'The journey of not coming back'

Few make difficult move from Iraq to U.S.

Oakland Tribune, Oct 16, 2007 by Rebecca Rosen Lum

Of the millions of Iraqi refugees seeking new homes, relatively few are making their way to the United States -- and just a trickle reach the Bay Area.

They arrive exhausted and stunned, having seen their homes smashed to rubble, and relatives beaten or shot to death.

They've made their way to Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon or the Gulf states where, as "guests," they cannot work.

They plead for help from refugee workers, and few find a country willing to admit them.

The war has chased more than 4 million Iraqis from their homes, the United Nations has reported. The number is expected to reach 5.5 million by the end of this year.

The United States admitted only 1,608 -- instead of the promised 7,000 -- in the past fiscal year and says it is preparing to increase the flow. It committed in April to take 25,000 Iraqi refugees altogether.

Recent arrivals to the East Bay tell stories of misery and endless waiting.

Hussein, a 42-year-old father of two toddlers, holed up for eight months in Jordan in a two-room apartment with five strangers.

Hiyam, a 45-year-old mother of four sons, fished for food in trash bins during their seven-year limbo in that country.

Nearly all refugees suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, said Kathleen Newland, director of Migration Policy Institute, a nonprofit organization. They know their families in Iraq stomach a daily diet of fear. And they know they themselves will never return.

Refugees International calls the displacement of Iraqis the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world.

Catholic Charities is among 10 agencies helping the refugees start a new life. Hussein, now in San Jose, said he is too fearful of retaliation against his family to make his last name public.

Mortar shells pounded the U.N. agricultural office where he worked. Later, insurgents attacked his home. His brother-in-law was shot dead when he went to collect Hussein's belongings, he said.

Karim, an artist and an atheist, once taught Arabic to non- native speakers. In April 2006, an anonymous threat arrived: "You are not needed in this place. Leave here." He sold his car and all his belongings and went to Jordan.

"That's the journey of not coming back," he said.

First walk, then run

Catholic Charities helped resettle the men in Santa Clara County. Karim, who also asked that his last name not be disclosed, has been here for a little more than a month; Hussein for 20 days. Despite the challenges, they plan to stay.

"It's better to live in heaven in the U.S. than in hell in Iraq," said Hussein.

"I prepared myself emotionally," Karim said. "I am going to live in a different place. This is Part Two of my life."

Hussein, a veteran truck driver, wants a license here, and fast.

"I have to work," he said. "I have a family."

The refugees are impatient to get moving.

Hazim, 48, took one English class then quit in frustration. He says he can learn on the job. With a family to support, he can't afford to waste time in class.

"I have to tell them to walk, not run, or they can hurt themselves," said Sister Elizabeth Lang, refugee director for Catholic Charities of the East Bay, who helped Hazim and his family resettle in Concord.

"There is so much disappointment, frustration. It's easy to lose hope."

A difficult adjustment

Hazim's wife, Hiyam, and their eldest son, Ammar, take a bus together to their daily adult-school English classes at Mt. Diablo Adult Education Center. It takes an hour and 20 minutes to get there from the home Hiyam calls "a starter apartment."

In the ground-floor apartment, vertical blinds cover aluminum sliding windows. A relative with a furniture shop brought them a couch and a table and chairs. On the wall hangs a blue plate with an Arabic inscription: "All blessings come from God."

It amazes Hiyam that their rent exceeds $1,300 a month. Refugee assistance, which has been folded into the welfare system, pays the family $980 a month for eight months. The system pays $350 a month for Ammar, 19.

Without a history in this country, they couldn't find an apartment. To get gas and electricity turned on, they had to pay a deposit.

"I asked for emergency food stamps," said Hayim's sister, Suna Salim, a Walnut Creek business owner and longtime resident who is helping settle the family. "They said they had to have proof that they had no money. I said, yes, Catholic Charities gave them some money, but they needed that for a deposit for rent."

Hazim has been suffering from panic attacks. Hiyam breaks out in nervous rashes.

"Every day, I cry at least once or twice," she said. "I am trying to figure out how to pay for things. I can't go to the doctor. I had an ear infection, it was bleeding."

The surprises are relentless. For one, Americans keep to themselves, Hiyam said.

"Here, everybody is in their own world," she said. "(In Iraq), neighbors come over, drink tea, kids play. People look out for each other. If someone makes some food, they bring you some. 'Hey, I'm going shopping -- want to go?"'

Another shock: American schools.

"That doesn't look like a school, that looks like a disco," said Hazim as the family passed by a high school, where girls in low- rise pants and tank tops stood chatting.

No comparison to Gulf War resettlements

Refugee workers note a stark difference between the Gulf War and this one.

