Complaint to FEMA about Project Roomkey – Sacramento
dated July 21, 2020
Ramona Mayon
3377 Deer Valley Road #278
Antioch, CA 94531
Re. 07.07.20 death of Greg Mayon in a trailer from the Project Roomkey at Sacramento CalExpo and the previously-filed April 1, 2020 (self-represented) case alleging repeated violations of the Unruh Act and elder abuse/ neglect # 34-2020-80003362-CU-WM-GDS Mayon v County of Sacramento Department of Human Services.
NOTE: the vouchers for $8000 + paid to Skyriders Motel from March 19, 2020, until June 13, 2020, were not Project Roomkey, but rather these vouchers were paid from the General Fund.
The updated complaint being filed Aug 1, 2020, will add the newest accounting twist, centering around the fact the FEMA will reimburse Sacramento DHS – and their sub-contractors – for our occupancy of a trailer in the Cal Expo FEMA trailer campus from June 14 to July 7, 2020.
I plan to blow the whistle long and loud on the FEMA trailer/ Project Roomkey/Home key real estate scam being done in the name of the homeless as described here, dated April 17, 2020: https://sacramentoexpress.com/2020/04/17/special-trailers-at-cal-expo-designated-for-homeless-people-with-covid-19-recieve-first-patient/ known as the ‘medically-supported isolation unit’ as well as “The City is overseeing the management of the trailers and has hired Goodwill Industries as the site operator. Goodwill is coordinating with Sacramento County Dept. of Health Services to help meet the medical needs of patients. … medical staff is on-site daily to provide care and treatment.” That is NOT a true statement.
Along with updating the lawsuit started April 1, 2020, I am also submitting this press release (and other paperwork not presented here) to the GAO’s Inspector General re. FEMA’s role. It is imperative that all agencies (Federal, State, and local) be informed of — and share in the responsibility for — the demeaning and dangerous treatment that I and my husband of 27 years received the last weeks of his life. I warned everyone he was too frail for what they were insisting that we had to do to comply with “policy”. I told them repeatedly he was too frail for these horrible moves.
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My husband was 68 and had liver cancer (diagnosed 9.16.19 at UCSF’s Liver Transplant Unit). However, the attached photo taken two months earlier shows him doing pretty well. We were following dietary recommendations and getting lined up for a transplant in San Francisco when the pandemic hit. I started isolating him late February. He was doing okay. Up driving somewhere when we needed it. Walking around. He was also deeply involved in my work which was finally manifesting into a full-fledged bench trial in front of Judge Steve Austin (Dept #33 in Martinez Civil courthouse in Contra Costa County lists as Mayon v. Bosman ), this is the culmination of two years of suing our former slumlord to code enforcement actions by not having a permit to run the mobile home park where we lived from Aug 2013 til July 2018, among other things. Again a self-represented case. It was scheduled to go to trial in May, but derailed by the pandemic.
In other words, no real issues per the cancer, just a lot of fatigue and bleeding gums. Also, a simple head injury that had become a chronic issue as it bled super-easy under the slightest stress (with headaches) because of thin blood due to the medications he had been on re. Transplant. He was doing okay until March 18, 2020. We got by on $1600 a month; that’s his retirement SS check and my SSI (mobility issues since 2017). The failure of his health began when the County of Sacramento just walked into our life as fascist as you please and took over.
Direct line of authority came from the order by President Trump, Gov. Newsom, and county public health authorities to close all federal, state and other public campgrounds for the County Park Rangers to remove us from our beloved RV home (since 2015) that CONTINUES TO BE parked at the most remote and southern tip of Sacramento at the Sherman Island County Campground. We were paying GUESTS who had paid up the day before for one full week (7 nights – used only one night); no refund ever given; I still have the receipt too; more months of daily-fee receipts showing we PAID to live there. No side-of-the-road RV dwellers. We were one of the 6 to 10 “full-timers” living there. I have daily camp fee receipts back to the fall of 2019 when we got his cancer diagnosis. So you see, we were contributing citizens, we spent a third of our income to stay in that park even though it was just a parking lot with pit toilets, with no water or electricity, in the middle of nowhere. And until March 18, 2020, at approximately 2 pm, we were in control of our lives.
