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May 5, 2008 10:17 pm US/Pacific
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Sam Shane Investigates: Hotel Berry
Reporting
Sam Shane
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) ―
Sacramento city leaders have just paid the new owners of Hotel Berry $5 million of taxpayer money to take it over and fix it. It's one big mess. And as we uncovered, local fire experts disagree on whether Hotel Berry is even up to code.
The Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency paid Oakland-based development company A.F. Evans $5 million to in December of 2007 to take the property off the city's hands, renovate it, and continue operating it as part of the city's affordable housing pool. A.F. Evans partnered with non-profit The Trinity Housing Foundation.
Renovation is scheduled to begin in October, 2008 for the Hotel Berry. But what you're about to read and see in the video is what people are living in now.
From the outside looking in, you'd never know.
The Hotel Berry -- 729 "L" Street, in downtown Sacramento.
We're about to take you inside.
After you see what we saw you may call this place a rat trap, or a fire trap, or a death trap.
Sacramento's elected officials have poured more than a million taxpayer dollars into this place since 1994, and at least one city leader admits he has no idea what's inside.
"I haven't been inside it for four years," admits District One Sacramento City Councilman Ray Tretheway.
Inside the Hotel Berry, we found incredible filth, and we discovered what appear to be code violations all over the place.
For the poor people living here, and they are poor, not only is this a dirty place, it's potentially a very dangerous place.
"These city run projects are blight on the city," says former Hotel Berry resident Bob Medina.
Medina recently moved out of the hotel, but before he left, with his infant daughter in his arms, he gave us a tour.
We started in his rooftop apartment, and like the entire building, he says it usually has no heat, and no hot water to bathe his sick daughter.
Rodent droppings litter the crawl space under his floor.
"You can smell that odor coming out of there," says Medina while opening hatch, which sits directly beneath his mattress – security for the trespassers who crawl their way underneath his apartment and try to break and enter.
And that's the just the beginning.
On floor after floor, exposed wires dangle in the open.
Then there's the plumbing.
"This is what somebody has to use in order to take a shower here," he says while demonstrating one of the community bath tub faucets; it shoots a solid stream of water toward the ceiling once he turns the handle due to the broken plumbing.
There's no shortage of disgusting pictures from this place, from the cockroaches, to the backed-up toilets in community bathrooms.
And we can't ignore the elevator -- it works, sometimes.
"You can see here the permit expired in 2005," Medina says while pointing to the outdated permit affixed to the wall of the elevator. We trust this thing to safely take us from floor to floor of this eight story building.
The elevator in Hotel Berry is the first major code violation we discovered. The elevator here has been running without a permit for almost three years.
We called state investigators at the Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) -- they are responsible for inspecting this elevator. We asked them why they allowed it to run without a permit for three years. They told us they tried to inspect the elevator, but when their inspectors arrived at Hotel Berry the elevator was not working, so they could not inspect it. The day after our call we found these elevator inspectors at the hotel.
And they had no interest in talking to our CBS13 producer.
Here's how part of the exchange happened as the two men exited the hotel, one man getting into his car on the street, the other walking off down the sidewalk in the opposite direction:
"Producer: Do you have a moment? Can you talk to us about your inspection, at all? No?"
Producer: "Sorry to chase you down but I was wondering if we could talk to you for a quick second. Are you working' for the city? Are you a city worker?"
Man: "I have no comment."
Producer: "You can't talk to us about the inspections you guys just did on the elevator?"
Man: "No, I have no comment."
Producer: "You can't tell us why the city is taking so long to inspect the elevators or how they've been able to operate for so long without any inspections or certificates."
Man: "I have no comment."
Producer: "Can you at least tell us who you work for?"
The man shook his head and walked off.
We found out later that day his name was Gary Ambuel, and ERT engineer with DIR, Cal/OSHA, Elevator Ride & Tramway Unit, Sacramento District Office.
In 2003, California enacted a law giving elevator regulators the power to fine any building owner $3,000 if they operate an elevator without a permit. But the owners of Hotel Berry have never been fined. Why? Because Cal/OSHA says five years after the new law was enacted State elevator regulators have still not written the regulations that allow them to issue the fines.
Then there are the fire doors.
"This is one of the fire doors that's' supposed to be working here," Medina says while showing us a fire door connecting a hallway to the hotel's main staircase.
During our tour, Medina showed us why he says the Hotel Berry is a fire trap.
"This is their idea of a fire door. You see the huge gaps around there. That's not really doing anything."
One after another fire doors leading to the only staircase in this eight story building are broken or falling off their hinges.
"This is another fire door. You can see it's completely hanging off the hinges and across from it, there is no fire door."
If a fire were to break-out Medina fears a tragedy for the people who live down these halls.
"If they can't get down this hallway...," he says gesturing through the open fire door. "…Guess what? Everybody's dead."
We thought the California State Fire Marshal would be interested in seeing these pictures. We were wrong. They told us they were not interested. We then took our pictures to the Sacramento City Fire Department. And we were astonished by what we were told.
Sam Shane:
"It's safe? It's OK?"
Troy Malaspino, Sacramento City Fire Marshal:
"I've already told you, I don't know if it's okay or not. We're gonna make a determination and do some research and find out if it does in fact meet the code when the building is built."
Fire Marshal Malaspino, who's in charge of inspecting the Hotel Berry every year, told us he was not sure if the broken fire doors are a fire code violation or not.
One week after our interview, a spokesman for the fire department sent an email to CBS13 that stated "Because of the installation of the sprinkler system, there was no need for fire doors..." in the Hotel Berry.
James McMullen completely disagrees. "This is the California fire code," he says, pulling out a large, official looking, three-ring binder.
McMullen would know. He's the former California State Fire Marshall, and an expert in fire and building code analysis as president of The McMullen Company, Inc. We showed our video of the broken fire doors in the Hotel Berry to McMullen. He was very clear and, he says, so is the California Fire Code. McMullen read the code for us -- Chapter seven, Section 703.2.
"And it says fire doors and smoke barrier doors shall not be blocked or obstructed or otherwise made inoperable," he says reading the code aloud.
He says this part of the fire code is always the same -- it states fire doors must work.
McMullen continues "Pure and simple. Nowhere is there an exception in there for sprinkler systems."
McMullen told us there's no mistaking the California Fire Code. "So, it's clear. No matter when that door is put in it has to be maintained." And that's the property owner's responsibility.
But our pictures show Sacramento city fire inspectors are not properly enforcing California Fire Code in the Hotel Berry.
So here you have a rundown hotel allowed to stay open with its broken fire doors and aging elevator. Beyond the apparent code violations, this filthy, low rent hotel has cost taxpayers millions of dollars. And at least one city leader says it's time for an internal investigation.
"I am concerned about what you shared with me about cockroaches and fire doors and we'll look into that," promises Ray Tretheway.
Currently, there are 115 single room occupancy (S.R.O.) units within the walls of the Hotel Berry, but the building rehab will reduce that to a hundred units, including 10 for tenants designated under the Mental Health Service Act (MHSA.)
The city's ability to put affordability restrictions on the hotel would have expired in 2009. With that deadline looming, Sacramento city officials felt it was imperative for them to get the $5 million dollars in funding secured for A.F. Evans; they did, gave it A.F. Evans and that now allows Sacramento's affordable restrictions to extend another 55 years.
City documents also show that tenants cannot be permanently displaced before and during the rehab, and that they must be temporarily relocated.
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