Oakland landlord to pay SRO tenants $575,000 in wrongful eviction case

OAKLAND — Four tenants of a downtown Oakland single-room occupancy residential hotel will receive a total of $575,000 in a settlement with developers, who they allege tried to drive them out with renovations to the century-old building.

Controversial developer Danny Haber and his partners purchased the Hotel Travelers building at 392 11th St. in 2016, and quickly began renovating the place. According to a 2017 Planning Commission report, the developers planned to remodel the hotel’s 78 units, add common kitchens and living rooms on the upper floors, reconfigure the bedrooms, and renovate the ground floor space to accommodate a restaurant.

Tenants Peter Howe, William Prather, Joshua Daniels, and Orlando Chavez — who died last year — felt like they were living in the middle of a construction zone, said their attorney, Bob Salinas. The four filed a lawsuit against Haber, his business partner Alon Gutman and the building’s property manager Dion Ross, alleging tenant harassment and wrongful eviction — although the tenants were not formally evicted.

In March, the developers agreed to pay them $575,000 while denying wrongdoing, Salinas said.

Haber, in an interview, denies the harassment and wrongful eviction claims. He said he was prepared to take the case to trial to prove the allegations wrong, but his insurance provider opted to settle to avoid a costly court battle.

Haber said the building was in such a bad state when he bought it that major fixes were necessary. Dana Wallace, who lived at the building for about five years before Haber took over and continues to live there now, described it as a “rathole before, a cockroach heaven” in an interview Tuesday. There were bed bugs, old wiring, asbestos-infused plaster walls and other problems, he said.

Howe, Daniels, Prather and Chavez, however, saw the renovations as an attempt to drive elderly tenants out and make the building appeal to young professionals, Salinas said.

While room renovations were underway, tenants were either offered buyouts to leave or Haber would temporarily put them up somewhere else. Haber paid for Wallace to stay at the Jack London Inn for close to a year, Wallace said. When he came back, he was able to pay the same amount he was before, $685 a month for his room.

“Danny took really good care of me,” Wallace said.

The tenants who filed the lawsuit, Salinas said, were led to believe that they would lose their rent control once renovations were complete. Salinas said Haber “aggressively” tried to get them to take a buyout.

“The place should have never been emptied out like that. The tenant population was vulnerable; when getting pressure from this new landlord, they couldn’t fathom how they could assert their rights,” Salinas said.

Prather, one of the plaintiffs, was able to keep his place, but was “subjected to a construction zone, and for stretches of time he was deprived of any water supply,” according to a news release from Salinas’ firm.