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I have been a tenant in affordable housing provided by MidPen Housing since 2010, and at my current address since 2016. I have always had problems with management being dismissive of concerns and complaints, and making comments implying they thought I was delusional. When I started meeting with other tenants to organize after I was assaulted by a tenant's guest, I found that everyone--whether or not they had a disability--was being accused of imagining problems in the building. I don't just mean leaky faucets, I mean security issues such as non-tenants partying in the hallways and fire stairwells all night and assaulting people who asked them to be quiet. Even the guards have been assaulted. An intruder kicked in the door of a tenant around 6 PM, but because the security video doesn't cover that corner, management said it didn't happen even though they repaired the door the next day. (I have photos of them repairing the door.)

I have been involved in tenant rights advocacy in a number of local organizations so I reached out to two local nonprofits that are involved in tenant organizing. I met with a tenant who successfully petitioned management to fix the hot water recirculation system after we had intermittent hot water failures for over two years. (She primarily speaks Spanish and I found that half the tenants in our building are primarily Spanish-speaking.) We collaborated on a petition about safety and cleanliness issues and got signatures from over half the tenants in the building. But after we submitted it to management, they and their legal counsel said we were imagining all the issues. We had held a meeting where we nominated and elected a steering committee, so management approached everyone on the committee and told them they would get a bad reference if they continued to associate with me.

The next month, they held a meeting to "reopen the community room" after the pandemic. The manager's supervisor announced our organizing had been illegal because there is already a tenant advisory board and all complaints must go through the advisory board. Nearly all of the people who had been complaining about bad treatment by management at the tenant union meetings stood up and denounced me for saying mean things about management and how I had threatened them. This is classic union busting.

This alleged tenant advisory group has not met since 2019, and met in secret so they could exclude people they didn't like. They were organized by the building's Services coordinator, not by tenants, and she observed the meetings from her office adjacent to the community room. This group fails to meet HUD standards for tenant associations in buildings receiving HUD funding whereas my group, Independent Tenant Association 158 (the number refers to our address), intended to meet those standards. The purpose of the official group was for tenants who were formerly homeless to submit complaints to Services who would review them for submission to Management. They established this group after a police shooting in our building drew public attention to the lawless environment and rampant drug trade in our building and involving our tenants. Yet none of the issues we had observed (inconsistent hot water, poor security practices allowing non-tenants to run amok in the building, smoking in a smoke-free building) had ever improved as a result of this "tenant advisory board." The leader of the group, a former apartment manager, regularly purchases drugs from dealers in front of the building and is only the leader because she insisted on it because of her job experience as a manager. She has never polled the tenants who can't attend meetings during working hours to see what their needs are. Her input to Services is primarily complaints about tenants she doesn't like, not about issues such as the hot water problem or people being assaulted by non-residents. (We suspect she is inviting a lot of these people into the building, as she hangs out with street people and visitors often holler up to her balcony for her to let them in.)

I would like to have a bonafide tenant association under HUD rules, but now that management has frightened people into believing that would be illegal, it is impossible to organize. Even my co-organizer on the petition has said she is no longer interested because she doesn't want to be targeted by management.

Technically, anything short of eviction or rent increases is not considered retaliation. However, management has been telling tenants they will get a bad reference for senior housing or other more desirable buildings if they associate with me or the tenant union. They have also said it is a lease violation to associate with my group, which technically isn't eviction but it is a step towards eviction. It should be illegal to tell tenants that they are not permitted to organize.

This year, during recertification, they started issuing "failure to appear" lease violations and eviction notices after we submitted all our paperwork but they had not yet completed verification of income, etc. They refuse to retract these letters after they complete their end of recertification, so they have documentation of my "refusal to participate in recertification" that they could submit as just cause for eviction at any time, even though they verbally acknowledged I submitted everything on time, complete, and accurate.

After the petition was rejected, I went to my City Councilmember's office, and they have been working with the City of San José Housing Department and Police Department to remedy the problems.

At the community meeting the following month (May), the manager's boss announced that he had decided to change our guest check-in security policy to bring it in line with other low-income housing in the area. Although he did not acknowledge any influence of the tenant association, this was one of our primary demands. We have not yet seen the new policy, though I am sure MidPen's legal counsel and the City need to review it thoroughly.