Supervisors Tackle Mold Issue At Hunters Point Apartments

Two call for cleanup of subsidized housing

Anastasia Hendrix, Chronicle Staff Writer

Denouncing the living conditions in four Hunters Point apartment complexes, San Francisco Supervisor Sophie Maxwell asked the city attorney's office yesterday to investigate whether local government can force the landlord to rid the homes of toxic mold.

"I'm appalled by it. I'm just appalled that we're allowing people in San Francisco to live like this," Maxwell said of the plight facing residents in her district. "We're such a passionate city. I feel that if people understand and are aware, they will be passionate about (getting) it (fixed)." Maxwell spoke at a press conference organized by the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco. The committee has been working with tenants who live in the privately owned but federally subsidized low-income apartments to determine the extent of the problem. Supervisor Aaron Peskin, a former committee member, said he also would champion the residents' pleas to get the complexes' owner, the Apartment and Investment Management Co., to repair leaking pipes and aging sewer lines. That, he said, would help prevent toxic mold from infesting their homes. "It is our job to help advocate for what is right, and that is having AIMCO make the conditions inside the buildings as beautiful as it is outside," he said, standing on a patch of grassy hillside behind one of the complexes, just a few feet from the property management office. Their comments came a day after Supervisor Gavin Newsom proposed legislation declaring indoor mold and mildew a public nuisance.

The committee also released a seven-page report yesterday, stating that the mold and mildew also may be related to "severe health and safety" problems reported by many of the residents. It also charges that the complexes' owner "failed to adequately address the underlying causes of mold and mildew," despite nearly a year of construction work. "What they did was just put up Sheetrock. The plumbing was never fixed," said Shoreview resident Patricia Green, who suspects the recurring spore growth is causing her 19-month-old foster daughter's respiratory problems. Other residents have complained of severe asthma, rashes, headaches, nosebleeds and high blood pressure from mold exposure.

Tests done in 1999 showed that 530 of the 604 apartments had visible mold, including 287 with "toxigenic" fungus, which releases toxic byproducts as it grows. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development later referred the four properties to its enforcement division, which continues to monitor the repair efforts.

Apartment and Investment Management Co. spokesman Pat Foye did not return a message yesterday seeking comment. However, company officials previously have said they spent $9 million replacing plastic siding on the outside of the buildings, repairing roofing and replacing windows in addition to hiring contractors to clean and remove mold. Marc Slavin, spokesman for the city attorney's office, said the first step will be to determine what power, if any, local officials have over the property.

A Plague on their Houses

Hunters Point residents blame health woes on molds that thrive in leaky apartments

Chronicle Staff Writer Sunday, February 11, 2001

Life on The Hill means getting used to gunshots, sirens and screeching tires. But residents of four apartment complexes in Hunters Point say the real danger might be inside their homes. "We're slowly dying out here because of all this mold, mildew and asthma," said Helen Jackson, president of the All Hallows Gardens complex, perched above the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco. In the last two years, many inhabitants of the federally subsidized buildings - which house more than 1,000 have gotten rashes, hacking coughs, respiratory problems, headaches, nosebleeds and high blood pressure.

Residents say the problems stem from a wide range of molds. Sticky black patches cling to closet doors and ooze through walls and ceilings. Fuzzy gray threads creep through cracks under carpets. Spindly spores and tiny green globules dangle in garages, and yellowish-white blotches bleed through warping, water-damaged walls and windowsills. Residents' accounts of living with the ubiquitous slime sound like something out of a '50s science fiction movie: -- Regina Holloway believes her hacking cough and itchy skin rashes are related to dense black mold on two bathroom walls -- the result of an often- overflowing toilet and a hot water leak in the bathtub that started a year ago.

Continual scrubbing has not stopped - or even slowed - the growth. "Any time I have to use the bathroom I just try to be quick about it . . . sometimes I even close my eyes so I don't have to see it," she said. Because symptoms disappear when she leaves her All Hallows apartment, she spends as much time as she can visiting friends or staying with her son in Visitacion Valley. -- Michelle Phillips has lived with her two sons, 11-year-old Japrell and 21-month-old Ronald, in All Hallows Gardens for a decade.

In his short life, Ronald has been to the emergency room five times because of difficulty breathing. Phillips, a preschool teacher, believes it's a result of the black mold that seeped through her kitchen ceiling and closets. It infested some drawers, speckling the baby's clothes with dark spots that refused to come out with repeated washings and different detergents. -- Patricia Williams-Miles, 55, takes a tablespoon of thick cough syrup four times a day to tame the rattle when she breathes. The inhaler never leaves her purse. When she leaves her All Hallows apartment to visit her sister in Fairfield every weekend, the symptoms vanish. "Then as soon as I get back here, within 15 minutes, I start wheezing," she said. -- Shirley Watts shares a four-bedroom All Hallows apartment with her sister, two nieces, nephew and great-nephew. And many millions spores of mold. At the bottom of her bedroom closet is a patch of white, yellow, green and black mold. Black spots are also visible through floral wallpaper in one corner near the bed. She sleeps at the foot of the bed to get as far away from it as she can. Many nights, though, it still bothers her. "It's like it strangles you," she said. "You wake up and can't breathe." Her great-nephew keeps a wad of paper towels stuffed in his coat pocket because of daily nosebleeds.

