Overview: California Attorney General Rob Bonta has filed a lawsuit against Mike Nijjar and his family, alleging that they have rented out unsafe and uninhabitable units, disregarded tenants’ requests for repairs, and failed to eradicate pests, inflicting harm and anguish on tenants. Nijjar operates a multi-billion dollar real estate empire with over 22,000 housing units across the state, primarily in low-income communities. The lawsuit alleges that Nijjar has rented out units with ceilings that collapsed, walls with mold, sewage flowing into tenants’ homes, and roaches crawling on their children. The state is encouraging anyone with information related to the case to share their stories.
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“PAMA and the other companies owned by Mike Nijjar and his family are notorious for their rampant, slum-like conditions—some so bad that residents have suffered tragic results,” stated CA Attorney General Rob Bonta in a mid-June press release.
The complaint, filed by the state against Nijjar and several corporate entities associated with him and his family, allege he and his business partners “rent out unsafe and uninhabitable units, disregard tenants’ requests for repairs, and fail to eradicate pests, inflicting harm and anguish on tenants.”
The state’s action was warranted and long overdue considering that over the years, Nijjar properties have accrued a history of being regularly cited for a multitude of code violations ranging from bug infestations, rodents, mold, security issues and lack of repairs, to name a few of the accusations against them.
Nijjar operates a multi-billion dollar real estate empire that controls more than 22,000 housing units throughout the state of California. Most are centered in low income communities across Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and Kern counties.
Niijar’s presence in the Inland Empire is not surprising when you consider the poverty level in this region. Poverty rates in the inland region are typically higher than both state and national averages.
There is the added cruelty that in some of our communities, including Hemet and San Jacinto, for example, the Nijjar Companies hold such a huge percentage of the less expensive housing stock that is sometimes difficult to find rental property that the Nijjar companies do not own or manage.
Nijjar properties are primarily owned by Mike Nijjar, his sister, and his adult sons. According to court documents, the Nijjar family’s rental empire is among the largest providers of rental housing in California.
This real estate empire continues to create wealth on the backs of its moderate to low income tenants, who with limited options in today’s rental market, coupled with the Nijjar family’s strangle hold on low income properties, continue to be exploited with little relief.
In 2016, the Department of Real Estate revoked the licenses associated with Nijjar Realty, Inc. (a predecessor organization to the entities named in the current lawsuit) for violating laws intended to protect the public. Nijjar reacted like most millionaires and billionaires who create wealth on the backs of the poor, he simply restructured and rebranded his business with little, if any regard for the lives of those impacted by his misdeeds.
Nijjar lost his Real Estate license(s) that year after a fire broke out in a mobile home that was not authorized for human occupancy–he rented it anyway. The fire killed a five-month-old baby girl. Yet, despite this travesty, the company has continued to rent/lease/manage properties—that are substandard and unsafe—to vulnerable Californians, including many of our neighbors here in the inland region. He is doing so without a real estate license allowing his company to do so.
Examples of the types of inhumane living conditions endured by his tenants as alleged in the lawsuit include, “ceilings that collapse after months of leaking; walls so damp that mushrooms sprout indoors; sewage that flows up through tenants’ drains and into their hallways; and roaches that crawl across their sleeping children—to list just a few . . .”
By any definition, Nijjar is a slum lord. The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes a slum lord as “a person who owns a building with apartments that are in bad condition and rents them to poor people.” A fuller definition describes this person as a “a landlord who receives unusually large profits from substandard properties.”
A 2017, Harvard Law Journal essay titled Exploiting the Poor: Housing, Markets, and Vulnerability asked a penetrating question: Do landlords, and more generally the rich, “exploit” the poor?
“They struggle to instill in their children some private sense of honor or dignity which will help the child to survive. This means, of course, that they must struggle, stolidly, incessantly, to keep this sense alive in themselves, in spite of the insults, the indifference, and the cruelty they are certain to encounter . . . They patiently browbeat the landlord into fixing the heat, the plaster, the plumbing; this demands prodigious patience; nor is patience usually enough…”
James Baldwin (Nobody Knows My Name)
There is a serious housing shortage in this state and for the rental properties that are available, “the rents are too damned high,” as they say. While the Department of Housing and Urban Development states households should not spend more than 30% of their gross income on rent (a tenant established by the federal government as a rule of thumb and intended to provide affordable housing options), more than half of the renters in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties spend more than 30% on housing. In addition, local residents are twice as likely as local homeowners to spend more than 50% of their income on rent.
When you consider the local housing shortage, the poverty level in this region, the fact that more than 50% of local renters are paying more than 30% of their gross income on housing and with some paying as much as 50%, it is easy to see how an “unscrupulous scumlord” would want to build his fortune in this region.
The lawsuit further details how Nijjar’s companies raised rents on thousands of units; served illegal eviction notices; and discriminated against Section 8 renters. Not only do these actions impact tenants, it places an economic burden on communities who must bear the costs of increased demands on their code enforcement units. Across the country since 2019, these teams have issue thousands of violation notices at Nijjar properties for what the state defined as “habitability defects.” In many instances these notices cite not one but multiple defects, with some “citing hundreds or even thousands of defects at a single property,” according to the lawsuit.
Inland area rental properties that are part of Nijjar’s real estate empire include Bridge Management, which operates in parts of San Bernardino County; Hightower Management, in and near the City of San Bernardino; Legacy Management, in western San Bernardino and Riverside Counties; Pro Management, in eastern San Bernardino and Riverside Counties; Mobile Management, which manages mobile-home parks throughout the state. There is also an entity titled Golden Management that handles some accounting and management operations for all of the properties listed above.
Exploitation of poor and working class people is nothing new. For someone like Nijjar with a long history of exploiting his low income tenants and subjecting them to deplorable living conditions, threats of eviction, etc., it begs the question: Why has it taken so long for the state to act? Had these been renters in exclusive, high end rental properties would the state have acted sooner? Of course, it would not be warranted as such properties would scarcely be allowed to fall into such disarray.
As the state continues to confront its housing crisis, the need to also address sub-standard housing must also become part of the conversation.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I’m keeping it real.
Attorney General Bonta is encouraging anyone– including current or former tenants – who has information related to this case to share stories with his office by going to oag.ca.gov/report.
To learn more about your rights as a tenant, please visit here.