Lakewood Tenants Association
655 John Muir Drive, San Francisco, CA lakewoodtenants@hotmail.com (415) 334-0465
June 26, 2004
Certified Mail #
7004 0750 0000 1878 0201
Edward S. Matthews,
President
T&S Realty Co.
900 E. Hillsdale Blvd.
Foster
City, CA 94404
Certified Mail #
7004 0750 0000 1878 0195
Muir Partners, L.P.
c/o Joyce Hameetman
John Muir Corp.
2029 Century Park E.
#1550
Los
Angeles, CA 90067
Dear Mr. Matthews
and Ms. Hameetman:
Enclosed please find
a copy of a recent report by SAFE, an organization associated with the City and
County of San Francisco, documenting the continuing failure of the
ownership of Lakewood Apartments of John Muir Drive in San Francisco, whom you represent, to adequately maintain
the property to secure it from criminal unauthorized intrusion. As you
should know, San
Francisco's
Building Security Ordinance requires you to maintain the access doors to be
self-closing and locked. The report also describes additional measures that may
not be required by law but that were deemed advisable by SAFE in light of the
history of alleged criminal activity on this property. Included, as well, is a copy of the letter
sent to the Amy
Sexton, GM of
Lakewood and myself, written by Rob Mackenzie, Residential Security Specialist,
which accompanied a copy of the safety report, dated 6/26/2004.
The Lakewood Tenants
Association has provided your managers with our own surveys of the security of
the access doors for the residential structure on several occasions. You can find a copy of the most recent survey
along with the letter sent to Ms Sexton, our general manager, on the Lakewood
Tenants website http://www.lakewoodtenants.com/News.htm See items dated 2/16, 3/26 and 3/27/2004. One
of our members has provided similar surveys for many years before that. When R
& B Apartment Management Company was managing the property, these surveys
were, on one occasion at least, acknowledged and some minimal effort was
performed to correct the defects. Since Western National Group has assumed
management responsibility, these security surveys have never even been
acknowledged. We have never received any requests for clarifications of
the surveys and the defective conditions have persisted for months after we
have reported them to you, suggesting to us that our surveys have been
completely ignored. Only when some of the same defects have been presented to
you by SAFE have they been repaired. Be advised that not all of the defective conditions
have been presented to you by SAFE. While we will continue to provide your
managers with our security surveys occasionally as we may be able to, as a
courtesy, whether it is appreciated or not, it is your responsibility,
not ours, to identify and correct any conditions that make the property unsafe.
We believe that it is incumbent upon you to establish and maintain a systematic
program to identify and promptly correct defective doors. At our suggestion a
few years ago, you numbered the doors so they could be readily identified but
that effort was a failure because not all the doors were numbered. We believe
that your security guards should be made responsible for checking every access
door to the residential structure common hallways and garages every day because
these doors are purposely vandalized, often within hours of the time they are
repaired, by whomever it is that finds it worthwhile to do so here.
Beyond these
suggestions we would simply observe that we find it more than a little surprising
that you would fail to take the extra effort occasionally, to apprehend the
criminals that are so damaging your property. It seems to us that it would be
the "ounce of prevention that saves a pound of cure" to hire a
temporary off-duty police officer or other qualified person to apprehend the
perpetrators who vandalize the door locks so they can come back later to help
themselves to the tenants’ property.
The lease you are
offering to new tenants pretends to a waiver on the part of the tenant to a
secure property. We consider such lease provisions to be laughable in light of San Francisco's Building Security Ordinance and we will
continue to advise out members to seek legal counsel if they are the victims of
crime at a property so neglected by its owners.
Sincerely,
Mona
Cereghino, President
Lakewood Tenants Association