The businesses of B Street are tired of the trash, drugs, prostitution, and thievery in downtown Hayward, and they believe that it is trickling out of the Green Shutter Hotel.

Business owners are attempting to have the low-rent residence shut down.

“There are parolees that are being released straight from jail to the green shutter, that’s a known fact,” said Antique jewelry shop owner Rod Vargas. “No matter what crime they have been convicted of, they have to go somewhere. Now, I’m going to sound like a NIMBY, but not in my backyard.”

B Street’s lights, vintage feel and overall vibe is something these owners want to cherish.

Compared to the rest of the street, filled with clothing stores, sweet shops, food and antique goods, the hotel is an outcast. And so are its residents.

Its not only the trash that people leave behind, business owners say the drug users, smokers, loiterers and criminals essentially use B Street as their living room.

“I’ve seen the drug use, the thievery and people have come in here and they have traced them back to the Green Shutter,” Vargas said.

The business owners’ movement towards cleaning up Hayward seems to always come back to the Shutter. Now they are talking to people higher up as a group, rather than dealing with the business directly.

Clothing store “Vintage Alley” owner Alfredo Rodriguez said, “I am with the BIA, Downtown Business Development Advising Board, I brought it up to them a couple months ago and they are doing stuff to help… they are doing inspections for health and safely, fire and they have found a lot of critters.”

The Green Shutter, built in 1926, is a historic building in Hayward and is listed under the National Register of Historic Places. The ideal for these owners would be that the hotel is gutted and turned into a condominium, dorms for students or a higher-income hotel.

“Anything besides that place – office, hotel, anything…any kind of human beings, except for those kind that are there currently,” said Pizza shop owner Glen Silver

The question is whether the owner is trying to provide a safe haven to stuggling residents or just collecting rent. Rodriguez strongly believes it to be money and money only.

“I have not met the owners and I don’t think I want to…the owner doesn’t do anything, gives them keys, collects the rent, and they forget about it.”

The owner, who spoke through his 14-year-old daughter, would not comment directly.

Current resident Tim White, a family man with three young children, has had problems. He had to move his wife and children out of the hotel and into an Oakland shelter. White said, “…social services took us to court, and the judge said ‘I don’t feel comfortable with your children being there’ because one of my kids was assaulted by one of the tenants here, who has psychiatric problems.”

White added “Yeah, you basically got people that are either near homeless, or had a problem with their eviction like we did.”

The type of people he lives with are no ideal neighbors, he said.

“This guy just got picked up about three or four weeks ago, for murder, for an old cold case, that got picked up on… A guy died in here, about 60 days ago, the man perished, he was in here for five or six days…they smelt the room and the guy was swelling up,” he said, gesturing to the rooms.

Its not just the local businesses that want a change. White said as a tenant he wants change too. Like many of the business owners, he believes it to be the manager’s or the owner’s fault.

“Management is lax, doesn’t really care at all, so what happened is that I contacted a plethora of agencies, he was contacted by people he couldn’t control… he finally started fixing things to cooperate with law.”