I remember we had to put pots and pans on the floor. Inside the pots we would put rags so that you wouldn't hear the clink when the water hit. Finally their landlord, Allen Wong, repaired the old and shabby roof. Recently Rocha moved out of Wong's building to a house less than a mile away, thus ending his family's stay on Heller Way, a blighted, dead-end street near the intersection of Alum Rock Avenue and King Road. On Heller Way, houses stand shoulder to shoulder, crowding one another.
Cars swamp the small court, parked bumper to bumper, devouring the sidewalk.
In this mostly poor, Latino community, tenants wage war against taggers, painting over graffiti on their fences only to find them tagged again within less than a week. At night young kids and teenagers crowd the court so that driving through the street becomes hazardous. Rocha can recall a few times when returning home was impossible due to police blockades. Frustrated with the condition of their houses, six of them decided the legal system might have a remedy for their neighborhood's condition. Ruben Velazquez, a Heller Way resident, says residents complained to the city's code enforcement department, but the problems were never sufficiently investigated.