June 2016
Landlord being sued for allegedly pushing out SRO Tenants
Green Group, LP, an investment company, bought the building at 524 8th Street last year. In October 2015, James Kilpatrick, who helped Green Group purchase the building, and who owns a five percent stake in Green Group, told the San Francisco Business Times that he and his co-investors plan to upgrade the 38-unit SRO and rent it out to students and tech workers.
But Robert Salinas of the Sundeen Salinas & Pyle law firm told the Express Kilpatrick and his co-investors are trying to push out the building’s tenants. Salinas said that his law firm, along with Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker and the Asian Law Caucus will ask the court to enjoin Kilpatrick’s company from engaging further in activities that appear designed to pressure the building’s current tenants to leave.
“Almost all the residents are monolingual Cantonese speakers,” said Salinas. “They live and do their business in Chinatown. They’re low income. Some of them are elderly, and it’s a vulnerable population.”
Salinas alleged that Kilpatrick’s company recently tore out a communal kitchen in the building and removed bathrooms, making the building close to uninhabitable for the twenty-five families living there. He characterized the landlord’s actions as a form of constructive eviction.
"When we took over this building, despite having 39 residential units, it had zero smoke detectors, there was raw sewage in the basement
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/archives/2016/06/17/landlord-being-sued-for-allegedly-pushing-out-sro-tenants
August 2016
James Kilpatrick is sued by China Town tenants and Oakland City Attorney
Oakland — James Kilpatrick, Jaevon Marshall, NAI Northern California/Highview Property Management, and Green Group LP, the owners of 524 8th St in Oakland, have been sued for damages and equitable relief by around 14 residents of an Oakland China Town residential building. The low-income renters are receiving legal help from the Oakland City Attorney, Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Asian Law Caucus, and attorney Robert Salinas of the law firm Sundeen Salinas & Pyle.
James Kilpatrick and the group he is operating with has also been ordered by a judge to repair a number of shared bathrooms and shared kitchen areas that have been demolished in the cockroach infested building at 524 8th St., according to reports. Presently around 34 residents share one kitchen, according to reports, and they are allegedly terrified, angry, and pissed off about the current slum like conditions existing at the building. The tenants pay around $400 a month in the SRO, but some new tenants who allegedly have rented some rooms recently there through Airbnb are paying as much as $70 a night to live in a building that is more like a construction area, with slum like conditions.
According to public records, James Kilpatrick of 475 14th Street, Suite 700, in Oakland, has had problems in the past, and has a brokers license that was suspended in 2009, and in 2012.
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2016/08/21/18790312.php
