‘That ain’t right’: Detroit senior living building union demands owner come to the bargaining table

BY KATHERINE DAILEY, MICHIGAN ADVANCE

DETROIT—A group of tenants in the River Pointe Tower building in Detroit, a senior living apartment complex, are calling for the head of Capital Realty Group, Moshe Eichler, who owns the building, to come to the bargaining table.

A number of River Pointe Tower residents formed a union in August, demanding safer living conditions and better quality of maintenance in the apartments, after tenants dealt with issues from roaches and bedbugs to cracked walls and ceilings.

They held a rally outside their building on Monday to explain that Eichler had failed to adequately address these issues, and had only met with them one time.

“This is where we live every day,” said Jacqueline Rice, one member of the union and resident of the building. “Mr. Eichler could come here and live and stay for a month or two, see the conditions that we live in. If not, come to the bargaining table.”

“If you want to run the building, you want us to stay here, you do what needs to be done, or else we’re gonna rent freeze, gonna picket, or we go to New York and let him know what’s going on,” said A.J. Johnson, a leader of the union.

“That ain’t right” became a rallying call among the tenants throughout the demonstration, as numerous members of the union expressed their grievances with Eichler and building management.

Since the union was formed in August, tenants say that some additional maintenance has been done in their building—but they say it’s not adequate. The people brought in to make these changes are handymen who, according to tenant Teresa McCormick, have said the work required to get the building into shape is too much for them.

“It’s paint, it’s floors, it’s blinds, it’s the plumbing, it’s the bathrooms,” she said. “They’re going to do this right away because it’s a band aid. It’s not fixing the problem. There are no skilled trades here, working on the boiler, working on the plumbing, working on electricity.”

“We need help, and Eichler needs to step up to the plate,” McCormick said. “We need proper security, not some fly-by-night that’s related to somebody in the office. We need proper maintenance people.”

And Walter Welch, a union leader, said that his apartment has been skipped over by maintenance in retaliation for his organizing. His whole apartment floor was sprayed for pests over a month ago, but his unit was skipped, even after he repeatedly asked for assistance.

“They still didn’t come back to do nothing. They haven’t done nothing up till now, right now, and I see bed bugs and roaches now when I didn’t have them,” he said.

And Welch is not alone—Johnson said, “I myself have been yelled at and threatened with eviction.”

River Pointe Tower is not the only Capital Realty property that is unionizing amid allegations of poor management—there are tenant unions popping up around the country in buildings owned by the New York-based private equity firm, including in Kansas City, Missouri and New Haven, Connecticut.

Capital Realty Group and River Pointe Tower management did not respond to requests for comment.

Latisha Johnson, Detroit’s City Council member for the district where River Pointe Tower is located, has already shown the union support — she spoke at the August event in which tenants announced their union.

“She spoke particularly about how she wouldn’t allow Moshe [Eichler] and Capitol Realty to get any funding in Detroit,” said Steven Rimmer, a co-founder of the Detroit Tenants Union, of which the River Point Tower union is a part of. “We’re trying to hold them to that.”

This issue is also bigger than Capital Realty, said Sam Garin, a spokesperson for the Private Equity Stakeholder Project.

“A private equity firm, they will do whatever it takes to make their ‘investment’ more profitable over a pretty short amount of time,” she said. “And unfortunately, what that usually means for tenants of private equity-owned buildings, we’ll see slashed maintenance, rent hikes, increased and more aggressive evictions.”

As he spoke during Monday’s event, Welch’s story shared a similar tone.

“They treat us the same, all the same. We are nothing but an income. That ain’t right,” he said. “They don’t actually care about us. They only care about their profit. Mr. Eichler, it’s time to put people over profit. Come to the bargaining table with our union right now.”

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This coverage was republished from Michigan Advance pursuant to a Creative Commons license.