City Places Teens In Cockroach-Infested Apartments

The City of Oakland funds an agency that places teenagers in apartments infested with cockroaches and mice. Since 2003, First Place Fund for Youth has placed 16- to 23-year olds who had been in foster homes into a 21-unit building called Effie's House at 829 E. 19th Street.

According to testimony by an adult who has lived in Effie's House, on a recent September day, "Two young women, one with a baby in her arms and a young boyfriend in tow, hung out in front of their new one-bedroom housing unit at Effie's House. The young male was telling the tenants passing by, 'Hi, we're your new neighbors. Our apartment has cockroaches, does yours?'" (The full report is available here. Additional details were supplied to ORPN by interview.)

Effie's House has a high incidence of police calls and ambulance visits. Trespassers climb the fence in an effort to gain entrance into the building and the young women inside. The youth residents have disruptive parties and have vandalized the apartments of other residents who requested a minimum of peace and quiet.

The owner of a furniture-moving business who has many First Place teenagers among his clientele reports, "Most of the teens from First Place have children, and most of the young mothers seem to have only a few pots and pans for cooking. Often the moms don't even have a mattress to sleep on, and end up sleeping on the floor of their new residence. But, they all seem to have large boom boxes."

Brought to teens by City grant

The cockroaches and mice should be no surprise. The teenage single mothers do not always know proper food handling, and without supervision they do not learn it. Also, the garbage chutes empty into open trash cans outside, where scraps fester for a week until the next waste pickup.

In 2004 and 2005, the City gave the First Place agency $150,000 a year from the Measure K fund, commonly called Kids First. In 2006 and 2007, the amount rises to $175,000 a year. That is not all. Through the Redevelopment Agency, the City provided a loan or grant of $225,000 to Effie's House. The agency report is so nonchalant about the money that it lists "Loans and Grants" without noting each item as one or the other! Perhaps the omission is a signal that the loan will never be repaid.

Effie's House rents out all the units without reserving one for a resident manager. This policy, apparently in violation of state law for buildings with 16 or more units, is especially objectionable considering the troubled teenage residents – but it increases revenue.

First Place's executive director was paid more than $76,000 in the year ended June 30, 2005, up from $72,000 the previous year, for placing teens into cockroach-infested apartments and leaving them without adequate supervision.

First Place and Effie's House are not the only scandalous grants by the city council to non-profit agencies:

• ORPN previously reported on the slumlord Oakland Community Housing, whose units are also infested with cockroaches and mice. The City gave OCH millions in grants and loans.
  
• The managers at PUEBLO embezzled at least $185,000 of City money for their personal travel, jewelry and clothing purchases.
  
• The City voted a grant of $1.5 million of so-called "violence prevention" money to Youth UpRising, which promoted sideshow culture and helped gutter rapper E-40 make a video celebrating sideshows.
  

City government is in effect outsourcing public programs to private non-profit agencies. Government and public supervision ranges from lax to negligent. This outsourcing builds in systematic institutional problems.

• The public has a right to know where tax funds go. In the case of the City, we at least have some sunshine and freedom of information rules. That's how we discovered that councilmember Quan raided the City treasury to pay for a mailing as part of her campaign to raise the Landscape and Lighting tax assessment. Private agencies take public money but hide from open government.
  
• Politicians often serve on the boards of grant-receiving agencies. Instead of closer supervision, the politician becomes an advocate with a narrow, self-interested vision. For example, councilmember Quan is on the board of Chabot Space & Science Center, and she advocates giving City funds to the Center while downplaying Oakland's crisis of police understaffing.
  
• Somewhat workable laws curb the ability of politicians to make public employees campaign for them and their pet causes. However, councilmembers develop political alliances with the leaders of agencies: I give you a grant, you join the next tax or other campaign I run. In the case of PUEBLO, allied with councilmember Nadel, the agency used public money to campaign against adding officers to our understaffed police department.
  

One of the major functions that the city council should perform is to hold investigative hearings when problems become apparent, formulating systematic curative legislation. The Oakland city council rarely does that. When it does, the result is often a political farce, such as the attempt to deprive the city auditor of the resources due him by law to perform his watchdog duties.

While cockroaches crawl into the food of teenage mothers at Effie's House, city councilmembers are busy instead campaigning for a hugely wasteful palace main library in Kaiser Center. Two buildings, one story: a dysfunctional political machine runs Oakland.

Agency Acts Quickly After Exposé

Less than two days after Web reports on ORPN.org and elsewhere, the whistleblower on the cockroach situation at Effie's House reports:

"First Place & EBALDC did the right thing by moving those kids out of the rental unit that had cockroaches in it, and the problem has been addressed.
... Hopefully in time, some of the other issues brought out in the above article may be resolved also."

We are happy that a little sunshine worked. Unfortunately, according to testimony posted by more people saying they have first-hand experience with Effie's House, serious problems remain. The building is said to remain a gathering place for disruptive, unsupervised parties of several dozen teenagers, lasting long into the night and depriving other residents of their right to a peaceful and quiet home. The nonprofit agency that owns the building apparently does not have an on-site manager.