August 2024, requesting that he be moved to a distinct room, as his smoking neighbor was exacerbating his “essential medical sickness.” Khazen mentioned he wasn’t moved.

“We had no recourse,” the owner mentioned. 

Khazen typically emailed metropolis workers detailing her issues about situations and residents’ conduct, and the nonprofit offering companies on the property. In March 2024, she wrote to Oakland actual property workers saying she would gladly proceed working with the town as soon as the lease was up, however provided that they went with a distinct service supplier — except HCEB needed to buy the constructing and take full management. 

A month later, she wrote with a distinct verdict: “I’m writing to formally inform you of our resolution to not renew the lease…Current incidents have considerably breached our administration requirements and jeopardized resident and property security, compelling us to take this motion.” At public conferences, metropolis workers mentioned the lodge was closing as a result of Khazen needed to promote the property.

Housing Consortium of the East Bay views the scenario a bit otherwise from the owner. The nonprofit wasn’t the tenant — the town was. And HCEB was introduced on because the service supplier, with particular duties that didn’t lengthen to property administration.

After the primary yr, “we by no means had an actual property supervisor on the lodge,” mentioned Marichelle Alcantara, program director at HCEB. “And we had been left to take care of these items on our personal, which shouldn’t be the case.”

If one thing was damaged, it ought to have been on the property proprietor to repair it, added Darin Lounds, the nonprofit’s govt director, in an interview in November. “We would pay for it” if the injury was attributable to a shopper, he defined, “but it surely’s nonetheless their accountability. That wasn’t occurring for the final couple of years, and it’s one of many causes we’re now not there.” 

The owner, like most landlords, merely had to supply 24 hours’ discover to enter a room, HCEB mentioned. 

One other service that was missing, in accordance with Alcantara: housekeeping. “Purchasers wanted to wash up, to set their very own self-care,” she mentioned. The nonprofit carried out unit inspections month-to-month, in accordance with her — then every day, forward of the move-out — and issued warnings to shoppers who had violations. 

The nonprofit additionally carried out every day “wellness checks,” typically within the shopper’s room however typically out within the frequent space or at meals. Particularly susceptible or bed-bound residents labored with an on-site nurse.

The tragic loss of life of a resident in September underscored the stress between the owner and repair supplier. Khazen’s housekeeping workers mentioned they notified HCEB a few horrible odor emanating from the residences early one week in August. They accused the service supplier workers of not investigating and barring them from on the lookout for the supply of the stench. They mentioned additionally they reported {that a} shopper hadn’t been seen for at the very least a number of days. The next Monday, his physique was discovered decomposing in his room. 

HCEB representatives mentioned this system was solely advised in regards to the scent that weekend — not a number of days earlier — and that they had been advised the odor was emanating from the improper ground. Their “skeletal” weekend workers checked each room on that incorrect ground, then when the total workers returned on Monday, they discovered the deceased man in his room in one other a part of the constructing, mentioned Alcantara.

“If somebody hasn’t been seen in three days, we’d do a wellness test,” mentioned Lounds.

In response to the coroner’s report, which was finalized weeks later, the 56-year-old died of a cardiac challenge and was present in a stage of “early decomposition.” 

Brandi Foscalina, a sheriff’s technician, mentioned the workplace couldn’t verify precisely how lengthy he’d been useless, however that he was final identified to be alive on Friday, Aug. 30 and located on Monday, Sept. 3.

After we visited the room the place he died in November, there was vital water injury on the ceiling and mushrooms rising out of the partitions. HCEB mentioned that’s as a result of the coroner sealed off the room for weeks instantly after eradicating the physique.

Some residents cherished their time on the lodge. Betty Bass moved to the property after falling into homelessness. She honed her artwork observe on the lodge, “graduated” into everlasting housing, and continued returning to the shelter to volunteer serving meals. 

“I used to be greeted with unbelievable respect” by the workers, who labored arduous to show the residents right into a “household,” added Curtis Wiley, a 2021 resident, in a Google assessment. “Lake Merritt Lodge [pulled] me out of my misfortune and turned it right into a unbelievable trip…I promise to do one of the best I can to remain heading in the right direction.”

Others had a horrible time. A former resident who goes by the title Freeway mentioned they and their husband felt belittled and patronized by a number of the workers, like when safety started checking baggage and residents with a steel detector every time they entered the constructing. The hazardous situations discovered in lots of rooms, Freeway mentioned in an interview, is a mirrored image of poor administration.

“In the event that they needed to crack down on one thing, they should repair the way in which they’re working this system first — begin with themselves,” mentioned Freeway, who later discovered housing via LifeLong Medical Care. “They’ve taken folks which are disabled and are aged and homeless, and shoved them into this program the place they’re being mistreated consistently. They’re made to really feel lower than, like they’re not vital. So what in the event that they smoke of their rooms? It’s all they’ve.”

