More than 20 senior tenants from a deep East Oakland affordable complex bused to Sacramento last week not just to shame their property manager, but to confront the state committee that handed their landlord millions in tax credits — and to ask why nobody is enforcing the promises those credits were supposed to buy.

The Oakland Station protest is the latest escalation in a fight over a taxpayer-subsidized building that tenants and their lawyers say was won through a "campaign of deception." A 180-page lawsuit filed in July by nearly 70 current and former tenants alleges the owners obtained competitive low-income housing tax credits by promising a seniors-only building, then let it deteriorate and reopened it to all ages. By carrying that grievance to the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee — the very body that awarded the credits — the tenants are testing whether the state has any appetite to police the landlords it subsidizes.

More than 20 seniors climbed onto a bus to Sacramento on Thursday, Aug. 7, carrying jars of dead cockroaches and a demand that state officials stop looking away. Their destination was twofold: a protest outside the Roseville office of their property manager, CONAM, and a meeting with the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee, the state panel that awards the low-income housing tax credits that made their building possible.

"We came to CONAM because they have not been hearing us," Valarie Bachelor, the Oakland director of the tenant-advocacy nonprofit ACCE, told NBC Bay Area at the protest. "We need our units fixed."

The building at the center of the fight, Oakland Station, opened in 2021 on 105th Avenue off International Boulevard as a 324-unit complex restricted to tenants 62 and older, according to reporting by The Oaklandside. It was marketed for "healthy aging," with a reading lounge, craft room and bocce court. Tenants say those amenities largely never materialized, and that after a few good years the building fell apart fast.

"Roaches, trash everywhere, dog poop and people poop, safety hazards," tenant Cathy Harris said through a megaphone in Roseville, according to NBC Bay Area. Isabelle Ruiz, who lives in a one-bedroom unit, held up a jar of roaches she has been collecting — "my new roommates," she called them.

In July, nearly 70 current and former tenants sued the building's owners and managers in a 180-page complaint that runs from habitability violations and age discrimination to fraud, false advertising and harassment, The Oaklandside reported. The defendants include CONAM along with AMG Land Development, Oakland Pacific Associates, Riverside Charitable Corporation and TPC Holdings. Lawyers with San Francisco's Law Firm for Tenant Rights allege the owners earned their state tax credits under the false promise of a seniors-only building, then petitioned the city to open the complex to all ages once vacancies climbed — a shift the suit frames as a bait-and-switch on both tenants and the public that subsidized the project.

That is the thread the tenants pulled on in Sacramento. The tax-credit committee does not manage buildings, but it does decide which developers win the credits and is supposed to hold them to the terms. By petitioning it directly, the tenants are asking a financing agency to behave like an enforcer — a role it rarely plays publicly.

They are not the first to sound alarms. Over the past year, Oakland City Attorney Ryan Richardson sent CONAM four letters warning of violations, according to The Oaklandside. "The broken gate and elevator access are especially troubling given that the building serves elderly and disabled residents who are particularly vulnerable to potential assaults or theft from unauthorized individuals entering the premises," his office wrote in April 2025. City records reviewed by The Oaklandside show tenants have logged at least 44 complaints, with inspectors confirming violations in many cases.

The stakes fall hardest on the most fragile residents. Harris told The Oaklandside that some tenants have gone years without heat, and that she herself lost hot water for a stretch. With elevators frequently out of service, tenants who use wheelchairs and canes describe being stranded on upper floors.

CONAM did not respond to NBC Bay Area's request for comment after the protest, and the station noted that neither the management company nor the owners had commented on two prior stories. The Oaklandside reported it contacted all five named defendants and heard back from none. The Dissent could not independently reach the companies for this account.

What happens next may hinge less on the courtroom than on whether a state committee that hands out housing subsidies is willing to claw back the leverage those subsidies were supposed to give it.