There are 15 distinct parts to my complaint. Each part refers to who or what agency had control as our life was dismantled and care was assumed.
Part #1) removing us from our RV (contrary to CDC orders)
The Park Rangers arrived on March 18, 2020, and told us we had to vacate by 9 am the next morning, March 19, 2020, per orders of the Governor and the county’s public health director.
When I immediately replied we needed time or help to fix the non-starting issue on our RV (a recent problem, since we had driven into the park four days earlier), I was denied and told that it had to be fully closed down by the next day. A mobile mechanic later diagnosed it (over the phone texts, per symptoms only) as being probably a fuel pump, approximately $600 to repair and half an afternoon. An exhibit against DHS is the repeated emails and texts asking to have the repairs done or to move the RV to a location where it could be lived in until we could get the funds to fix it. Ask yourself this one thing, why not help us with a simple repair? Instead, they spent over $8000 at the Skyriders Motel and never once tested us for COVID-19.
Part #2) threat of forced hospice for Greg – we went to a CLOSED court & filed paper!
The Navigator, from Sacramento Self-Help Housing, a non-profit organization, who immediately informed me, after coming on board by way of a recommendation from the younger, slightly more genial Park Ranger that an Adult Protective Services Report had been filed on ME regarding my husband. This was the first reason I went to court was to complain about that and demand a copy. We haven’t gotten that far, but we will, I assure you. If you look in the law, there is this creepy ability of officials to preemptively file on an elderly person so as to better his living environment. As soon as I read it, I started writing paper and we went down and left the first paper at the downtown courthouse; took a photo of the security guard going in to put it in the dropbox for the few types of motions being allowed to be filed.
Part #3) struggle to actually be given motel vouchers and its 21-day move-out policy
The pressure of our repeated court filings – and a judge being assigned – created enough pressure that seemed to serve well enough (at first) to keep the pressure on DHS to force them to continue to supply motel vouchers. I even received that information in writing in an email from Ms. Coleman, which I promptly filed with the court. Sort of a holding pattern strategy. I wanted to get my RV fixed but everywhere I turned was a closed door. However, we were forced to move out every 21-days in order to avoid being “given” tenant rights. This was so cruel to do (in a pandemic) to two already-sick people, aged 68 and 59, one with cancer and other hurts to move (my SSI case was approved on the first go, no appeal, in only eleven months, as it was thoroughly documented with MRI back and hip issues, so it actually DOES hurt and furthermore, records will show I take zero pain medication ZERO). It’s endangerment (in a pandemic) to have the policy to move a highly-vulnerable person out of the secure, isolated bubble of absolutely no one coming into the room (not to mention being able to put supplies in our car in the motel parking lot for several hours before bringing inside, just so virus germs could die) to a room that was just that morning cleaned with a broom, mop, and sponges that cleaned every other toilet, sink and shower in the row of rooms, thus potentially spreading COVID-19 virus to the room we occupied for one night. We were allowed by the kind manager of the Sunset Motel to leave our belongings in the room and he promised no one would enter it or clean it so as to leave it safe (?) for my husband to return to. These ridiculous moves happened three times. No amount of complaining could stop it. I was ignored, as were my daughter’s emails to various government officials – only two answered but no one did anything (her emails are another exhibit).
Part #4) housing being offered to us
Our second complaint details (one offer is even shown in an email) the offer of either #1) Room and Board (which, by the way, lists in a county document as costing more than a bloody outrageous $60,000 annually for the medically-vulnerable) all cozy in a house with three other couples (in a pandemic) with a supervisor; or #2) a room in another much-lower quality motel where one can only leave half an hour a day (oral statement). Regarding the RV repair, and my desire to find a simple place to park it so we could move back in was repeatedly ignored or I was offered false promises of looking for private help. I knew I was being made fun of inside the agency when I then complained to the DHS Ombudsperson and I was told to go park it in a Walmart parking lot or see if an Elks Lodge would let me stay or pay the motel to see if I could park it in their parking lot. One email from CeeCee coldly says “good luck getting your RV repaired by the end of the month”. Somehow both a threat and an insult.
