Nearly two months after a Jan. 19 three-alarm fire ripped through a downtown Oakland apartment building, roughly 200 residents are still living out of bags and bouncing between temporary beds. The tenants and a tenants’ rights group insist the landlord owes them city-mandated relocation payments due to preexisting code violations, while the owner maintains no such payments are due. In the meantime, families are scattered across short-term hotels, shelters, and friends’ places, with only limited opportunities to retrieve their belongings.
City steps in, but only so far
The City has declared the five-story building at 1770 Broadway unsafe and uninhabitable and has set up a Local Assistance Center and a temporary shelter to support displaced residents……