Tests done in 1999 by an environmental analysis firm showed that 530 apartments -- out of 604 -- had some sort of visible mold growth; 123 showed evidence of Stachybotrys mold, considered by some among the most hazardous; another 287 had varieties of mold identified as "toxigenic" -- producing toxic substances -- according to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development records obtained by The Chronicle under the Freedom of Information Act. A fungus in one apartment was so bizarre that the inspectors, who work for Forensic Analytical in Hayward, could not identify it.

The tests were paid for by Apartment and Investment Management Co., which acquired the buildings in 1997, along with more than $12 million from HUD to subsidize rents for low-income housing. A publicly owned real estate investment trust, AIMCO is the largest private landlord in the country.

Terry Elliott, an AIMCO division manager, said the company has spent nearly $9 million in the last year to make repairs and remove mold -- though about a dozen apartments still need work. "I think we've addressed the biggest problems," he said from the company's Phoenix offices on Wednesday. "Do I think there will be an ongoing presence of mold and mildew? Yes. Will it be in a number that will be easy to address with trained people? Yes. Because of the climate I don't think it will ever go away." Residents and housing activists say much of the work is shoddy and inadequate, and fails to fully address the underlying cause: leaking pipes and soggy Sheetrock on the walls.

In some apartments, for example, mold simply has been painted over and remains visible. One resident said she was shocked to discover a shelf in her closet had been turned over so the mold would not be seen. Others say the mold is already creeping back. Patrick Goray, operations director of HUD's multifamily housing division, said the mold problem was the first large-scale issue of its kind that the agency dealt with on the West Coast. He readily admitted that the agency was slow to understand the scope of the problem. "There were no red flashing lights or sirens telling us that this was the new asbestos of the time," he said.

Other cases of toxic mold have surfaced in the Bay Area. Hundreds of San Francisco State students last fall couldn't move into campus dorms after they were closed to clean up toxic mold. In December, the state agreed to give the Fairfield-Suisun School District at least $7 million to replace an elementary school shut down because of toxic mold. And in 1999, Santa Clara County officials condemned a courthouse after toxic molds were found.

Upstairs in Apartment 1 on 20 Espanola St., Naikya Seastrunk uses a breathing machine -- sometimes up to three times a day -- to pump medication into her lungs to clear her airways. The 3-year-old Shoreview resident also puffs a hand-held inhaler every morning and evening, and goes to the hospital nearly every other month for urgent treatment. Her mother, Shavonne Jones, was forced to quit her job as a security guard last October to care for Naikya full time, and sleeps with her every night to monitor her breathing. To reassure herself, she keeps the TV on, with the volume turned down, so she can see her daughter's chest rise and fall in the flickering light. They are among dozens of families who say their health is being harmed by mold. Two lawsuits -- including a class action representing 320 people -- have been filed.

Residents allege AIMCO allowed their homes to fall into disrepair while collecting federal funds earmarked for maintenance. And they are even more upset that the federal government didn't force AIMCO to start making repairs until early last year. The buildings in the Shoreview, LaSalle, All Hallows and Bayview complexes were constructed more than 20 years ago. They have been plagued by decaying pipes that have burst and sent raw sewage flowing onto the floor; single-paned windows that didn't always keep the rain out; and wood siding that soaked it in. Those conditions, residents say in their suits, created a dank, musty haven in the Sheetrock walls in which fungi could thrive. The first suit, filed in U.S. District Court in August 1999 on behalf of residents in the 156-unit Shoreview complex, charges that HUD gave satisfactory ratings despite aging, leaky roofing and windows that were no longer "waterproofed." Dozens of residents said they have called and written to HUD, but the agency does not maintain records of how many complaints are filed against individual landlords, said Joan Hall, a HUD representative. The second suit, filed last July in San Francisco County Superior Court, on behalf of nine residents, charges that AIMCO violated state and federal laws by failing to provide safe and decent housing. Local government agencies, private consultants and housing activists have tried to pressure AIMCO to make improvements, to little avail.

The San Francisco Department of Public Health issued three citations demanding immediate action. The Department of Building Inspection has filed dozens of violation notices insisting on repairs. Doctors, nurses, and teachers have written to AIMCO officials, pleading that families be relocated and remedies pursued.

