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Eventually, it got so bad that Fritz couldn't sleep because she was afraid bugs would crawl on her body. She began taking photographs of the problems in the motel, and placed the first of many calls to the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
In the winter of 2006, Fritz' boyfriend ran into an old friend from the Baldwin House Hotel, where the couple had previously lived. The friend asked whether Fritz and Baldwin were in on the class-action suit against that SRO. It was the first Fritz had heard of it, but she contacted Jay Koslofsky, a lawyer handling the case, and signed up.
He eventually asked Fritz where she lived now. Did she have anything she wanted to share about it? A shiny new class-action lawsuit was born.
When Fritz started to recruit others to be named as plaintiffs, she didn't have much luck. "They felt I was promoting a situation where these folks were going to lose their housing if I didn't shut up and just leave well enough alone," she said. "That's why I couldn't get people on my side."
Fritz' neighbor, Kassel, had been at the Bridge for more than 20 years. She says his rent-controlled space cost him just $200 a month, and he didn't want to risk losing it. Although he eventually decided he did want to be part of the suit and gave a lengthy and sometimes poetic deposition, he died last year from a methadone overdose.
Across the hall, a resident named Jeff Antunez — who Kassel claimed was working for the Shaikh brothers — told Fritz that he was not interested in being part of the class action. Antunez and two others, William Bell and Patrick McInerney, actually opted out of the lawsuit. "It was for personal reasons," Antunez said curtly, then shut his door.
Evans immediately liked the idea of being part of the suit, but says Mohammed Shaikh threatened him. "He advised me to tell my lawyer that I didn't want nothin' to do with the lawsuit," Evans said. But when Fritz and the lawyers told him he had every right to sue and could not be evicted for doing so, he reached for the pen. He says his participation in the lawsuit cost him his off-the-books cleaning job.
Stewart also says Mohammed Shaikh threatened him with eviction over the lawsuit. In response, Stewart says, he called the manager a "dirty motherfucker." (Again, the Bridge managers declined to comment.)
According to Fritz, several tenants refused to be seen talking to the lawyers inside the motel because they believed it was too dangerous. Instead, they arranged clandestine meetings at a diner across the street.
In the end, seven people agreed to be named in the lawsuit. Anita Fritz, Kenneth Baldwin, Greg Breeze, Sandra Hines, Jose Espinoza, Jon Evans, and Gregory Rausch.
Though she had been out of work for nearly a decade, Fritz used her communication skills and her knowledge of the law to persuade four of those people to participate.
The hardest part, she said, was making them understand something she innately knew from her time in the business world. "No matter how little they think they are, they actually have rights here," she said.
On Sept. 24, 2007, a team of experts including an entomologist, a general contractor, a structural engineer, and a plumbing contractor evaluated the conditions of the Bridge Motel. The results — made public as part of the class-action lawsuit — weren't pretty.
Structural engineer Bishwendu Paul observed cracked walls, sloping floors, and a shallow foundation, and ultimately concluded that the motel was "structurally deficient" and "seismically unsafe." Plumber Rick Peyton found natural gas meters that weren't vented, which could cause a fire or explosion, and an uncapped sewer connection that "will allow gas and odor from the city's sewer system to enter dwellings."
Bruce Powelson, a licensed general contractor, discovered trash, dead rats, and rat feces and urine in the entryway and basement. He called the exterior "decrepit," the floors "spongy," and the motel's eight 20-amp circuit breakers "insufficient to adequately power these hotel rooms" and therefore "likely to result in electrical blackouts."
Entomologist Arthur Slater determined that the motel had become a breeding ground for rats and cockroaches, which he found living and dead throughout the building. Pest control operator Juan Hernandez later told attorneys that when he first visited the motel in May 2004, he saw roaches everywhere and believed there had been no professional pest control for at least six months.
Hernandez came to the Bridge seven times, he said in a deposition, but discontinued his service in 2006 because the motel management stopped paying him (and apparently owed him $200). Six months later, after the Department of Public Health cited the building for infestations, the management called him again. Upon his return, Hernandez said he encountered one of the worst infestations of his career.
To understand how the situation had gotten so dire, lawyers took depositions from the building owners, management, and tenants. When they asked about cleaning responsibilities, everybody had a different answer.
Mohammed Shaikh testified that the cleaning was done by himself, Nasir Shaikh, and Thomas Regan. Nasir Shaikh told the attorneys that Regan alone was responsible for cleaning and fixing anything that was broken. Regan said that although he cleaned once in a while, he was never provided with cleaning supplies or maintenance training.
Nobody mentioned Evans, who claims he was hired to clean for $5 a day, but some residents told the attorneys that the Shaikhs often hired tenants to clean for little or no money. The Shaikhs' lawyer, Richard Stratton, said he doubts this is true, and that the tenants may be trying to get out of paying full rent.
The Shaikhs did, however, heap quite a bit of responsibility on Regan. Starting in 2006, according to Nasir Shaikh, Regan was in charge of keeping the receipt books, registration cards, daily logs, and tenant roster. But when attorneys questioned him about record-keeping, he told them he was illiterate. "I can't read or spell," he said. "I was born almost handicapped, okay?"
