Committee votes to subpoena Domus Management Company over Western Addition housing conditions

The Board of Supervisors committee that oversees city government voted to issue subpoenas to the management company, the co-op boards and the owner corporation behind a group of Western Addition apartment buildings, at the end of a hearing where the parties tenants most wanted to question did not appear.

Tenants of the co-ops and apartment complexes managed by Domus Management Company described raw sewage and flooding, mold, leaking roofs and rat infestations. They described security that is broken or missing, and unauthorized entries into their homes. They described eviction notices tied to failed recertification, the periodic income review federal housing programs require, and to ledger arrears the company could not substantiate when they asked about them. Residents across the buildings described the same kinds of problems.

The hearing covered evictions, habitability issues and other management irregularities at the properties. The agenda listed evictions first, then habitability issues and other management irregularities. Residents testified first. Civil rights staff and attorneys who represent tenants testified after them. The management company was invited to answer all of it, and so were the co-op boards, the owner corporation and federal housing officials. None of them attended, and committee members returned to the empty seats throughout, treating the nonappearance as the problem underneath the rest of the testimony.

Eviction cases drew the most testimony. Tenants said unlawful detainer complaints, the court process for removing a tenant, were filed over small amounts of notice money, while much larger debts, unsupported by the company's records, were held over them in settlement negotiations. The notices followed recertification failures, and the balances behind them, tenants said, could not be explained by anyone at the company. Each notice carried the threat of losing the unit.

The civil rights staff and tenant attorneys who testified said their offices have no enforcement jurisdiction over the management company, and that mediation attempts were rebuffed. The picture the committee heard was of tenants subject to the eviction process while the public agencies they complain to cannot reach the party they are complaining about. The buildings sit in a federal housing program, one reason federal housing officials were among those asked to appear.

With no one from the management side present, the committee could not put any of those accounts to the company or ask it to explain the ledgers, the notices or the condition of the units. It voted to issue subpoenas compelling attendance at a hearing tentatively set for December 3. The motion carried. The chair continued the matter to the call of the chair, which leaves the item open and allows the committee to bring it back without a new hearing request.

The subpoenas are the concrete outcome, and they name the parties that skipped the hearing: the management company, the co-op boards, the owner corporation and federal housing officials. The properties at issue are co-ops and apartment complexes in the Western Addition. A subpoena demands testimony and documents, and it is the committee's main means of getting the management side onto the record. It does not order repairs, settle a tenancy or open an enforcement case, and the city agencies that testified described no path to act against the management company.

Co-ops like these are owned by their resident shareholders, who elect boards, and those boards hire the management company. All three were asked to appear, and all three were subpoenaed.

The committee's action does not change the conditions tenants described or the status of any pending case. What comes next depends on the December hearing. If the subpoenaed parties appear, the committee gets its first chance to question them about the arrears, the notices and the conditions tenants described. If they do not, the item stays open, the tenants' accounts stand on the public record, and the answers the committee sought will still be missing.