By Hilda Gutierrez, Michael Bott and Alex Bozovic
Nearly 70 current and former tenants of the Oakland Station apartments – all seniors or people with disabilities, or both – filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing the building’s owners and managers of negligence, elder abuse, harassment and other civil violations.
The 181-page lawsuit alleges residents were lured in with the promise of luxury senior living but instead endured years of unsafe conditions, repeated elevator outages, security failures and severe cockroach infestations at the affordable housing complex.
“Overrun with trash, debris, feces, unhoused trespassers, drug use, drug paraphernalia, rodents, and cockroaches, the Complex trapped senior tenants in the most vulnerable and unsafe housing conditions and had virtually no usable amenities,” the lawsuit alleges.
The suit follows months of organizing by residents, who filed complaints earlier this year with the city and confronted building management over conditions at the property.
Now, they’re taking them to court.
“The people that we’re representing are retired nurses, retired teachers, retired AC Transit workers,” attorney Rahman Popal said. “And they come back to the conditions here which are not safe and unsecured and completely dirty and uninhabitable.”
The lawsuit also raises questions about how the project was first developed and marketed
It alleges the Oakland Station was promoted as a luxury affordable housing community for seniors in order to attract tenants and secure development incentives, including housing tax credits. But last year, citing high vacancy rates and other factors, the building’s owners – Oakland Pacific Associates – were granted permission from the city to open the property to tenants of all ages.
But the lawsuit alleges those empty units were caused by “unsafe and unhealthy” conditions, reduced services, and limited access to parking.
“Our lawsuit looks at the entire history of this property from the very beginning,” Popal said. “This was passed and sold as an affordable housing complex for senior tenants. And the ownership group secured housing tax credits that greatly benefit them.”
The lawsuit describes dozens of alleged problems, including building-wide heating and plumbing issues.
Paula Reed, 75, is a cancer and stroke survivor. She alleges in the lawsuit that her bathroom plumbing was not working for about a week and had to use makeshift alternatives.
“I was using a pai,l and I was using plastic bags,” Reed said.
Additionally, the civil complaint describes a time when Reed was displaced from her apartment for almost two months due to flooding at the complex and was promised reimbursement for a motel. But she was never paid back, according to the lawsuit, “forcing the senior, low-income Plaintiff to shoulder the costs of displacement.”
Nearly every tenant in the building who spoke to NBC Bay Area told stories about cockroaches. Roach motels and bug-killing powder are common sights throughout the hallways and inside tenants’ units.
Claudia Alejandre says cockroaches have even crawled inside the CPAP machines she and her husband use to sleep at night, so she now has to tape them shut.
“We found roaches inside swimming in the water container,” Alejandre said. “It was a really stressful situation.”
The lawsuit also details numerous safety concerns, notably a broken exterior gate that remains open and allows anyone to enter the building.
Tenants regularly encounter trespassers using drugs, along with “sex workers, and others camping through the building,” according to the lawsuit.
“People off the street living in the hallways,” said Williams, a U.S. Coast Guard veteran. “I had my car stolen.”
He said he’s taken his complaints to building management, run by a San Diego company called CONAM, but has been met with “no communication and a lack of concern.”
Another plaintiff in the suit, Saffiya Usman, said the building got so dangerous she had to move out. The lawsuit alleges that she was assaulted and robbed in the building’s elevator last year.
“He pushed me and knocked me down, and my head hit the back of the elevator,” Usman said. “He grabbed my bag and ran out."
Usman said she filed a report with police, but the man was never caught.
Records from the Oakland Police Department show officers have responded to more than 50 calls at the property in the first four months of 2026 alone, for reported robberies, trespassers, car burglaries and more.
“That was the most terrifying and frightening experience that I have ever had,” Usman said.
The building’s elevators are a major concern among tenants, particularly those with disabilities, since they “have broken down over 30 times,” according to the lawsuit.
When the building’s elevators were out of service for four days in 2024, according to the lawsuit, Oakland firefighters were forced to carry a paralyzed tenant down six flights of stairs during a medical emergency.
A spokesperson for the Oakland Fire Department confirmed the incident.
During the outage, tenants like Rose Luster-Brooks said they were trapped in their apartments.
“Everybody was stuck, and it was hard for people like me that’s in a wheelchair,” Luster-Brooks said. “But the office never came up and said, ‘Hey, y’all need some water? Is there anything we can do to help you?’ They never checked on us.”
Neither Oakland Pacific Associates nor CONAM responded to NBC Bay Area’s request for comment.
In a March letter to tenants, however, management said it remained committed to operating the property in compliance with applicable laws and lease agreements.
They added that the building’s heating system has been fixed, common areas are cleaned regularly, and that the building has a security team, though it’s not in place 24 hours a day.
With the help of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), the tenants' complaints and organizing efforts caught the attention of city officials earlier this year. Several city council members have toured the property and the city said May code enforcement inspections led to notices of violations, including for pest-related issues.
But Popal said there were opportunities for the city to intervene earlier and more aggressively, citing code enforcement visits to the property going back to 2023.
The lawsuit seeks damages and court orders requiring the owners to address the alleged conditions at the property.
“We’re demanding accountability,” Popal said. “These tenants didn’t come to me about money, they came to me because they want to be able to sleep at night.”