STOCKTON -- Two tenants of the Franco Center senior apartments have received three-day notices instructing them to pay back rent or move out by Friday. The tenants say they are being singled out by their landlord, the Housing Authority of the County of San Joaquin, because they went public two months ago about the complex's bug problems.
"I don't owe them a (expletive deleted) thing. I've got the canceled check to prove it," said Alonzo Eison, 65, a tenant for about two years at the five-story, 110-unit complex that provides subsidized living for seniors at El Dorado and Washington streets downtown.
Eison's notice says he owes $325 for March rent, but he said he paid that and plans to present Franco management with the canceled check before the deadline.
"I never had any notice about March until this showed up," Eison said. He believes that because he criticized Franco management in a television news report that aired in April, he is being singled out even though other tenants who have not paid rent have not received eviction notices.
A disabled tenant who admitted owing two months' back rent -- he is withholding it in protest of the bug problem -- said he did not receive an eviction notice. He refused to provide his name out of concern for his future housing status.
Dorothy Kelly, 66, a 17-year Franco resident and one of the tenant leaders raising concerns for several months about the infestation of bedbugs and cockroaches, also received a three-day notice Tuesday. She has withheld $2,060 in rent going back to September.
Kelly is concerned that other tenants who had voiced protests in the past about the Housing Authority's seeming disregard for the bug problem are backing away now out of fear of retribution.
"As far as I know, she will be locked out after Friday. Dorothy has no place to go. They didn't provide no information or nothing. Just get out," Norman Kelly, her husband, said as a cockroach jumped off a chair in Dorothy Kelly's kitchen.
Housing Authority general counsel Alan Coon said Wednesday he had not seen the eviction notices and could not comment.
Since tenants alerted the media to the widespread infestation of bedbugs and cockroaches, extensive extermination efforts have been under way.
Regular pesticide spraying has been conducted, heat treatments have been applied, boric acid has been spread on the floors, baseboards have been caulked, infested furniture has been replaced, and tenants have been educated on their responsibilities to curb the problems, along with other measures -- but the bugs keep coming.
Eison, who wants to remain at Franco Center, said, "Everything's nice except the roaches, and they ain't movin.' "
Contact reporter Joe Goldeen at (209) 546-8278 or jgoldeen@recordnet.com. Visit his blog at www.recordnet.com/goldeenblog. ___
(c)2013 The Record (Stockton, Calif.)
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