"I was responsible for U.S. refugees during the first Gulf War," said Ellen Dumesnil, now director of refugee resettlement for Catholic Charities of Santa Clara. "We were able to process thousands of refugees after that war."

But the Bush administration has fallen far short of its goal of accepting 7,000 this year. At a Geneva conference in April, the United States pledged to take in as many as 25,000.

Dumesnil said the slowdown is a clause in the Patriot Act that bars immigration to anyone who has offered "material support" to the enemy.

That includes people who have paid ransom to insurgents who have kidnapped their loved ones, she said.

But a spokesman for the State Department said the only bureaucratic bottleneck was the lack of "infrastructure" in Jordan and Syria. With two refugee processing centers now in place, 1,000 refugees should now enter the United States each month, Kurtis Cooper said in a telephone interview earlier this month.

"We consider those issues to have been addressed," he said.

"It's mystifying," said Newland. The long processing times occur "partly because they are Iraqis and the U.S. is conducting a war in Iraq," she said. "But it's also because -- the government doesn't want to concede the vast majority will not be able to go back."

Canada will take 5,000 and Australia will take 1,000. Sweden has accepted 6,000 and Denmark several hundred, Dumesnil said.

Priority in this country is given to those who face immediate danger, those who have worked with the Americans and those with family here, she said. The United States has accepted only refugees who have made their way out of Iraq.

Once they are resettled here, refugees can become citizens in five years.

Life is not without its sweet moments. Hazim turned 48 here, and his sister-in-law took the family to Ocean Beach. He had never seen a beach before.

"He ran up and down," Salim said.

And Karim made the rounds of San Francisco galleries, where he touched a Miro and a Picasso.

"I am very eager to achieve a lot of things," said Karim, carefully folding newspaper reviews of his artwork into a binder. "I feel I can really do something in the U.S."

Richmond priest working to get mom out of Kenya

Oakland Tribune, Jan 3, 2008 by Rebecca Rosen Lum

RICHMOND -- As tribal foes descended upon neighborhoods in Kenya, a worried Richmond priest tried frantically Wednesday to wire money to get his mother out of a rural village.

Mobs had already set upon her community, torching neighbors' homes.

"She is in a church, but she doesn't have any food," said the Rev. James Kimani Kairu. He had urged her to take refuge in the parish earlier this week. Soon, some 10,000 desperate Kikuyu had packed in and around it, he said Wednesday, his voice quivering.

More than 5,000 Kenyans have fled into Uganda, and tens of thousands of others have left their homes to escape the chaos wracking the nation. Dozens of people who sought shelter in another church met a fiery death when mobs torched it Tuesday.

His three brothers and two sisters in different areas of the country could not travel because of the unrest, he said. Cell phones in Kenya require a prepaid calling card, but all the stores had shut down.

"They can't call each other, so I am the one organizing," said Kimani Kairu, who practices at St. David of Wales Catholic church in Richmond. He has been in this country for a year and a half while studying for his master's degree at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley.

Wednesday, some army units reached Aldoret to rescue people, Kimani Kairu said at sundown.

But Kalenjin tribal members "are coming to kill all the Kikuyu. I am trying to send money to my brother in Nairobi to get my mother out of there, but how to get her to the airport, that is the problem."

Terrified villagers poured onto the roads but found roadblocks en route to the airport, he said.

Luo and Kalenjin tribes believe incumbent Kikuyu President Mwai Kibaki rigged his Dec. 27 victory over Raila Odinga, a Luo challenger. Kenyans of all tribal backgrounds fear a backlash if a planned meeting between the two comes off in Nairobi today.

"The two are just playing a blame game on each other," Kimani Kairu said. "No one is willing to go a step further and stop it. I don't think any of the candidates is worthy of being president."

An ethnic Kikukyu, the 37-year-old Kimani Kairu said tensions disrupted the peace in 1992 and 1997, once forcing him to sleep in the forest. But he said the usually stable country has never experienced the kind of explosive violence that has erupted in the past several days.

He said his mother built a home on what some Kalenjin tribal members have recently claimed is their ancestral land.

Kikuyu have taken refuge in churches and police stations, he said. Without intervention, they could face slaughter, he said: "This the world must know."

Christian family abandons homeland to start new life

Oakland Tribune, Oct 16, 2007 by Rebecca Rosen Lum

Life in Fallujah was already dangerous before Samiya Bashir, her three daughters and son learned American and Iraqi forces were coming to "clean" their neighborhood.

Men with unfamiliar accents would stop them in their car and demand to know why the women didn't cover their heads. One day, two men sideswiped them, forced them to stop and tried to pull one of the women from the car.

They were Christians in a once-diverse society increasingly dominated by violent Islamic extremists.

In 2005, when American fliers dropped leaflets on their neighborhood warning of a coming air attack, the family threw together some pillows and blankets, documents and a laptop. They rented a car and drove to Diyarbakir, 60 miles inside Turkey. From there, they took a bus to Istanbul, and to a Catholic church.

