Owner of Gateway Inn, a last hope hotel, hands eviction notices to families, elderly.
By Barbara Zaragoza
All occupants residing at the 40-room Gateway Inn received a 60-day termination notice on Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2016. The hotel, located one block from the U.S.-Mexico border, is a single room occupancy (SRO) hotel known to provide units to those who might otherwise be homeless.
The owner of the property, listed in public documents as Francis Lin, submitted a permit to the City of San Diego to demolish the two-story hotel, according to the San Diego Development Services Department. However, the permit – filed on Jan. 13, 2016 – has not yet been approved.
Rachel, an occupant of the Gateway Inn says, “Sixty days is not enough time…In my case, I have nine children. There’s not somebody that’s just going to take us in.”
Project Status Report from City of San Diego, Development Services Department
Rachel’s children are between the ages of almost 14 to almost 1. Some of her children attend Willow Elementary and San Ysidro Middle School. She lives in a one room apartment with no kitchen. She has to provide her own refrigerator and cooks using a skillet and microwave. She explains that the building is in terrible condition. Broken windows are never fixed. Two months ago her entire room flooded because of the air conditioning. The walls were full of mildew and she had to throw away several bags of clothes. When she moved into another room, the previous one had to be boarded up.
Her new room isn’t much better. Cement is trapped in the pipes of her bathroom sink. “The smell in my house is terrible, not because my house is dirty. It’s because the sink stinks. The walls in the bathroom, no matter how many times you scrub it, the darkness off of it will not come off.”
Rachel explains that an older disabled gentleman and his elderly wife will be evicted. Several mothers with children will have to find new housing also, displacing about 20 children.
Another occupant, Jesusa, is a school bus driver who has lived at the Gateway Inn for almost three years. Her husband was deported and she spends most of her weekends in Tijuana. The location of the Gateway Inn is important because it’s close to the border, so she can visit her husband frequently. If her car breaks down, she can also use the trolley or the bus. Schools are nearby, although there is no Walmart or grocery store in close proximity.
Jesusa explains that her apartment isn’t in very good condition either: “The tub, the water doesn’t have pipes and it goes out to the dirt.”
Gateway Inn, San Ysidro
Termination Notice from the Gateway Inn
Tenants of the Gateway Inn pay $600 per month to rent a room. Jesusa explains that she owns a car and must pay an additional $250 per month to park her car.
Rachel, whose husband is a construction worker and certified welder, was deported five years ago in Tracy, California. She says if he was able to come back to the United States, they would both get on their feet within a month. She sees him only when she can get a ride over to Tijuana because she doesn’t own a car. She wants to remain in San Ysidro and near the border, so she can remain in close to him.
“I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs. I don’t do anything but try to take care of my kids to the maximum. I sell my clothes. I go and recycle during the day when my kids are at school, if I can’t make it at the end of the month. Anything that it takes for my children to be OK. And … for them to take our home from us, it’s not right.”
The conditions that families with children are living in our City makes me want to scream. And I see no way to improve things without a change of heart of the people in power. Thank you for bringing this story to light, Barbara. This hotel SHOULD be destroyed but first we need to relocate these families and fine the owner. So much of this desperation is due to deporting the breadwinner. How can we justify this other than racism? It certainly doesn’t make economic sense for taxpayers.
We need to keep hounding the people in power until they fork over the money and build decent housing for all.
Slumlords – like this one (and good for you, calling them out in print for what they are) – should be JAILED, and in their very OWN despicably-maintained buildings, too – NO “buying” their way out, via paying paltry fines!!
(And no demolition permit, either…!)
Barbara I am sharing your story within my community. This is an issue that we must all be concerned with. Slumlords are everywhere.
Barbara, Thank you for bringing this to our attention. The city should buy the motel, provide alternative housing for the residents, and totally remodel the place. The now-residents should be given the opportunity and priority to move back after the remodel and be charged the same rent as they are paying now. That is what civil society demands.
This is a difficult issue – this building, from all accounts, is beyond repair. Hazards such as inferior plumbing and abundant mold are going to be much costlier to repair than rebuild. Then again, even if a more sanitary version of the same building were rebuilt and offered back at the same cost is it still reasonable to ask a family of ten to live in a single room?
Not only is it unconscionable, it’s illegal. And it speaks to the dire need for a huge boost in affordable housing throughout the county.
Working in the real estate industry, I have several colleagues in property management. One recently relayed a dilemma to me – he rented a small studio unit to a young couple several years ago. They now have three children, and while they’re looking for a larger home, haven’t been able to find one that fits their budget (I didn’t have any vacancies myself, though his searching on their behalf is how I heard their story). He wants this family to have a home, but at the same time could face legal penalties if he’s caught lodging five people in a unit capable of housing only one or two and is worried about being labeled a slumlord himself if he lets them stay, though obviously there are no 2-3 bedroom units going for the same price as a studio in a comparable neighborhood. Just sharing this story as an anecdote to illustrate that there are some of us on the other side of the landlord/tenant relationship that care about affordable housing even as we struggle to provide it.
Good on you. There’s lots of sales people in real estate who, like you, live in sight of this sort of injustice daily. You guys are major sources of information and ideas and it would be encouraging to see you all put together an industry group that could help provide stats and stories for reporters trying to expose the city’s indifference to its residents and their need for adequate housing.
While I’m not as hopeful when it comes to establishing a meaningful working group of colleagues, I am working on a large-scale piece that puts affordability (or the relative lack thereof) into perspective. Give me a few weeks on that. I also try to keep up with tenant rights stories, will be revisiting that issue later this week.
Kelly Davis at VoSD wrote an article about the loss of SROs. According to the article, “A San Diego ordinance says property owners can’t convert or tear down an SRO without agreeing to replace the lost units and pay each long-term tenant two months’ rent to cover relocation costs.”
The loss of this housing of last resort for so many people contributes to the spike in homelessness.
So will the city ultimately give this landlord an exemption? The Housing Commission or Housing Federation needs to come in, buy the property, scrape it if necessary, find housing for the displaced and put up housing.
I just read a similar article in the LATimes last week about another motel booting people out to demolish and make something bigger, fancier and unaffordable. At least one family has been living in one room for nine years with no hope of increased income to move out. Housing provided makes solutions for other social problems like addiction, poor health and so on much more manageable to resolve once people have a safe place to live. How can we continue to allow hundreds of thousands of people live on the street with no hope for a safe place to be?
And that is the conundrum that those of us working with homeless families face every day. Most efforts to address homelessness these days focus on individuals – mostly males. A family with children is almost impossible to place – especially with more than 3 children. If they are lucky enough to have relatives in the area, they start by doubling up – the crowding is intolerable, the plumbing alone can’t sustain it. Quickly the family finds itself out on the streets with nowhere to turn. What Amikas is offering with tiny homes are not a long term solution – but they are better than nothing. We have known for years that we have an affordable housing crisis, but it has been ignored – as if ignoring it will make it go away. Now the crisis is a catastrophe. And it requires a disaster response – first triage and emergency shelter and relentless effort to create sufficient, safe, very affordable housing.
Thank you for this article. A dose of the terrible reality of low income families, families with children, etc. Owner/landlord definitely should be fined, demolition permit denied, until all families are relocated (that is, if it’s legal to withhold permit pending compliance with law). All the moaning from the San Diego City Council about need for low income housing, declarations of a “Housing Emergency,” while at the same time issuing demolition permits (daily?) to destroy existing housing in favor of higher cost housing. Granted, this can barely be called “housing” but it’s “shelter” and the owner is responsible. He should not be allowed to profit from his crimes. Please keep the public posted on this situation.