Author
Winifred Kao
Senior Counsel, Impact Litigation & Program Manager, Workers' Rights
Winifred Kao
Senior Counsel, Impact Litigation & Program Manager, Workers' Rights
Going all the way back to our origins in 1970s, we’ve represented San Francisco Chinatown tenants, many of whom are elderly immigrants, in major cases against racial profiling, unconstitutional arrests, and illegal landlord harassment and displacement.
Fast forward to today: We're still standing by low-income residents and tenants, and fighting to preserve affordable housing in Chinatown, an indispensable gateway haven for immigrants and their families. With it now taking four times the local minimum wage to afford a two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco and ongoing gentrification citywide, low-income tenants who are forced out of their homes have few, if any, options. Yet, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable barriers to justice, our clients' tenacity powers through.
Since 2018, we’ve been representing the Community Tenants Association and tenants from two single-room occupancy (SRO) buildings, 1350 Stockton and 371 Broadway. All are low-income Chinese immigrant tenants. All but one are seniors. All are Cantonese or Mandarin speakers and do not speak or read English well. Some have lived in the building for more than a decade.
Our case alleges that Valstock Management, one of the largest SRO landlord in Chinatown, has carried out a years-long campaign to intimate, harass, and push our clients out of the buildings. The landlord misled tenants by claiming that they didn’t have current leases on file, tried to force residents to sign onerous 40-page English-only leases, threatened and imposed arbitrary and exorbitant fines for practices that were previously permitted like hanging laundry, and provided services such as a 24-hour maintenance line only in English. During the pandemic, Valstock even refused to translate a circulated notice about a positive COVID-19 case in one of the buildings into Chinese for Chinese-speaking tenants to be able to read.
We believe Valstock’s actions are unlawful and unconscionable. The case is going to a jury trial later in early 2022 and we look forward to our clients receiving the justice and peace they deserve.