If you’ve ever watched the show The Big Bang Theory, you know one of the running gags is that the elevator in the building some of the friends share has been broken since they moved in. Of course, in the show, the inconvenience of having to walk up and down several flights of stairs every time you need to enter or leave your home is just a funny bit.
However, for residents living in the Oakland Station apartment building in Oakland, California, a broken elevator has been no laughing matter, according to NBC Bay Area.
They claim that the landlord has refused to repair a broken elevator in the building, leaving senior residents and those with disabilities stranded in their homes. And it’s not just impeding the tenants’ ability to come and go as they please. According to SF Gate, first responders have had to carry residents down multiple flights of stairs during an emergency on more than one occasion.
Now they are fighting back and have filed a lawsuit against the landlord, citing the broken elevator and several other incidents of neglect.
Almost 70 Current and Former Tenants Are Joining in on the Lawsuit
A group of tenants is fighting back after they say AMG Land Development, Conam, Oakland Pacific Associates, Riverside Charitable Corporation, and TPC Holdings, the owners of the complex, failed to keep the elevator in their building well-maintained. SFGate reports that before it went completely down, first responders had to rescue people trapped in the elevators at least 14 times between 2024 and 2025.
Then, during the 52-day outage, residents say that they were either stranded in their homes or forced to make long treks up and down the steps, which was hard for some to navigate. “I had to plan every trip up and down the stairs, which, at my age, would take about 10 minutes every time,” tenant Kathy Vaquilar said.
It Wasn’t Just the Elevator Causing Problems
The 181-page lawsuit contains other complaints about the entities that owned the apartments, including various health and safety complaints, according to NBC Bay Area.
“Overrun with trash, debris, feces, unhoused trespassers, drug use, drug paraphernalia, rodents, and cockroaches, the Complex trapped senior tenants in the most vulnerable and unsafe housing conditions and had virtually no usable amenities,” the publication says the lawsuit alleges.
One woman says she was even physically assaulted in the elevator, which resulted in a head injury. Saffiya Usman, who is also a plaintiff in the suit, says that she filed a police report, but the man was never caught.
Now, the tenants say they want to see the landlords held accountable for putting profits over people and failing to provide a safe living environment for the people who called the apartments home. And they may actually have a good shot at holding the company accountable, since Marinaccio Law’s website says that California has some pretty robust landlord-tenant rights.
Among them is a landlord’s duty to provide safe housing, which includes, among other things, secure doors and windows, living areas free from infestation, and working electrical systems.