Tenants Find it Tough to Leave as Renovations Are Slated for Old Hotel
Trash bags are piled in the lobby. Big red signs warn of the danger of asbestos. The wooden registration desk needs a coat of varnish. The tile floors look as cold as the building feels. In one corner, a tiny Christmas tree stands forlornly.
Shuffling along the tile toward the exit of the Hotel Sandford is an elderly woman who refuses to give her name. She’s one of 71 tenants being evicted from the old hotel, at 1323 5th Ave. She says she’s 16 but looks closer to 66. She says she’s headed to North Carolina to visit her parents.
When a visitor expressed surprise that her parents are still alive, she shot him an angry look and muttered, “What’s the matter--you think I’m too old for my Momma and Daddy to still be alive?”
The trip to North Carolina is her “Trip to Bountiful,” her belief that if she can just get back to the land of her girlhood, everything will be all right.
Sheila Muscio, who is building manager for the Hotel Sandford and works for the new owners that assumed the property Nov. 18, said “this is the hardest part”--relocating elderly and indigent tenants during the Christmas season.
Muscio and her boss, Mavourneen O’Connor, argue that what’s being done is for the best. For 15 years, Mavourneen O’Connor has headed the Downtown Senior Center Corp., which bought the Sandford from B&T; Investments. Mavourneen O’Connor’s group has since sued the previous owner, claiming it wasn’t told of a hazardous asbestos condition existing in the hotel basement.
“The tenants were not notified of the asbestos by the previous owner, nor were we,” she said. “Beyond that, I don’t care to comment, since the matter is in litigation.”
Mavourneen O’Connor said the new hotel would be “much-improved,” with 131 rooms, compared to the current 66. She said rentals will be around $250 a month, compared to the current $360 a month.
Mavourneen O’Connor appeared sensitive to criticism that some people are being unfairly relocated, at “an inopportune time.” She said that to criticize her twin sister, Mayor Maureen O’Connor, for a relative’s “contributing to the homeless problem” is “unfair and ridiculous.”
“I hope not to draw my sister into this directly or indirectly,” Mavourneen O’Connor said. “It’s unfortunate that one might have that impression. The individuals in the hotel have been handled with as much care as we can possibly render. How will it ultimately impact my sister? I think she’ll be proud of our efforts. This will be a vastly improved facility, able to house more senior-citizens, at lower cost. The difficulty is in this transition period.”
Some Tenants Angry
The transition period has left some tenants angry.
Dan Harrison, 39, is an unemployed truck driver. He receives SSI, a monthly stipend from the government designed to supplement Social Security disability. Harrison was paying $360 a month for a room with a bath. He said he was on “psychological disability” after having a gun pointed at his head for several hours by a co-worker who was “high on drugs.”
Harrison made reference to a newly passed city ordinance that requires displaced tenants of downtown hotels such as the Sandford to receive remuneration for moving expenses. Mavourneen O’Connor’s group is paying some expenses, on a case-by-case basis, but isn’t paying everyone’s because escrow closed before the ordinance takes effect (mid-January).
Mavourneen O’Connor denied that the purchase of the property was timed to avoid complying with the ordinance and that “many people’s moving expenses are being paid.”
“We don’t have to pay anyone’s,” said Mavourneen O’Connor spokesman Tom Mitchell, “but we want to pay some, because we are dealing with human beings here. We care about these people.”
Harrison said he received only an eviction notice that told him to vacate the premises by Dec. 18.
“My wife and I have found a new place,” he said. “It’s $395 a month, with a $250 deposit. I don’t know how we’re gonna make ends meet. We’ve gotta find a way somehow.”
Hired Social Workers
Mavourneen O’Connor said a team of social workers had been hired to help residents relocate and that many already have new quarters in the Churchill and Southern, downtown hotels not far from the Sandford.
“The owners of those hotels have been cooperative, the social workers have been terrific and cooperative, and for the most part,” she said, “the tenants have been cooperative. Our desire is to relocate everyone as sensitively and as expeditiously as possible. Those people couldn’t stay there anyway, because of the asbestos. I guess this is a case of leadership having to take its lumps.”
Margaret Meyers, 37, said she had lived at the Sandford since 1985. She receives psychiatric disability and doesn’t work.
“I have a lot of hostility for the way the elderly have been treated here,” she said. “It just doesn’t seem fair to put them out of a home at Christmas.”
Mavourneen O’Connor again argued that everyone is being helped with relocation and that “simply no one is being kicked out--that just isn’t true.”
Meyers also complained about the condition of the Sandford--something Mavourneen O’Connor won’t argue about, calling its condition “deplorable.”
Meyers sleeps on the floor on a bamboo mat, since her bed had to be removed. It kept breaking down. Her room is small, cold and cluttered.
“The place is a dump,” she said. “And we don’t even have heat.”
Michael Bentz is hotel alert coordinator for Senior Community Centers of San Diego, the social-work organization handling relocation for the tenants of the Sandford. The hotel has no heat, he said, because the furnace has been broken for years. Lack of heat seems to be the least of his problems.
“When a hotel closes, people feel that immediate pressure to move--and obviously, they have to,” he said. “But they also feel that no one is out there to help them. When the news of this place closing hit the papers, everyone got excited. People got scared. But the people here aren’t being disregarded.”
Bentz said, “It’s kind of a sad situation,” adding that he believes the new owners “have their hearts in the right place” and that ultimately senior citizens in San Diego will benefit from a renovated Sandford.
In the meantime, though, he doesn’t dismiss the realities of the elderly and indigent being uprooted.
Regardless of how “nice” her new place may be, Margaret Meyers said the “grim reality of my life” won’t go away, and that moving, “no matter how fairly handled,” won’t make it better.
A cartoon on the door to her room shows a woman kneeling at her bed in prayer, saying, “You know how I hate asking for material things . . . “