Recognized by the U.S. State Department as members of a vulnerable minority, the Christians nonetheless waited for two years in Turkey before the U.N. high commissioner accepted them as refugees. The women were given passage to the Bay Area, where they joined a brother in Dublin. Another brother, Raed Toma, still waits in Turkey.

The first of several Iraqi families to be resettled by Catholic Charities of the East Bay, Bashir and her daughters have moved into a sparsely furnished apartment in Fremont and now spend their days running to Social Security, the Department of Motor Vehicles and other agencies to accomplish the tasks it takes to establish a working life.

Her son, Shamil Toma, a testing engineer, has been in the West for 15 years and is helping them learn to make their way in the United States.

When these refugees look back home now, they see a beloved country torn by harsh ethnic and religious rifts.

Twenty years ago, Hana Toma, 50 -- the eldest of Bashir's daughters and a former translator for the Ministry of Culture -- worked happily with a crew that included a liberal Shiite, a Turkman, a Christian and a Muslim, and she knew of many mixed marriages.

Wafa Toma, 45, a primary school teacher, and Sena Toma, 37, a teacher at a technical institute, enjoyed friendships with people of different faiths in Fallujah. In fact, faith was seldom discussed, they said.

Although they were Christians in a conservative Muslim neighborhood, they enjoyed mutual respect.

"Christmas, we set up our Christmas tree," Hana Toma said. "At Easter, Mother would color eggs. Until 2003, nobody knew who was living next to you religionwise. After 2003, everything just fell apart."

As the bombs began falling, the minority Wahhabis -- a Sunni revivalist sect that advocates separation of the sexes and other fundamentalist mores, enforced by a cultural police -- began asserting themselves. Other Wahhabis began pouring into the city.

"It was a catastrophe," Hana Toma said. "People thought there would be democracy and freedom. Those terms are comparative. How can you apply them when everything collapses?"

Freedom of religion has been all but lost in Iraq, according to a U.S. State Department report. The 2007 Report on International Religious Freedom blames the ongoing insurgency and "conservative and extremist Islamic elements" for the sharp decline in religious tolerance.

"We are a minority," said an Iraqi priest on an interfaith tour of California. He asked not to be named for fear of retaliation when he returns home. "We suffer maybe more than other minorities. Why? Insurgents say America is majority Christian. This is the logic."

Christians in Iraq -- Chaldeans, Assyrians, Syriacs, Armenians -- still use an ancient liturgy. Although they are a small minority -- 3 percent -- many are doctors and engineers, the priest said.

Chaldean priests have been threatened, kidnapped, tortured and killed. More than 500,000 Christians have fled the country since 2003, according to the State Department report.

"In Iraq, we have the same problem as here -- the silent majority: Muslim clergy don't speak out because they are afraid," the priest said.

"It's ironic because there have been Christians in Iraq since year zero, but Christians are associated in many people's minds with the West," said Kathleen Newland, director at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonprofit organization. "Their asylum claims are less likely to be challenged and there is advocacy on their behalf."

Three months after the attack on their neighborhood, Raed Toma returned to Fallujah and photographed the ransacked ruins of their home.

Now, they sit at a bare table in a room with few other accommodations sorting through the photographs showing a comfortable living room -- then the same room with a hole punched in one wall. Other photos show scorched walls of rooms that looters emptied.

Despite displacement and destruction, they laugh a lot. They have always been a close family, pouring their salaries into a single pot. They built their family home together "brick by brick," Hana Toma said.

Late in the morning on a weekday, the sisters poured Turkish coffee into espresso cups donated by a friend of Shamil's and served visitors helva candy.

"We don't like to just sit here and go shopping," Hana said. "That is not our life. We want to be active again."

Police chief's job on the line

Contra Costa Times
July 6, 2003 Sunday FINAL EDITION

By Karl Fischer and Rebecca Rosen Lum, Times staff writers

RICHMOND -- A perception that Police Chief Joseph Samuels Jr. misled the City Council about disciplining employees for alleged misconduct may soon cost the city's top cop his job.

Numerous city officials say a firm council majority wants Samuels gone in October, when he finishes his one-year presidency of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the world's largest professional organization for police executives.

City Hall sources say City Manager Isiah Turner has given Samuels until the end of that term, Oct. 9, to repair his tarnished public image, heal gaping rifts between the department and Richmond's minority communities, and correct a series of employee discipline lapses that eroded council faith.

If not, Samuels will be removed as quickly as a graceful departure can be arranged, sources said.

"I've received input from community leaders and the City Council expressing concerns about the chief's leadership," Turner said. "I have raised these concerns with the chief and let him know we have certain standards and expectations."

