When Tamika Spikes moved from the single-room-occupancy hotel where she lived with her young daughter into a two-bedroom apartment at Alice Griffith earlier this year, she felt lucky. Her window offered sweeping views of the bay and Candlestick Park, and her daughter got a room of her own — her first.
But just weeks later, a rotten smell permeated her home and the hallways of the building’s fifth floor, causing Spikes and her five-year-old, who uses an inhaler, to gag and struggle to breathe. Spikes recognized the smell: It was the same odor that had lingered in her SRO after a neighbor died from an overdose, years ago. This time, she said, she told maintenance staff she “smelled death.”
It’s rats, she was told…