Part #5) money for motel runs out for the non-Project Roomkey we are living in
Specifically, on June 10, 2020, CeeCee (the Navigator) calls me up and asks what our plan is. Ummm, there’s a pandemic on and you promised the County would pay for the room. Nope, not that room. The struggle went on for a few days whether it was to be a lower- quality room or the CalExpo FEMA trailer campus. Desperate for a kitchen (did I mention, the 90 days in the motel, we had to provide our own food? I have emails proving that too, where it’s saying we don’t get food because … we are in a non-Project Roomkey motel), I agree to move to a trailer. Little did I realize that there were no kitchen facilities because the gas stoves weren’t hooked up and the power supply to the trailers was so bad, that if I used the hot plate I had bought for the motel room (it had a broken microwave), then the whole trailer flipped the breaker switch. Finally, my daughter sent an electric skillet that could cook an egg without shorting out the place. Then without notice the (Goodwill Industries) Staff running the FEMA trailer campus send around a note announcing a new rule: no cooking appliances allowed.
Part #6) food
In the motel 90-days, we mostly had to order in. Some Amazon stuff. A few (scared) trips to the grocery store. The only way to describe what was served us the 21 days we stayed at the camp is with pictures. Every day so much sugar: two sodas, two muffins, a snack bar, fruit cocktail in a heavy syrup, same instant oatmeal packets. Every single day the same food. And the food itself? A dog wouldn’t eat that stuff. www.thepandemic.home.blog look around for the link at the bottom that refers to the food diary. Yet the staff adds a rule that I can’t cook anything but heat up the slop they bring. The original rules list on the table when I moved in was that there were to be NO OPEN FLAMES. They just arbitrarily add a rule, no cooking appliances. My husband was seen by an entire team of a dozen specialists at UCSF’s Liver Transplant unit on Sept 16, 2019. One of them was a nutritional specialist who taught a proper diet regimen for him and I need a kitchen to do it in. I had a kitchen up until March 18, 2020. I still don’t have my kitchen. Or my house. Or my husband. House and kitchen mean nothing without him in them.
Part #7) the two & half hours in the sun June 21, 2020
On June 14, 2020, after getting “approved” for the trailer and that current motel voucher for only 3 days, I had the car packed and ready, called AAA to deal with the dead battery and flat tire and we set off for the FEMA campus at 11 am because it was check-out time. CeeCee Coleman told us she couldn’t meet us before 2 pm. Greg began throwing up in the Sac Self-Help Housing parking lot where she had told us to wait. It was those two-and-half hours where he began to get sick and never recovered. He got heatstroke because once at the trailer and under the AC blast, while I was gone to park the car, he passed out and had a monstrous bruise on his hip from it. He came back and didn’t know where he was, all our stuff was there but I was gone parking the car. By the time I got back, he had suffered an episode that he never really seemed to come back from.
Part #8) made to move AGAIN inside the FEMA campus (again the policy why?)
I am ashamed to say that when a hard-faced Goodwill staffer showed up on June 20, 2020, at the trailer we had been assigned a week earlier and told me that we had to pack up and move in two hours because we had tested COVID-19 negative and we were in the “positive” row so had to move to the “negative” row. I burst into tears. I refused to do it then but was humiliating to be forced to agree to move at 9 am. They came at 7. Two days earlier, I had bought an expansive supply of fresh food from Safeway delivery but had hurt myself, first having to chase down the delivery driver to get him to head over to remote (and unmarked) parking lot (#26) where the trailers are, and second, having no help but a rolling suitcase in hauling back all the bounty. Now I was stoved up severely to have to move it (unaided) to another locale, not mention the original belongings I had brought from the motel. I packed for two hours, maybe more, angry and upset for my husband to watch, helpless. Then I literally cried all night long while he petted me. That’s so sad a memory I just want to curl up in physical pain when I think of how he must have felt to listen to hours of exhausted sobbing. The next morning, someone brought me a three-tiered pushcart for my stuff. I walked Greg over first. Maybe a hundred yards, not much. But as I moved things back and forth, one of the “trustees” (i.e. a resident who is allowed to stay longer because he helps the staff, similar to the prison system in my opinion) this older Hispanic man says I need to get ready to move every week because that’s how they keep the trailers clean.
