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The Oakland Housing Authority said Friday it would comply with a judge’s order to allow a college student back into her apartment after she was kicked out two weeks ago, her attorneys said.
An Alameda County Superior Court judge on Thursday ordered Oakland public housing officials to immediately allow a tenant back into her apartment. As of late Thursday, Eboni Route had remained locked out of the West Oakland unit. It was her 15th day homeless after an improper eviction, according to her lawyers.
On Friday, Route was allowed to get her possessions, and the Housing Authority said it would pay for a hotel room for her.
Route was $125 behind on rent when the Oakland Housing Authority impounded her two dogs, placed her possessions into locked storage and changed her apartment door locks, said one of her pro-bono attorneys, Emma Dinkelspiel of Bay Area Legal Aid. Route had live in the one-bedroom apartment in Campbell Village for five years.
The items that Route, a 24-year-old student at Merritt College, had been unable to access include her homework and a textbook on administrative justice that she needed to return to her school. She was also unable to receive medical equipment that had been shipped to her apartment for knee surgery recovery.
For the past two weeks, while she was taking final exams, Route has been sleeping in a car that belongs to her mother, who is also homeless.
On Thursday, hoping to get the court order enforced, Route and her attorneys said they went to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, whose deputies directed them to the Oakland Police Department. Oakland police officers told them to speak with the Oakland Housing Authority Police Department, which directed them to the property management company that oversees Campbell Village. Finally, a company representative said Route would not be let back in, Dinkelspiel said.
“The judge specifically said to let me and my stuff back in to my house,” Route said Thursday outside her still-locked apartment.
Inside, crews have been painting walls and doing flooring work. Route said she was told the unit is slated for a new tenant.
Late Thursday, Dinkelspiel said, a representative for the Oakland Housing Authority offered to pay for Route’s hotel room for a night because her apartment was uninhabitable due to the ongoing work.
The agency is still trying to evict Route, Dinkelspiel said.
Greer McVay, spokeswoman for the housing authority, said she couldn’t comment on an individual resident’s case and directed questions to the property management company, called John Stewart.
A John Stewart representative who answered the phone Thursday said no one could comment because of an office Christmas party. A lawyer who has represented the company during the court proceedings could not be reached.
The lawyer, Mercedes Gavin, said in court that she would seek an appeal and that Route should not expect to be let back in her apartment, according to Dinkelspiel.
Route’s lawyers said she should not have been kicked out in the first place. A clerical error at the courthouse allowed an initial eviction order to be processed, but a judge reversed it Nov. 21, Dinkelspiel said.
Despite the reversal, on Dec. 5, after visiting her mother, Route returned home to find her locks had been changed.
“My key didn’t work,” she said. “A neighbor said they came to take my dogs.”
She hasn’t been able to retrieve the dogs without a home, she said.
Dinkelspiel said they would next ask a judge to compel the Oakland Housing Authority to let Route back in her apartment and to find the agency in contempt.
It’s not the first time in recent weeks that the housing authority has been accused of mistreating residents.
A lawsuit in September said a city law that targeted loitering on public housing property was being used as a pretense to break up family gatherings and police the movement of mostly young black men. In October, the City Council voted to repeal the ordinance, which had been on the books since 1983.
Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@
sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov
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