Chinatown Seniors in Housing Protest March

The issues didn’t seem overwhelming, but they were enough to bring 200 residents of a Chinatown senior citizens housing project to their first protest march on Tuesday.

The protesters, many carrying carefully lettered signs, took to the streets to complain of maintenance lapses at Cathay Manor, 600 N. Broadway.

“They just talk, talk, talk,” Louie Yet, 83, said of Cathay Manor’s management. “They say they fix. They talk fix. They don’t fix good.”

The complaints ranged from unreliable elevators in the 16-story building, to inadequate security, to restricted access to common areas, to a hassle over the precise placement of a board holding announcements of residents’ birthdays.

”. . . Chinese do not do this,” said Lilly V. Lee, a local businesswoman and supporter of the tenants. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen this in 50 years in Chinatown.”

The targets of the protest were a 15-member board with authority over Cathay and Barker Management Inc., an Anaheim firm that runs the $30-million, federally funded project that houses 350 residents.

Barker president Bruce Solari, whose firm manages 25 other housing complexes in Southern California, insisted that tenant “needs are being met” and that “reasonable responses are being provided.” The two elevators break down six or seven times a year, Solari acknowledged, and the firm is considering a lawsuit against the designer.

“I’m surprised because all these things we have resolved, or are in the process of resolving,” said Don Toy, chairman of the board of the Chinese Committee on Aging Housing Corp., which runs Cathay Manor.

In response to residents’ complaints, Malcolm Findley, a Los Angeles executive of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which funds the project, asked Tuesday for Barker’s written response to the complaints.

Findley also said inspectors will visit Cathay Manor within 10 days.