"If these goals are not met, we will come to a point where we have a discussion about his career," Turner said.

Samuels would not comment directly.

"I've heard all the whispers, all the rumors about my job status," Samuels said. "But where I come from, who I am, the only voice I listen to is the voice of God."

Political will to remove Samuels coalesced in December, when City Council members learned a police officer accused of bullying a woman into having sex with him while on duty remained on the payroll, despite assertions by Samuels he was fired, sources said.

Suspicious the police department had given them inaccurate information about other personnel cases, the council investigated certain police misconduct complaints handled in the past two years by the department's internal affairs division and the civilian Police Commission.

The council review took more than two months of closed meetings ending in late April. In the end, the council demanded officials start termination hearings against five police employees, including the chief's closest adviser.

The department's handling of investigation and discipline in at least three cases severely damaged Samuels' credibility with the council, sources said.

In the first case, a 34-year-old female motorist claimed former Officer Patrick J. Sweeney stopped her in February 2002 and, after giving her a break on a ticket, asked for sex.

In a Nov. 21 damage claim against the city, she claims she had sex with Sweeney at least five times over a five-month period -- while he was armed and on duty -- because she was afraid of him.

While the council considered settling the claim at a Dec. 3 meeting, members asked about discipline, and sources say Samuels and other city staff members told them Sweeney had been fired.

Samuels recalls telling them only that he recommended Sweeney be fired. "Maybe I should have elaborated a little more on the process," Samuels said.

The council soon learned on its own that Sweeney took a long-term medical leave months earlier and was not fired.

Sweeney, the nephew of Richmond's former interim Police Chief Ed Duncan, took a medical retirement May 9. The council settled the woman's claim for $35,000 in February.

In a second case, Samuels apparently did not place his top civilian aide on administrative leave or notify him of his termination hearing in late April despite direct orders from the council.

Council members learned nearly two weeks later that Armand Mulder remained on the job after several female city employees who had complained he sexually harassed them frantically phoned to report more problems.

Mulder, who served as the department's commander of support services until his sudden retirement May 19, was the subject of a December internal affairs complaint. Council members were horrified to learn the complainant, whom Mulder supervised, continued to work in the same office after she made the complaint.

A department source said Samuels in December removed Mulder from direct supervision of the city jail, where the woman worked, when the claim "came to (his) attention." Samuels said he could not comment.

In the third case, the council dressed down Samuels publicly for not investigating brutality claims against several officers linked to a notorious police action on May 5, 2002.

The council learned internal affairs investigators contacted some of the primary witnesses for the first time April 29, just hours before the council was briefed on police plans for this year's Cinco de Mayo observances.

This, despite Samuel's repeated assurances his department investigated the incident while the civilian police commission conducted an 11-month investigation into numerous brutality claims.

"In the past they have had a number of bad moments here," said Councilwoman Maria Viramontes of strained relations between police and local Latinos. "Cinco de Mayo was another one of those moments, and it didn't have to go the way it did."

Council demands that Samuels take action resulted in a pink slip for Officer La Raunce Robinson, who was accused in a civil rights suit filed this spring of striking community activist Andres Soto with a metal flashlight during the incident.

The commission's findings did not substantiate claims against any of the officers named in the suit.

The firing had nothing to do with what Robinson did on Cinco de Mayo, sources said, but with evidence he lied to the commission during his testimony about the incident.

"We believe that (his firing) was politically motivated. The complaint was not factually sound," said Alison Berry Wilkinson, an attorney representing Robinson. "They were doing it, in my opinion, to resolve some community issues rather than because it was the right thing to do."

Talk of all these incidents has roiled the city's neighborhoods, igniting a discontent simmering since Samuels arrived in August 1999 and began dismantling the community-involved policing started by his popular predecessor.

When Samuels came to Richmond, the only concern was that the ambitious up-and-comer might not stick around if he were offered a more prestigious assignment.

Samuels seemed like the dream candidate. He had become Fresno's police chief at 42, and Oakland's first-ever African-American police chief. He launched community policing programs in both cities and collected some admirable awards. At only 50, he sat on the board of the world's largest organization of police executives.

"I was very pleased," said Eleanor Loynd, president of the Richmond Neighborhood Coordinating Council. "I thought, 'He's coming from Oakland, he's dealt with all that.' It has been a real disappointment."

Richmond searched for months to replace Police Chief Bill Lansdowne after he went to San Jose in 1998.

Then, in March 1999, word came that Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown planned to purge department heads, including Samuels. Although he says there was no connection, City Manager Isiah Turner dumped a pool of finalists that included three Richmond police captains.

In August 1999, Samuels took a $24,000 pay cut to become Richmond's top cop.

He was given a four-year contract paying $147,000 a year and asked to expand Richmond's popular community policing program.

