Concord Residents Sue Landlords for $500K

Concord residents sued their landlords in Contra Costa County’s Superior Court on Wednesday, demanding $500,000 in damages and injunctive relief from being forced to live in uninhabitable conditions. 

“My kid can’t sleep at night, because the bed bugs don’t let him sleep,” said Ariana Ayala in Spanish. “I talked to the manager; he doesn’t listen,” Ayala said, while her son stood beside her, bite marks lining his arms.   

20 tenants of the Rosemont Apartments, located in the 1400 block of Monument Boulevard, say their landlord refused to eradicate their apartments of parasitic insects and conduct other repairs to their homes.

“In my 20 year career representing tenants this is the worst case of bed bugs I’ve ever seen,” said Steven McDonald, attorney at Greenstein & McDonald who filed the complaint. 

“They have little kids living in there who can’t pay attention in school, because they’re itchy…These bed bugs are eating our clients alive,” McDonald said. Ayala said her children are sleeping on the floor, because they had to throw out their mattress that was infested with bedbugs. The insects left excrement on the sheets, inside the mattresses, and on furniture. 

There are at least 17 active bed bug infestations in Concord, according to Guillermo Elenes, a housing rights advocate with Tenants Together.  The situation has been a problem for more two years, according to residents.

When they brought the matter to the Concord City Council on October 1, Councilmembers took turns deflecting responsibility to the county’s public health department and displaying unfamiliarity with municipal ordinances.

“It is a serious problem,” said Vice Mayor Tim Grayson. “I believe that the county health department has a hotline for emergency situations,” Grayson said. 

“This is outside of our direct control,” said Councilmember Laura M. Hoffmeister “That’s why we have a county agency that can provide assistance…They do have a staff that deals specifically with bed bugs, ” she said.

City Manager Valerie Barone told the residents and City Council that she researched the issue a few years ago and arrived at the conclusion that the best course of action would be for the residents to talk to the county.

“This falls under county health not the city of Concord,” Barone said.   

But, county health services staff told Patch that Contra Costa’s “Bed Bug Task Force” only provides educational programs about bedbugs to help people identify the parasitic insects. It does not do pest removal.

Holding up a plastic baggie of dead bed bugs, Guillermo Elenes said he was told the same thing.

“The county’s position is that they aren’t the authority to go to. It’s the city,” Elenes said. “I called code enforcement and heard the same thing. They do not respond at all to bed bug calls,” he said, appalled.

Concord’s laws mandate that “all structures and exterior property shall be maintained free of rodent, insect or vermin infestation, which creates an unsafe or unsanitary environment on the subject or adjacent buildings or properties,” according to the city’s website. 

However, no one enforces that law, admits Patrick Murray, code enforcement corporal for the Concord Police Department.

The bed bugs are not considered a vermin by the courts, Murray said.

“They don’t fit into the legal definition of vermin," he said, highlighting that the city does not have the resources to eliminate the bugs. He said that his office gets many calls about this, but ultimately the problem turns into a civil issue between the renter and the landlord.

“We don’t enforce it in Concord right now,” Murray told Patch.

McDonald was startled to hear this. “That man is wrong," McDonald said. "A bed bug is an insect. You can Wikipedia it.”

“We have people working two jobs here,” he said. “They go out and buy new furniture to get rid of the bed bugs. And when they bring it back it gets infested.”  McDonald said that after the residents went to the council, the landowners promptly put the property up for sale.

The landlords and property owners named in the complaint, Rosemont LLC, Stuart Tunick, Brad Drian, Tamara Warren, Lafayette Holdings Family Limited Partnership, could not be reached for comment. Calls to the apartment complex manager’s office went unanswered. 

Elenes declared that city staff should take action to correct this issue. “They have authority to cite landlords if there in an infestation in the property. It’s not being done; get them to work.”