About a week after moving in we received paperwork on the door that the house was in foreclosure and was scheduled for auction on October 18, 2010. I brought this up to Lance, the landlord, and he became very defensive and belligerent. It was at this time that the harassment began. Our landlord began coming over all hours of the day and night unannounced yelling at us to water and mow the lawn and threatening that he can have us kicked out within twenty four hours and move someone in who will mow the lawn. My friend, the one that allowed me to move in, got frustrated with the whole situation because we had no kitchen sink due to ongoing plumbing problems, the house has many repairs that need to be done and there was raw sewage leaking out on the front lawn and the landlord failed to make any repairs. With all the repairs needing to be done and not getting done along with the landlord harassing us my friend decided that she no longer wanted to rent there and moved to San Jose with her sister leaving me and my sister to deal with the situation. This happened approximately October 15, 2010.

On October 17, 2010 Lance showed up at our door at 10:00 p.m and handed my sister and I the rental application to fill out and he said he would be back the next day to pick it up and add us to the lease finally. The next day he never showed up. On October 31, 2010 while I was at work and my sister was taking the kids trick or treating Lance broke into and ransacked our house. He stole all of our blankets, pillows, curtains, a lot of clothes, an ipod, nintendo ds and other electronics. All of this was witnessed by our neighbor who gave a full statement to the police, however our landlord was not arrested which im finding out now may be due to his ties with law enforcement and the district attorney investigator John Mc cormick. He broke the back door so that we can not securely lock and shut it. I made many police reports because it didnt stop there. He walked in unannounced once when I was in the shower nakked. All of my police reports went unheard or no action was ever taken. I had to pay money out of my own pocket to repair the sewage or the health department was going to make the house unlivable and the landlord would not make the repairs. I got a restraining order against him and today we finally had a court date for an unlawful detainer which he never even served us with but thanks to the court for sending us a notice of filing we knew about the court date. He was claiming that we are squatters and he never gave us permission to be there ect. ect. because we don't have a lease with him because he never added us onto the lease.

We have to go back to court tomorrow because the judge was unable to make a decision because we had a lot of documented proof. I even was able to get in touch with the previous tenant who rented the house for four years from lance right before we moved in. She wrote me a statement because she experienced the same exact thing with him breaking into her house and stealing her stuff. He harassed her as well and she won her judgment when he filed an unlawful detainer against her but she moved anyways because it got real bad for her to rent there. Today after I returned home from court there was two investigators for the district attorney department one of which is named John Mccormick. He walked up to me and asked me my name and said that he was there to investigate well fare fraud. He asked if he could come inside so we would not be talking outside. I told him to come in. He right away started questioning me about our landlord. He asked why I got a restraining order against him, why I called the police on him and so on. These are things that I did not tell him so he must have been told by our landlord. I asked him why he was questioning me about my situation with the landlord if he was there to investigate supposed well fare fraud but he would not answer me and I asked him that several times. Instead he insisted that I was committing well fare fraud and continued to talk as he invited himself to walk around my house looking through doors and stuff. He even picked up a prescription bottle off my shelf and read the name on it. He walked into my kitchen and bathroom looking all around as he was talking to me and I was trying to explain my situation with the landlord. He let us know that our landlord is the one that filed the fraud report but without directly telling us it was him.

After he left I called my well fare worker and she knew nothing about what was going on. She stated that I was not committing well fare fraud and that I had been reporting everything correctly and she did not know why the investigator was there. I was also told by another social worker that when a fraud complaint is made it is supposed to usually go through the well fare department and your social worker first then if your worker sees any sort of fraud they forward it to the district attorney. None of this happened. Instead Lance called directly to John Mccormick who was at my house in a matter of a short short time period from when Lance had called him. I did research and found out that both Lance Cleaver and John Mccormick where two people who endorsed a candidate who was running for superior court judge in 2008. This was yet another one of our landlords ties and he was using him to scare or intimidate us. I have court again tomorrow for the unlawful detainer but I am trying to get in touch with civil rights groups or the NAACP to help us against the salinas police department and the investigator at the district attorneys office because this man, Lance Cleaver is breaking the law and getting away with it and no one is helping us. He has a history of doing this sort of thing to his tenants but never faces charges because of who he knows. This investigator used the fact that he works for the district attorneys office to try to intimidate us for his friend. We have no criminal records at all. I recently got a new job and am working full time. We are both single mothers trying to make a life for our children without the support from their fathers. The investigator could not find anything against us so he is trying to use the fact that we are on well fare to scare us or intimidate us. If there is anyone out there that can help with civil rights or whatever this would be classified as please help us...... We have been traumatized by this whole situation. We have had C.P.S called on us by him and of course the case was closed because there was no evidence to support his claim. This is just another tactic he is using to make our life harder. Please help