He is the only city executive, other than Turner, to have a contract. It expires in August.

Samuels needed the job security it provided. He knew he would be president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 2002-03, a post he would have to resign if he lost his job.

At the time the contract seemed like a small concession for Richmond. But Samuels soon began rubbing the neighborhood councils the wrong way.

"I've learned that this community wants a hands-on chief," said Samuels, who intends to spend more time in the city once his IACP commitment ends in October.

One of his first acts was to re-assign five of 16 neighborhood-based officers to Narcotic Intervention Team Restoring Order, a nine-member task force targeting gangs, guns and drug dealing.

"He came in with an attitude toward dismantling the community policing we had with Chief Lansdowne," said east Richmond's Nick Despota. "There was a huge outcry, and after that he tried to piece it back together, but he wasn't very effective."

Samuels said promotions, injuries and retirements forced the shifting of officers.

Community policing embraces two tenets: Pairing an officer with a neighborhood over a long haul, and helping an area become crime resistant, said Rudi Raab, a North and East Neighborhood Council representative who works as a Berkeley police officer.

"If you stay on the beat, there's no us versus them. It's us together," he said. "In Richmond, it's a revolving door."

Under community pressure, the City Council in January approved 17 guidelines for community policing. But critics say they have yet to be implemented.

Samuels disagrees, and says a report due this month will show marked improvements in community relations.

"We're looking at making a lot of changes," he said.

Among officers, Samuels has become known as an aloof, hands-off executive, as in Oakland.

He is away on association business so often the council appointed an assistant police chief, paying him $146,500 a year -- only $500 less than Samuels -- to steer community-building efforts and represent the department.

Within the past two weeks, assistant police chief Charles Bennett tendered his resignation, leading residents to despair of community-involved policing ever getting off the ground in Richmond.

"Chuck Bennett is the one who carries CIP," Raab said. "This is really sad."

Raab said his most telling encounter with Samuels came early on, at a meeting that included Turner.

He and others hoped to implement a public education campaign to keep New Year's revelers from shooting live rounds into the air.

"Within five minutes, the chief stood up and said, 'I'm sorry, but I have an important meeting to go to.' I wanted to grab that guy by the lapels and say, 'Listen, we're talking about out-of-control gunfire in your city and you have somewhere more important to be?' And Isiah let him get away with it."

Editor's noteThe Times does not use unnamed sources unless editors determine them to be credible, the information cannot be obtained any other way and the sources have compelling reasons for remaining unnamed, such as fear of retribution. In this case, the situation's gravity and the legal issues involved for the numerous sources led us to take the unusual step.

Woman's damage claim led to police chief's scrutiny

Contra Costa Times
July 6, 2003 Sunday FINAL EDITION
RICHMOND -- The case that triggered an avalanche of mistrust among City Council members and scrutiny of Police Chief Joseph Samuels Jr. began as a routine traffic stop.

Early Feb. 17, 2002, Officer Patrick J. Sweeney pulled over a 34-year-old woman near South 15th Street and Cutting Boulevard for a minor traffic violation, according to a Nov. 21 damage claim against the city.

He checked her record for warrants and, finding none, said he would give her a break -- allegedly with one catch.

"Officer Sweeney told (the woman) that he wanted her to go home, put on lingerie and have sex with him," according to the claim. "(The woman) was shocked, but felt she had to do what Officer Sweeney wanted her to do. He was a police officer, carrying a gun, and she felt that she was powerless given his authority."

The Times does not name possible sexual abuse victims without their consent.

The woman did not respond to numerous attempts to contact her over several weeks. Her attorney said without her permission he could not comment.

Richmond council members, reading the claim for the first time in December, saw that Sweeney was the target of both internal affairs and criminal investigations connected with the incident.

At a closed meeting, members asked whether the officer had been disciplined.

Sources say the council received different answers from three staff members: "Don't worry about it," "He's not coming back," and a statement that Sweeney had been fired.

But soon afterward, a council member stumbled across a monthly statistical report documenting police officer injuries. It showed Sweeney remained on the payroll, using injury leave to nurse an ailing wrist he hurt on the job.

Samuels said he recalls telling the council that he had recommended Sweeney be fired.

According to a series of damage claims filed against the city between September and November 2002, the woman said she performed oral sex on Sweeney the day of the traffic stop.

She filed a complaint against him with police internal affairs on Feb. 21, 2002, only to receive a surprise telephone call.

"After repeatedly being called and threatened by Officer Sweeney, (she) returned to internal affairs to withdraw her complaint," according to the claim.

Despondent and feeling powerless, the woman submitted to sex with Sweeney at least four more times last spring all while he was on duty, according to the claims.

Sweeney, who took a medical retirement May 9 over the wrist injury, denies he ever had sex with the woman or knew her before the Feb. 21 complaint.

