Oakland Tenants Say Landlord Used Immigration Threats to Push Them Out

Tenants in East Oakland are suing their landlord, who they said threatened them with immigration enforcement to force them out of their homes.

The plaintiffs alleged that Bay Area-based investor Darrick Chavis, who last May bought the properties where they live, offered them $5,000 to move out — much lower than what Oakland law requires for buy-out offers. They said that after they refused that offer, he began a monthslong harassment campaign to drive them out.

Tenant Benito Briones said he and his wife, Veronica Hernandez, have lived in their Princeton Street home for 20 years, where they care for their grandchild. Briones shared with attorneys text messages that he received in May from a number claiming to be Chavis. After mentioning the buy-out offer, Chavis sent another message to Briones, which read: “My Attorney asked are you legal ?”

“This was not a question — this was a threat,” Hernandez said in Spanish at a press conference on Tuesday at the Alameda County Courthouse.

“This was using immigration as a weapon to scare us and force us to abandon our home,” she said.

Hernandez said her family has a legal immigration status, but clarified that this lawsuit is meant to protect all her neighbors.

“Our neighbors are mostly Latino immigrants,” she said. “In the current climate where we see ICE raids across California, for a landlord to ask about your immigration status is not just irresponsible, it is harassment.”

Tenants at two properties that Chavis bought are being represented by attorneys with the housing rights nonprofit California Center for Movement Legal Services.

The lawsuit alleges that Chavis sent similar messages to Rafael Reyez Zarragoza, who pays rent for his 89-year-old mother.

Reyez Zarragoza said he turned down the buy-out offer in May, and then received a text from the same number claiming to be Chavis. According to Reyez Zarragoza, it read: “Are you legal my staff was asking?” — which was followed by: “Hopefully we can make a deal.”

A month later, after Reyez Zarragoza once again declined to end the lease, he received a message that stated: “Ok no problem hope your legal you’ll hear from my attorneys soon and yes we’re checking.”

State law prohibits landlords from threatening immigrant tenants with reporting them to immigration officials. Advocates have pointed out that immigrants lacking permanent legal status are especially vulnerable to neglect and abuse from their landlords, who may threaten them with contacting law enforcement if they speak up about needed repairs or an unlawful eviction.

“Regardless of whether you’re documented or not, there’s no difference: We all have the same housing rights,” Leah Simon-Weisberg, executive director of California Center for Movement Legal Services, told KQED earlier this year. “If a landlord is discriminating against you based on your immigration status, that’s illegal.”

The lawsuit also states that Chavis failed to make necessary repairs to the property and may be exposing residents to lead from the buildings’ older layers of paint.

“Residents just want to stay in their homes,” said Valarie Bachelor, director of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, a housing rights group that has helped these tenants organize.

She said that Chavis has refused to provide tenants with an address for mailing rent checks.

“They want a conversation with him to be able to live there, stay there and have a relationship with them so that they can be there safely with their families,” Bachelor said.

When KQED attempted to contact the number that tenants received messages from, the individual who answered denied being Chavis and hung up.

The Oakland City Attorney’s office shared with KQED a letter it sent to Chavis in July, which confirmed several of the tenants’ claims that their rent was unlawfully rejected and that Chavis failed to repair mold and broken windows.

Chavis has previously shared on social media that he specializes in flipping homes. He currently holds a California real estate license — which has been both previously suspended and revoked — and is registered to an address at a gym in Vacaville.