“When tenants' rights are under attack, what do we do?” chanted concerned residents.
“Stand up, fight back!” came the response.
On December 21, during an Arctic cold front, the key fob system for the building broke, forcing Clarkson tenants to get inside the building through a broken garage door in an icy alleyway. The key fob system still hasn't been fixed, although management implemented a temporary manual system after three weeks.
“We shouldn't have to remind our property managers that we have rights,” blasted tenant Gordy Goetz at the April 19 picketing event. “We shouldn't have to remind them that they're breaking the law for them to step into action.”
In addition to the broken garage door being a security issue — anyone could wander into the building’s parking structure since it was permanently stuck open — the alleyway is not accessible for people with limited mobility or in wheelchairs, particularly on snowy winter days.
“That was particularly concerning to me as someone with chronic, severe back problems, because we had no safe way of getting into the building at all for weeks at a time,” said tenant Sam Jimenez. “That was kind of the last straw for me, where I was like, okay, we can do something about this. We can band together and fight back.”
The Clarkson tenants formed a union in response to management's poor handling of the situation, and many of them also helped start the Denver Metro Tenants Union, which hosted its first official meeting on April 12 and aims to unite the city’s renters to collectively advocate for change.
Karuna Srikureja, another Clarkson tenant, said at the picket that when tenants called Boutique’s emergency line on December 21, they couldn’t even reach a human being in this country for help — and would have been left outside had other residents not come to let them in.
But the broken key fob system is just one of numerous maintenance issues left unresolved for extended periods of time.
After coming together through meetings organized by Jimenez, the Clarkson tenants collected lists of problems that residents were facing, knocking on doors to be sure everyone had the chance to participate.
They unearthed a trove of problems. The elevators are constantly out of order, and Srikureja got stuck in one after it broke down, requiring her to be rescued by the Denver Fire Department.
The garbage and recycling bins at the building are constantly overflowing; building amenities like the treadmills in the gym and the television in the lounge are frequently in disrepair; the lounge itself doesn’t have working lights. If tenants want to hang out there at night, they've got to bring their own lamps, Jimenez says.
Srikureja’s oven and smoke detector were broken for weeks, and Goetz was without hot water for eight days.
“It was only when we notified them that they're breaking the habitability law on the fifth day that we got any response from them,” Goetz said at the April 19 gathering.
Jimenez adds that every person in the union has tried to work with management individually through the normal channels and has been met with no response or an insufficient one.
“I didn't want to be a bother,” Srikureja said. “I didn't want to seem high-maintenance or annoying. I feel like this is what it really means to be a renter. You accept the lease, and you pay for these amenities that you may never have access to, and you just learn helplessness.”
But these renters aren’t helpless.
Together they’re demanding fifteen action items from management — including full rent reimbursement for the three weeks they had to sneak into the building through the garage, as well as partial rent reimbursement for building-wide shutoffs of water and times when trash collection was missed or other amenities were in disrepair or unavailable.
Being locked out of their building on a cold night spurred tenants of The Clarkson to unionize.
Catie Cheshire
Lastly, the tenants are demanding swift and permanent repairs for the key fob system, the elevators, the garage doors and the lounge TV. They’re also asking that future maintenance issues be resolved in a timely manner, with permanent fixes and an emergency hotline in place where people will actually respond in the event of an emergency.
Plus, they’d like their smoke detectors to be recalibrated to an appropriate level of sensitivity.
No one came to the door on April 19 when the tenants tried to deliver their demand letter to Boutique Apartments, but President and COO Nick Costanzo did offer a response in a statement to Westword.
“This specific building was constructed in 2012 and requires upgrades and repairs as the building ages,” the statement says.
According to Costanzo, an upgrade for the Clarkson's key fob system is currently in the works and should be ready by the end of April. The elevators are maintained by a third party, with whom Boutique has been working to get service expedited, he adds.
“We do our best to coordinate with residents and vendor availability to get all necessary repairs completed in the most efficient fashion,” the statement reads. “Repairs, including water heater repairs, arise as the building ages.”
Costanzo claims that increased vandalism and theft have impacted the building in recent years, but the company is doing its best to accommodate resident requests.
Clarkson tenants believe that calling the building old isn’t an excuse for the disrepair it’s in.
“There's probably 100-year-old buildings in the city with less problems,” says Jimenez in response. Her day job is in software, and she’s spent most of her free time on organizing her fellow tenants.
She says she’s been rewarded for that work with retaliatory action from Boutique Apartments in the form of a lease violation for harassing neighbors and management, a lease non-renewal and allegations of defamation.
“When I asked specifics about these allegations, they refused to provide any — because they don't exist,” Jimenez says. “They're just trying to scare me into not bringing light to these issues or retaliating because we're trying to advocate for ourselves.”
According to Costanzo’s statement, there haven’t been any non-renewals issued in relation to residents reporting building repair issues.
At the April 19 rally, several cars driving by honked in support of the picketers. Also in agreement with the residents was soon-to-be Denver City Council member Sarah Paraday, who won one of the at-large positions in the April 4 election.
“All of our homes should be safe, accessible, habitable, comfortable places to live,” Paraday said at the event. “That's true regardless of how high rents have gotten in Denver, but that's especially true when renters in this city are rent-burdened and are paying the majority of their wages just to have a roof over their head.”
Jimenez says rent for a one-bedroom apartment ranges from $1,450 to $1,725 for those in the union.
Two candidates in city council runoff races, Shannon Hoffman and Shontel Lewis, also spoke in support of the tenants at the April 19 rally. Hoffman said she’s had problems with landlord negligence in her own apartment. If elected, she wants to bring renters to the forefront.
“This is happening all over our city, and I'm so happy to see us building tenant power,” she said.
Hoffman is up against current city councilman Chris Hinds in District 10, where renters make up more than 70 percent of residents. Hinds wasn’t at the picketing event, but he points to policies passed by Denver City Council during his tenure — like the rental licensing program and a free eviction defense fund — as evidence that he also supports renters.
“I also have been open and public that I recognize that our rent continues to go up and we need to have the conversation about stabilization or rent control,” Hinds says.
Lewis’s runoff opponent in District 8, Brad Revare, was not at the April 19 event and did not return a request for comment.
The two most important things to those in attendance are that building management finally does right by them and that others who may be in similar situations in other buildings know they can organize.
“A lot of tenants feel like they need to suffer in silence when they face issues like this,” Jimenez says. “If there's any reason that I'm sharing this story, I really hope it's so that people can know and understand that there is a way to fight.”