The only reason we didn’t get moved by the next week was that Greg could barely get down the steps to submit to the daily nurses’ call by then. He died a painful death, gasping for air, but thankfully in my arms July 7, 2020, at 3:16 am.
Part #9) spiders
I sent the nurse a photo of the bite he suffered on his hand four days before he died; there were ants everywhere in kitchen and bathroom; wasp nests underneath the trailers so they buzzed when you came out and sat on the steps. I never saw the type of spider that bit him but he began to suffer from really bad cramps and spasms after the bite. I attribute it to the spastic way he began to walk. Again, no concern particularly from the medical staff. She told me to send her a picture with a circle drawn around it so we could see if it got bigger. That’s it. No concern from staff either medical or Goodwill. No, these people deserve not one dime of tax payer’s money for medical staffing.
Part #10) not allowed to have my car
In order to move into the FEMA trailer, we had to agree to park our smallish SUV on the road, a long walk from parking lot #26. Besides not being able to get Greg into it to go anywhere, because it wasn’t allowed in except in emergencies (???), it was on a street where it could have been ticketed for being there too long or broken in and stolen. As it was, it got a flat tire and a dead battery. It’s old. These things had to be dealt with by going to a station and airing up regularly, driving around to keep the battery up. So far to walk, and then when I get there, no way to use it to go shop or get out to get better food. Thus another part of our meager existence just cut off, with ZERO care or concern, because it didn’t fit a policy dictated by a fascist agency in charge of the underclass known as the homeless. We weren’t homeless til March 18, 2020.
Part #11) no supplies whatsoever without asking staff
Again, Goodwill Industries-supplied the staff at the camp. You have to ask for even toilet paper. Some dude who acts like he just got back from Coachella (Steve) and a woman named Celeste is his assistant. Another dark-haired woman in the office trailer. No phone numbers are given out. In fact, I have text messages between my daughter and CeeCee Coleman where she also refused to give out the phone numbers of the “team” saying she was the point person for the team. Fascist. No assistance from the only person everyone sees every day for sure because it’s only a “trustee” handing out the food bags. They shout back cheerfully, “I can’t help you. Ask the staff.” Well, when I leave the trailer to go see them upfront, my husband would have a panic attack which led to significantly increased bleeding incidents. I took pictures of all this and sent them to CeeCee but she never offered so much as a bandage. I was forced to explain to Staff why I needed two rolls of toilet paper a day. No offer of sterile bandages or other medical supplies. No soap, cleaning spray, sponge, broom, or mop was ever proffered. Only one set of sheets and one towel and washcloth were supplied. One day towards the end, I was given an extra towel and a roll of toilet paper by Celeste, who randomly knocked on the door. Look, I am 59 years old and have run my own home for more than four decades. That was humiliating. As a matter of fact, I still haven’t gotten back the laundry that was still out (my favorite shirt and skirt in there) and no one will answer my daughter’s texts about it. Nothing to them, but much to me.
Part #12) the nurses bursting the isolation bubble every morning
I am a trained midwife (non-practicing home-birth only). I know about medical stuff. I know what needs to be done to protect from the COVID-19 virus. I started doing it on my own since mid-February. At every step, the County’s workers have made that harder:
Example #1) Took us from the most isolated corner of Sacramento County and put us in the zip code next door to the MOST cases of it;
Example #2) Refused to do anything to help us get back to our home so if we have to go out to make something happen with RV, I have to go out with my very sick husband (in a pandemic);
Example #3) Refused to supply food in any form or fashion (in writing) so we were forced to go out and get it ourselves or have it delivered at great cost on our SSI budget;
Example #4) Make us leave every 21-days to go to a fresh potentially germ-ridden motel for the night and then return the next day;
Example #5) Move from one FEMA trailer to the next, in order to effect cleaning but in light of the laziness of staff we saw (or sloughing off on “trustees”), just how clean were they?