He claims to be the victim of an elaborate plot by street criminals to remove him from duty. Sweeney, 33, says many criminals inhabiting the Easter Hill public housing project and other areas he patrolled "hated and feared" him because of his efficacy as a police officer.

"Those people wanted me out of there," Sweeney said. "I was very proactive. I've been shot at, dragged by a car. -- I took a lot of people to jail, got tommy guns, Uzis, rock cocaine, crystal meth, working 13-hour days. I don't know when I would have time to do all this stuff" the woman claims.

After a second internal affairs complaint was filed in July 2002, the department investigated. Samuels said he could not release the findings because it is a personnel matter.

Sources say the police investigation revealed the woman told investigators she and Sweeney were in a relationship.

Still, the case caught the eye of a social worker who helped domestic violence and sexual assault victims, who relayed the information to the police department's Family Services Unit, which investigates sexual assault.

Sgt. Mark Gagan, head of the unit, initiated a criminal investigation. The Contra Costa District Attorney's Office conducted an independent investigation.

"We interviewed her in detail," Gagan said. "I believe that in the end -- all of us were convinced that the actions were not criminal," meaning the facts would not meet the legal tests required to successfully prosecute the case.

Sweeney was not disciplined. Samuels said his injury leave prevented the city from following some steps required by state law to fire him.

Sweeney will receive a portion of his pay and benefits for life, human resources manager Rob Larson said.

In February 2003, the City Council settled the woman's claim for $35,000.

SRO hotel owner: slumlord to some, savior to city officials

Contra Costa Times

By Rebecca Rosen Lum
Times staff writer

Mista Yancey stuffs the holes in his wall with plastic grocery bags to keep rats out of the room he and his wife share. On this oppressively hot, stagnant day, he plucks the pane out of the window and sets it aside. The sashes are so badly rotted, the windows no longer slide up and down.

The room is just large enough to hold a double bed. The sink in the Yanceys' room doesn't work, but they keep a bucket underneath it to catch frequent sewage back-ups. Four or five times a day, they dump the brown water that accumulates in it. They've photographed the rats that congregate at night, but so far they say they haven't been able to persuade their landlord, Inderjit Bal, to fumigate.

"I've been waiting so long for someone to come here and see how we live," Yancey said, waving dismissively at a faceless electrical socket that dangles unbolted along the corridor wall.

For more than 10 years, tenants and their advocates have complained about the rodent-infested, decaying building on Richmond's Macdonald Avenue. They describe the single-room-occupancy hotel, or SRO, as not just dismal but dangerous.

A one-time Bhopal, India, police inspector, Bal bought the two-story, 1910-era brick building in 1991. The City Council issued him a use permit in 1993.

For $435 to $600 a month, tenants get a private bedroom and share a common kitchen, dining room and bathrooms. There are 13 units on the second floor, and Bal rents the ground floor to two storefront churches.

"They are not satisfied with the landlord because I make them pay the rent," Bal said of his critics. "And there are people very fond of making complaints. I am a very good father, a very good brother to my tenants. I am their guardian. I am their well-wisher."

Among other acts of kindness, he volunteered free lodging for a time to a pregnant woman and to a family of five with nowhere else to go, he said.

But the tenants see things differently.

Entire sections of wall and floor have rotted away. Years of complaints about rats, leaks, exposed wire and corrosion have produced no improvements, they claim. One man was so fed up with the slow pace of repair and so terrified that a fire could spark from an oven with no door, that he bought an oven himself last week and had it installed in the shared kitchen.

Longtime renters say the furnace hasn't pumped out heat in years. Only one bathroom works. Much of the fire safety equipment required by the use permit, including smoke detectors in every room and up-to-date fire extinguishers, is missing or inoperative. Yet, despite overwhelming problems, Bal conducts business as he has done for years -- with the blessing of those who could force him to rehabilitate this rooming house.

Fire inspectors and City Council members have repeatedly praised Bal's efforts. His defenders say that without him, these tenants would be homeless. For those who live here -- some of whom work at low-paying jobs, others who collect disability or social security -- it's this or nothing.

Tenants and intruders have kicked in doors, stolen laundry coin boxes, disengaged smoke detectors, broken locks and thrown stones through windows, Bal said.

As for the Yanceys, Bal said they plugged up their own sink. He filed papers threatening them with eviction. "Since then they have been behaving very well," he said. "It costs me $500 to file an eviction. I don't get it back. If I talk about my problems, who cares? But if the tenants have problems, I am a bad landlord, and they are being discriminated against."

Despite documentation of numerous problems by use permit inspectors, Bal has made it through three permit revocation hearings, in 1993, 1994 and 1995, two investigative news reports in 1996 and 1998, and a sustained outcry from neighbors in Richmond's Iron Triangle section. The City Council has reversed every attempt by the Planning Commission to revoke Bal's use permit.

