East Palo Alto residents organizing to fight for better living conditions

Maggie Pande first came to America from Papua New Guinea more than 30 years ago with nothing more than a few suitcases and a dream for a better life for her family. Pande initially lived in Ohio when she first arrived in 1993. But in 2015, she settled at Woodland Park Apartments in East Palo Alto, near where her son decided to go to school and pursue his dream of becoming a psychologist.

Pande is a caregiver in San Mateo, while her son Graham now works with special education students in Redwood City.

“Even if we live not in the best area, it allowed us to pursue our goals,” Pande said of their modest home in what was dubbed the “murder capital” of the U.S. in the early 1990s.

While that distinction no longer holds — the city reported zero murders in 2023 — Pande’s one-bedroom unit, which she rents for about $2,000, has fallen into disrepair in recent years, she said, and like dozens of other tenants at the complex, the pair say they have had difficulty getting the building’s owner to attend to their needs.

The easy answer might be to move elsewhere, but it’s not that simple for Pande and her neighbors.

East Palo Alto is near their jobs. Once known as the last affordable area in Silicon Valley, the tech boom in nearby Menlo Park, Mountain View and Palo Alto has driven up the cost of living in the Peninsula’s most diverse city, meaning there are few options nearby for those on a modest budget.

According to Apartments.com, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is now $2,369. While the region’s housing crisis has pushed many families who lived in the area for decades to more affordable areas like the Central Valley, many residents of three buildings on E. O’Keefe Street — part of the 1,800 unit Woodland Park complex — are choosing to stay and fight for better living conditions.

“I love that there are plenty of international people here. So, I identify with them,” Pande said. “This is home to me.”

The movement to organize for improvements to the apartments began when residents of the rent-controlled buildings received a notice that their homes had been put up for sale. While the sale is not expected to be imminent and it’s not clear what a transaction might mean for tenants, the news worried residents, who connected with a tenants’ rights group. That group urged them to push for better apartment conditions. Before that, many of the residents had been worried about upsetting the powerful property owner, Sand Hill Property Company, and facing eviction.

Last month, nearly a dozen residents visited Sand Hill Property Company, the developer behind the massive project at the former Vallco mall site in Cupertino and other high-end sites, at their upscale Palo Alto office to present their demands for improving building conditions.

Among those demands include ensuring “safe and sanitary conditions” in common areas, fumigation for pest control, providing proper notice for water shutoffs, and updating and fixing appliances that many residents say have been neglected for years.

Gabriel Dias has lived in the complex for more than 20 years with his wife and five children, one of whom is in a wheelchair and had to be rescued by firefighters after being trapped in the building’s aging elevator, he said.

Raquel and Francisco Rodriguez, who have lived there for 10 years, say their patio door doesn’t fully close, letting in wind and rain during the winter. Mold grows in the bathroom and kitchen, and several cabinets are broken or missing.

“Last winter was really hard for us,” Raquel, who is from Mexico, said in Spanish. She works as a porter, handling custodial tasks at a tech company in Palo Alto, while her husband works at a janitorial services company in Mountain View.

In the past, Raquel said she has requested repairs in person or over the phone. She said management leaves notices, but workers will either not show up or perform insufficient work.

The fan above her stove, she said, was broken for years.

A spokesperson for Sand Hill Property Company told the Bay Area News Group the company has been responsive since hearing about tenants’ concerns.

“When we received the concerns, we inspected the buildings and held three listening sessions with the residents to learn more about their specific requests,” the spokesperson said. “As always, we encourage residents to report any maintenance issue when it arises so it can be fixed.”

“We have either resolved or are in the process of resolving all open maintenance requests,” he added.

Greystar, the property manager, said it is “committed to ensuring that all residents of Woodland Park Apartments are safe and habitable at all times.”

Tenants say that since organizing and formalizing a tenant union, maintenance workers have come to visit, albeit at inconvenient times or without enough notice.

“The goal over the next couple of weeks is to really articulate some concrete proposals that can be presented to Sand Hill Company,” said James Huynh of the Regional Tenant Organizing Network, the tenants’ rights organization working with residents. “The speed, the responsiveness has definitely improved, but there still continues to be communication challenges.”

In recent weeks, tenants have been meeting to discuss how to pressure the building’s management to improve maintenance services. They are also planning to get in touch with East Palo Alto’s rent board in the coming days.

East Palo Alto officials said no formal complaints have been received so far about the E. O’Keefe Street buildings. But Mayor Antonio Lopez said he is aware of the recent complaints from residents and that the city is willing to work with tenants to address them.

“We are happy to work with any tenants. (They can) escalate if necessary, as well as work with the private landlords,” Lopez said.

Residents say they are now hopeful they will be able to improve their living conditions.

“One good thing that came out of this is that the neighbors are becoming like family. Before, we’d just mind our own business. Now we watch out for each other,” Pande said.

“This experience taught me that we have rights,” she said. “We thought that if you’re just a renter, you play by the landlord’s rules. But we have rights and we should assert it.”