Example #6) Being handed a bag of food from said “trustee” instead of being left in the bin, as laid out in the Rules of the Camp;
Example #7) But by far, the most exposure my husband received was the nurse team that went around every morning, trailer to trailer, uselessly filling out a chart of questions about bowel movements, illicit drug use, and temperature checks. The instruments used were SHARED. Sometimes they were damp from supposed cleanings, but more often not. Blood pressure and a finger clip showed an oxygen rate. Okay so maybe those are perfectly fine and disinfected (or maybe the confusing message from CDC is meant to say the virus stays alive NOT on plastic walked between trailers of already-sick or known-exposures to it. But what is going to be contaminated is the PPE the nurses wear. Sure it protects them, but it spreads it to others! One sneeze on it and that damn virus are walked around to the whole bloody camp by the disposable wraps on these nurses. Ludicrous. When faced with needs, like I needed Metamucil badly and was embarrassed to ask for it, I said to the three female nurses, please, I need this. They never even offered or made a simple suggestion. When confronted with pictures of Greg coughing up blood, all I was told was that there “was a place I could put him where I didn’t have to go through this”. Again with the forced hospice. At no point but once in the beginning was I offered a teleconference with anyone “medical from UC Davis”.
Part #13) they are lying about the numbers
Every week the report put out by Sacramento Moves Forward says a single-digit number. The nurse who confirmed Greg was dead for the funeral home told my daughter and me that out of the 54 trailers available (others used for staff or storage), 42 were being used and there were 5 COVID-19 positives on site. That is NOT what the public is being told. Why?
Part #14) the superglue
The same day Greg gets bit by an unknown spider, I break the front tooth of my dentures. Because he has gone into a sort of special painful way of spastic walking, I am scared to leave him alone for long as he might go outside and the steeps are steep, he might break his neck I’m genuinely scared to leave since I have NO KEY to the trailer itself — only staff does, so you have to track them down if you to lock up — therefore I can’t lock Greg in for the 10 minutes it takes me to walk to the front trailer, ask for super glue, and walk back. I did it several times over a three-day period, each time I was promised I would be getting some within the next hour. I waited for three days. Finally, an older black gentleman knocks on my door and introduces himself as Daniel and tells me he is paid by people in the camp to go buy them the things they need. I am appalled. I have no cash. Not even change. I can’t give a stranger my bank card. He sees my tooth missing and says not to worry, he will buy it. He was kind enough to buy the good stuff. An actual staff member delivered it, all the while making sure I saw they took the extra “bonus” tube for themselves. What really shocked the senses was that I had been there for more than two and a half weeks without being told Daniel could go buy my groceries. Back to the superglue. I chased that stuff for the last three days of Greg’s life. Got it the day before he died. What that means is that I didn’t smile at him all that time because I was embarrassed about that missing tooth.
Part #15) the notary
The first time Greg coughed up blood, about ten days before he died, we (both) wanted to go into the hospital and asked the nurses to arrange it. Texts of all this. We were told that I couldn’t get into an ambulance or the ER unless I had a power-of-attorney. Remember my car has a flat and a dead battery and is so far away, I can’t walk it barely. Certainly not quick enough for Greg to not have a panic attack from being left alone. So I try to get a notary to be brought to me for this paper but CeeCee Coleman texts me back that she doesn’t do that and sends me a screenshot of mobile notaries. Then I figure out (online) I can have two non-medical staff witnesses do it, so for a solid week, I chase the top two staff (Steve and Celeste). By this time, Greg has bled almost every day and each time has a terrible argument with me about not going in alone. He began to have increased gum bleeds and head injury bleeds from the stress of me trying to force him into the care of a hospital. You don’t know what it’s like to argue with a really, really sick man who knows he is dying that he needs to go in, but by now is so scared and distrustful of everyone but me, that he is panicky at every knock on the door. To my shame, he died, literally, from stress and complete disorientation. It didn’t have to be this way. Now I sit at my daughter’s home, a few hours from Sacramento. My RV is still in the county park on Sherman Island. No one offers help. We are repairing the SUV with donations from a fundraiser my daughter began on Facebook. There is a plan to get my RV towed up here and repaired. No one has money for that. At present I am in shock, numb from the loss of my husband, but once I thaw out, I plan to return to the Capitol and re-commence what I began on July 4th. If it was that bad three days before he died, you can imagine how I feel now.