He hired the public relations firm of former Mayor George Livingston and Nat Bates, before Bates was a Richmond city councilman, to advise him before one hearing at an approximate cost of $5,000, Bates said.

"We sort of guided him," Bates said. "He was a very decent man."

The council hasn't addressed the matter since 1998, when it turned down a neighborhood request to close the hotel down.

But if Bates sees Bal as "a very decent man," and one who "probably gives more than he gets in return," Bal's management of the hotel has frustrated local police.

"The other SROs do a better job of keeping up the exterior and the hallways, bathrooms and kitchens," said Police Sgt. Ron Berry, who heads up the city's blight abatement team. "He finds ways to get around requirements. He blames problems on other people. I wish he'd try to see what people go through. But he's in this to make a profit."

Bal has proved a tireless litigator, suing tenants for the costs of property damage, back rent and security deposit increases. He has reported his critics to police, accusing them of breaking and entering when they respond to the pleas of tenants to look at conditions firsthand.

"It isn't just Mr. Bal, it's the city who's at fault here," said Iron Triangle resident and reformer Mildred Carlton. "The city is responsible for these deplorable conditions. They have failed to enforce the conditions on this permit."

Bal first applied for a permit in January 1993 and was rejected. A month later, the City Council OK'd his bid with additional conditions, including a management plan and a schedule of code compliance inspections.

County health officials, who have jurisdiction over Richmond since it has no municipal health department, said they could have ordered repairs -- if Richmond officials had notified them of a problem. In 10 years, no one has.

"We could be influential in getting this landlord to clean up his act, but somebody needs to tell us about it," Supervisor John Gioia said. "There is no excuse for not correcting these problems."

For residents of the hotel and the neighborhood, the explanation is simple. "There is an iron curtain around the Iron Triangle," Carlton said.

There are a handful of clean, functional SROs in Richmond. But 514 Macdonald Ave. has escaped the most dogged efforts of reformers.

Someone slashed open the fiberglass mailbox months ago, and it has not been repaired since then. Fearing checks could be stolen, tenants wait outside for the mail to arrive.

The fire escape dangles by a chain. "Even if you could get to the end, what are you going to do then?" resident Armund Johnson said, gesturing toward a drop of several feet onto a debris-strewn concrete lot. The gate that encloses it is padlocked.

The dining room is furnished with a rickety wooden table, no chairs and three sagging, stained couches.

One section of floor has rotted through. Residents barricaded it "so you don't forget and walk on it," one tenant said. "You'd be on the first floor in a hurry."

A box with a board over it serves as a step outside the single functioning shower. Whole sections of tile have fallen away.

And tenants say Bal does nothing to stop petty criminals from setting up shop in the hotel. They also say there are numerous unlocked entries that allow intruders easy access.

One couple, a man with renal failure and his wife, who works in the daytime, say a tenant's alleged prostitution business makes their nights a sleepless hell.

"I'm tired of it," the man said. "Everybody's tired of it."

"What can I do? I am not strong man," Bal said.

He does not call police; they have "more important things to do," he said. Sgt. Berry said he would respond immediately if called.

"I've got to run people out everyday who don't belong here," Mista Yancey said angrily. "I find homeless people in the furnace room. There's people in there having sex. All kinds of people come in to take showers."

If the conditions have raised eyebrows, so has Bal's record of litigation. He has been in court more than 150 times since 1991, mainly to evict tenants.

In one court action, a tenant claimed Bal sued him for two months' rent during a one-month period and refused to return his security deposit as promised.

Those who malign the business practices of Bal have marveled at his ability to escape enforcement.

"People have always said, 'Well, that's a tough neighborhood. Those people need somewhere to live, and this guy's willing to step up to the plate,'" said Councilman Tom Butt, who is urging the city to more aggressively pursue alleged violators. "That sort of perception has gotten him off the hook many times."

Former tenants Mary Brookings and Grace Wilburn say mosquitoes drove away congregants who came to their ground-floor community church, the result of standing water in the basement, a condition confirmed by a PG&E meter reader's report. Carlton said she ventured into the basement once and screamed when she saw electrical cords running from ice cream freezers to outlets under water.

"If you went down into that basement you could see it was just a matter of time until somebody got hurt," Brookings said.

Today, the conditions governing the hotel are mainly those proposed by Bal. His fire safety plan, approved by the city in 1998, ensures that a bucket of water and a bucket of fine sand are kept on hand. If a fire breaks out, those present are advised to "try to control it with all available equipment as soon as possible," and to "shout for help if necessary."

The city's own files bulge with documentation of alleged health and safety violations. A 1995 photo in Planning Department files shows a rat lounging in a sunny spot on a bathroom floor. In another, a stack of torn mattresses rests against an exterior wall. "Fire hazard," a department staffer wrote in longhand, with arrows pointing to various points on the property.