With criticism mounting, activists from the nonprofit Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco began a campaign to fix living conditions at the four complexes. Over the last few months, activists have held tenant meetings and interviewed nearly 100 people. Micheal Green, a committee activist who has conducted the door-to-door surveys, said about a third of the families have some kind of health problem.

The committee plans to release a report this week demanding improvement. It urges HUD and other city agencies to investigate the underlying cause of the leakage while stepping up oversight, said Rob Eshelman, who organized much of the research. "There are many, many things in HUD's tool box that they can pull out to pressure AIMCO and we don't feel they've really done that," he said. Goray said that because there were no national standards, or thresholds of mold and mildew levels, the agency appealed to AIMCO to come up with a plan. "AIMCO was always agreeable to that, they never fought this at all," Goray said.

Since the complexes had been referred to HUD's National Enforcement Center in Washington, D.C., which regulates troubled properties, inspectors continue to monitor the progress of the work. Goray sent a letter to AIMCO's senior vice president last October detailing problems, including a "pattern of damage" during window installation and "many examples of poor quality of interior repair and poor construction management" in units where mold and mildew work had been done. He also noted that "all of the work indicated on the invoices had not been fully completed." Nevertheless, Goray said he is pleased with the way the agency and company have worked together." However, Art Agnos, who stepped down as head of HUD's Pacific Division in January, said he still has concerns. "I am not satisfied and I remain unconvinced of how good that work is, unfortunately," said Agnos, former mayor of San Francisco, in a recent interview.

Residents and the housing rights committee say AIMCO has replaced windows and put up new siding -- cosmetic changes rather than the kind of major plumbing renovations and wall replacements that are needed. When the old siding was taken off a few months ago, many residents were stunned by what they saw underneath. "Once that was removed, you could see all the rot and mold on the Sheetrock, big black and white splotches," said Michelle Daniels, president of BRAVA (Bayview Residents for Action, Vision and Assertiveness). "You could really see how deep it was. You could even smell the mold and mildew, and this was on the outside," she said. "Then they just put up new siding and covered it up." Daniels, whose legs are covered with dark scars from the rashes she believes were caused from long-term exposure to mold before her apartment was repaired, aid water from winter rains is already dripping from the "fixed" roofing onto her bedroom dresser -- and some mold has returned. Former AIMCO manager Ernee Jamerson said there is substance to residents' suspicions. "They (AIMCO) are doing a lot of remediation, but some of the units they have just washed down," said Jamerson, who said she was fired in October amid repair controversies. "That dangerous mold? It's still out there." And while she does believe that some mold problems were housekeeping- related, she said other cases clearly were not. "I've seen some residents who are immaculate housekeepers, and the mold and mildew has been there for years. In fact, one woman scrubbed so much that the bathroom needed to be repainted," Jamerson said. "It was clearly not the housekeeping. It's just that there's no bathroom fans, no bathroom windows. It was just poor construction."

The connection between molds and illness remains widely debated. The California Department of Health Services has determined that "mold exposure is not healthy for anyone inside buildings." But Rajiv Bhatia, director of environmental and occupational health for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, argues that mold must be airborne and inhaled to cause a reaction. Even then, he said, only the fraction of people allergic to that particular species of mold will be affected. The most common symptoms include skin rashes, runny nose, nosebleeds and asthma. "When you have the sensitivity and the disease, it doesn't take much to trigger the illness," he said. Large-scale research on the danger particular molds pose for human health is still in its early stages, said Jeffrey Kishiyama, head of UCSF's Division of Allergy and Immunology. At the moment, he said, there's simply not enough science to justify residents' worries. But San Francisco attorney Paul Wartelle, who has successfully represented about 100 tenants in more than a half-dozen similar mold-related cases around the Bay Area, said he feels the connection is obvious -- and so do the juries. "I don't see how anyone can say the jury's out on the fact that you can get an immune reaction to mold," he said. "I think it's pretty clear that mold and water intrusion correlate strongly with incidents of respiratory problems." Wanda Elston said leaks dripped like a faucet in her Bayview complex, which flooded six or seven times in the last few years. Water came through the ceiling, dripped down corners of the walls, even buckling a wall near the bathroom. Mold patches festered in closet corners. "It's been flooding nonstop for 10 years straight," she said. "All my pictures are gone. From top to bottom I've lost all my worldly possessions." She was relocated twice while crews removed mold patches and painted her home. Since she moved back in December, she has kept her furniture in the garage and her clothes in black plastic garbage bags, fearing the plumbing problems might resurface. So, she was horrified to find raw sewage spewing out of the drain into the kitchen sink, flooding kitchen cabinets and the floor less than a month later. After she complained, maintenance crews came out but no major repairs were done. The property manager promised to find another apartment for her. But Elston is not optimistic. "This whole place needs to be gutted," she said.