Oakland is attempting one thing totally different on the new shelter in Uptown

The Lake Merritt Lodge was a expensive endeavor for the town of Oakland. However the urgency had by no means been larger, with a brand new, mysterious lethal virus spreading shortly via the group. And now there have been sources, too, with the federal authorities providing to reimburse cities that stood up non-congregate shelters. 

After a false begin with the county trying to buy the lodge, Oakland leased and opened the transitional housing website within the spring of 2021, banking on tens of millions of {dollars} in aid funds. After some time, there have been questions on whether or not the town may or ought to maintain the shelter.

“What’s making this constructing a lot costlier than our different applications is the truth that we’re paying leasing prices on high of the companies prices,” mentioned Lara Tannenbaum, then the town’s human companies supervisor, at a council assembly in 2022. Town paid $132-$182 per room per night time, “principally a resort price,” she mentioned.

The construction was uncommon. Town was the lessee, the tenant. And it was the supplier of the contract for the shelter program. This association obscured who was accountable for what, typically creating chaos for the residents, program workers and the property proprietor, and in the end leading to critical injury to the constructing and a bunch of sad folks.

“We didn’t have a contractual relationship with the proprietor on the lodge, as a result of we had been contracted by the town,” mentioned Lounds of HCEB. “Whereas we had much less danger, I believe it created a number of function confusion and made it harder to resolve points once they come up.” 

Town declined a number of requests for an interview with workers concerned in finishing up the lodge lease and overseeing the HCEB contract. Representatives for the town answered a number of of our questions in writing as an alternative.

“The Metropolis is in a continuing strategy of program analysis,” mentioned spokesperson Jean Walsh. She mentioned Oakland “leverages the experience” of nonprofits which are targeted on serving susceptible residents. 

“The Metropolis is shifting away from direct property possession or leasing to a mannequin the place the Metropolis empowers our companions to personal, lease and function these applications instantly,” Walsh’s assertion mentioned.

After the residents moved out in November, HCEB spent the subsequent many weeks discarding trash, cleansing rooms and bringing in pest management. 

“Town directed us to finish this extra work on the lodge,” mentioned Lounds in November. “And we’re doing it, however, once more, we’re the companies contract.”

Town confirmed that state legislation requires Oakland to “give up the property in ‘nearly as good order and situation as when obtained, aside from cheap use and put on.’” Town should additionally “restore and pay for any injury proximately attributable to motive of the Metropolis’s use.”

“The Metropolis is presently assessing the damages that should be remedied,” Walsh wrote in her assertion. She famous that Oakland’s $600,000 safety deposit “supplies a supply of funds to cowl these obligations.” 

In response to Khazen, the damages quantity to much more than that. She mentioned the town has scheduled a gathering together with her in April to debate subsequent steps.

Regardless of the actual price ticket, the repair would require a major chunk of change for a metropolis that’s staring down a momentous structural deficit and slicing contracts, workers and applications left and proper to make up for it.

“That is losing taxpayers cash — and damaging what’s typically a person property proprietor’s solely asset,” Khazen mentioned about shelters leased by Oakland. Every week that passes with no payout prices her a boatload. The mortgage alone is $114,000 monthly, to not point out insurance coverage, safety and utilities. However she mentioned she doesn’t wish to waste metropolis funds, both, or trigger battle. 

“If we discover a balanced resolution or accountability, that ought to be the aim,” she mentioned.

On the new shelter, at 1888 MLK Jr. Manner, issues are achieved otherwise.

Town continued its contract with HCEB, however now the nonprofit is renting the property instantly. Oakland just isn’t on the lease, and fewer on the hook. 

HCEB has introduced in its personal housekeeping workers this time. The group is offering the meals. And it has employed some extra employees.

Issues are working fairly easily to date, mentioned Alcantara, giving The Oaklandside a tour of the constructing earlier this month. The hallways had been oddly quiet and pristine. It was arduous to inform anybody was residing there, apart from the various bikes within the storage room and the few residents within the foyer. The six-story residence constructing was designed as market-rate housing, however the developer modified course when the pandemic uncovered the necessity for extra supportive housing. The views from the place are beautiful.

“Points will come up — that’s simply how this work is,” Lounds mentioned. “However we’re hoping we’ve acquired a greater association.”

Khazen mentioned she discovered one other tenant for the lodge, however the settlement fell via as a result of the property isn’t prepared for occupancy. She will’t full repairs till issues are settled with the town. Surprisingly, although, Khazen hasn’t let go of her imaginative and prescient of serving the group on the Harrison Avenue constructing. She’s various different nonprofits she may herald, or may even create a program herself.