Inspectors found electrical sockets without cover plates, holes in the floors, overflowing Dumpsters, a jammed garbage chute and wiring protruding from walls. The same year, 1995, a report signed by fire inspector Jerry Pando praised Bal and the condition of the property.

"Excellent condition!" it says. "Owner very cooperative in maintaining code compliance." Also in 1995, building inspector Coy Charles sent a memo to then-Planner Natalia Lawrence saying "no building code violations were observed."

The next year, fire inspector Pando praised the hotel's "good overall conditions," and added that Bal was "to be complimented on keeping building in good order."

Lawrence has moved on, but Pando and Charles are still working for the city.

"He was very conscientious about getting things done," Pando said last week[AMC2]. "When I do inspections, I try to educate the people about what they need to do, and once they know they are pretty good about keeping up what they need to do."

As recently as last Friday, the hotel easily passed a fire inspection.

The city's code compliance chief Fred Clement said he "could not say" why the city has not found problems with the use permit.

"People can say this and that, but I have never failed a fire inspection," Bal said.

After each Planning Commission vote to revoke Bal's permit, the City Council has reinstated it on appeal.

"You just can't win with him," Wilburn said. "You think the council is going to help you, but they always rule in his favor."

That infuriates Yancey. Holding up a 2001 fire extinguisher, he said, "It hasn't even been charged."

"I mean, come on now," he said walking by the display board showing Bal's detailed management plan. "All these papers are out of date."

As a councilman, Bates has consistently protested efforts to curtail Bal's operation.

"We've got rooming houses all over the city," Bates said. "If you really want to attack the problem you have to do it citywide. They offer a service nobody else wants to offer. Yes, they should have hot water, they should be sanitary, but if you close it down, where are these people going to go? You can't expect him to provide a high-class place when he probably seldom collects the full rent."

A Contra Costa County inspector scoffs at that reasoning. "That's the fallback argument: Let them live like that, because there's nothing else for them," said senior environmental health inspector Joe Doser.

Bal said his critics do not understand the daunting challenges he faces. He says it's a battle to collect the rent and keep the place in working order.

"I criticize the welfare system for making these poor people useless," he said. "Why should they work? Food is free, clothing is free, they eat better than I can afford to eat at the soup kitchen. If you study the lives of these people you'll see they live better than us hard-working people. You go over to the park across the street, and you have never heard such sounds of happiness and laughter."

A polite, soft-spoken man, Bal is frequently seen at the hotel in coveralls and a baseball cap. He owns several properties in Richmond, most modest tract homes he subdivides into rental units. He also owns a spacious home in Carriage Hills and another in San Ramon.

Managing the property "is trouble, but I have gone through much worse troubles in my life," he said. "What would be trouble to an ordinary man is no trouble to me. I have a great deal of experience dealing with low-grade people. It's a cat-and-mouse game, a game they play." He was awarded the highest humanitarian award in India for his service on the police force, he said.

Former Richmond planning commissioner Susan Geick says it is Bal who plays a cat-and-mouse game -- with the city.

"It makes me ill," she said. "(Bal) has done terrible things to these people and this city has let him get away with it. We've protected this man far better and longer than our citizens who need us."

Home fraud penalties stiffer because of Richmond woman

Contra Costa Times
Friday FINAL EDITION

By Rebecca Rosen Lum, Times staff writer

Gov. Gray Davis has signed into law a measure boosting penalties for fraud in the sale of home equity contracts to seniors in foreclosure.

Dubbed "the Irene Feaster bill" for the Richmond resident who inspired it, the law increases civil penalties to $2,500 and the maximum fine to $25,000.

"A sick, elderly woman was pressured into selling her home for an amount well below market value," said state Sen. Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch, the law's sponsor.

"It seemed crazy when I read about it in the newspaper," Torlakson said.

In December 2002, the Times wrote about Feaster, now 76, who had been hospitalized for treatment of breast cancer, diabetes, heart disease and early stage dementia when her home went into foreclosure.

She sold it for $10,000 in 1999 but says she never received the money. She was promised the right to stay there, but the buyer sold the home almost immediately.

It changed hands a number of times, and tens of thousands of dollars in loans were taken out on the Richmond three-bedroom.

Feaster's lawyer, Craig Nevin of Walnut Creek, has asked a court to undo all the real estate transactions back to the original sale. A tentative settlement is awaiting approval in Contra Costa Superior Court.

Court costs have taken their toll on Feaster, a diminutive woman who uses a wheelchair. Her telephone has been disconnected and her power cut off. Friends and neighbors bring her food and assist her.

She remains in her home of 30 years, and if a judge OKs the settlement, she will stay there the rest of her life.