# Mary Jesus was a troubled and difficult renter. Faced with eviction after a long legal battle, she made a final, painful statement.
By Lee Romney, Times Staff Writer
OAKLAND — After scattering hundreds of copies of her suicide note from the seventh-floor ledge of a downtown building, Mary Jesus held her nose and raised an arm in the air.
Then, like a swimmer taking a plunge, she leapt to her death.
"Goodbye cruel world and all that," said the note, which blamed her suicide on an eviction she had battled fiercely — and unsuccessfully. "Everyone will say what they always say when something totally preventable isn't prevented, 'Why didn't anybody do anything?' "
In the six months since her death at 33, Mary Jesus has become a symbol. Tenant leaders have highlighted her death as one of eviction's darkest consequences in an era of rising rents and an urgent shortage of affordable housing.
Landlords say they are not to blame and draw a different lesson. They point to failings in a mental health system that, they say, should have rescued Mary Jesus long before she stepped onto that balcony in the Oakland Tribune tower.
Many Oakland tenants have been swept out of their apartments by an overheated housing market. Most go quietly. Mary Jesus — stubborn, articulate, unstable — orchestrated a final act of defiance.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mary10jun10,0,7560740.story?coll=la-tot-promo&track=pacifictime