San Jose tenants are fed up with years of longstanding problems at their apartment complex — and took their complaints to the property owner’s front door.
A dozen tenants from Summerwind Apartments near the Japanese Friendship Garden in San Jose gathered Friday at an upscale neighborhood in Saratoga to protest issues in their complex such as black mold, lack of hot water, pest issues and persistent car break-ins due to the lack of security. Tenants have filed multiple code enforcement complaints, but said the longstanding issues still remain.
Tenants of the 288-apartment complex said their request to have a meeting with property owner Richard Gregersen, CEO of Peninsula West LLC, have been ignored and that management fails to properly address their concerns. Tenants knocked on Gregersen’s door, but were turned away.
Videos and pictures of the apartment complex viewed by San José Spotlight show caved-in ceilings with water leaking through, cockroaches crawling on walls, more than a dozen cars with smashed windows and a bathroom with mold. This news organization also reviewed inspection records showing multiple apartments with code violations, including cockroach infestations, holes in walls and plumbing and water heater issues.
“We have very consistently provided examples of all our cumulative problems … and we feel ignored,” tenant Wendy Carrillo-Rendon told San José Spotlight. “We need an answer, we need a resolution and they need to hold themselves accountable for their lack of response and lack of effectively helping us.”
Carrillo-Rendon, a 35-year-old organizer for the Service Employees International Union, has been living at Summerwind for more than two decades and can’t afford to move. She pays $2,700 for a three-bedroom apartment she shares with her mom, cousin, sister and her sister’s three children.
She said the complex has had these issues for as long as she could remember. She sets traps and sprays poison to get rid of the cockroaches and rats because pest control carried out by management is ineffective. She said the elevator was out for almost a year, which made it excruciating for her to travel up and down the stairs due to a back injury and nerve pain. She boils water and pours it into a tub to bathe because she lacks hot water.
“There’s layers and layers of disappointment, anger and frustration,” Carrillo-Rendon said. “I don’t have any more patience. I expect something for the amount of money that I paid.”
John Paul also lacks hot water and said management threatens to call the police on tenants when they file complaints.
“This winter has been one of the coldest and in multiple occasions, we experienced it without hot water,” John Paul said at the protest. “Hot and cold water is an essential part of a habitable living environment.”
Management didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Last year, tenants formed the Summerwind Tenant Association to better organize around their demands. According to an inspections report obtained by the association, management was supposed to replace an apartment’s water heater and repair holes in the ceiling of another by April 2, 2024. There was no indication in these reports whether the issues had been remedied.
A failure to address the issues could result in a $2,500 fine per day for each violation, but it’s unclear if Peninsula West Property Management faced any fines as residents continue to live in substandard conditions.
Contact Joyce Chu at [email protected] or @joyce_speaks on X.
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