JoAnn in Naoa California

I work for a very large realty company , who owns and manages several large apartment complexes in the Bay Area. I am/was their painter. I had worked for them just short of 6 months. This company doesn’t give 2 cents about their tenants. The time I was there I would find mold in recently vacated apartments that had grown from the bathroom to the interior walls of the bedroom. I would notify my supervisor and his response was always the same ” paint over it. I need you out of that unit”. There were times the mold was so bad I would put on my respirator. The property in Napa where I worked floods all the time. There are one section of apartments that the water just sits , stagnant under their units all the time. Sometimes we would pump it out into the carport area ( the smell would be strong with mold ) but most times the water is allowed to just sit under these units. The supervisor is fully aware of all these existing problems and does nothing but try to hide the problem. The structural safety of most of these units on this property in Napa California is of a deep concern. While I worked there We had concrete staircases fall apart. , ceilings in bathrooms and kitchens fall due to the moisture in the walls. We have had porches and patios give way sending big chunks of cement to the ground below. Almost every unit I painted while employed with this company had some degree of mold in it. The tenants are never notified. Not even if they have children. I have a concsious. Yea I needed the job but not at the expense of other people. I can paint anywhere. What’s the most disturbing part of all this is once a week the bank representatives that provides this company with millions of dollars in loan money walk this property with the manager and maintenance supervisor. They have no clue the hours prior to their arrival our supervisor would pull all employees off their normal assignments and have us scrambling to hide all visible violations. We had an ongoing joke that Thursday’s were our exercise day. Because believe it when I tell you that the things we hid from those bankers would put most people in jail. Never have I worked for a company where you were encouraged to clean all your paint equipment in the unit you worked in. No slop water. Nothing. Right into the tub and down the drain. And always within 2 months that unit would have a backup and maintenance would have to flush the pipes. You think? You can’t pour or clean paint equipment in a household drain. If only the people that live there would get together and realize they don’t have to accept that. But they are afraid because people I spoke with are afraid of eviction. Napa doesn’t need a reason to evict you. They only need to tell you they want to reclaim the property for upgrades. So in Napa if you live in a questionable apartment owned by this real estate company I guarantee that there are legal issues with the apartment you live in.