In an SF rent control unit, if the tenant signs a 1 year lease, are they able to decide if they stay or not after the 1 year initial lease term is over?
Evicted in San Francisco
71–80 of 257 posts
Re: Evicted in San Francisco
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> so as long as the unit was legal It wasn't, according to this article. She took a risk.
What if she was just "renting a room" and the new owner simply labelled it an "inlaw" as a legal loophole? [Update] I didn't see the pic. Yeah, it's clearly in a different building, so an in-law.
Saying that if you change the details of a story, then the details are different doesn't actually mean anything and doesn't have any bearing on the story as it happened.
Re: Evicted in San Francisco
#73Nonetheless, it’s a good time to be a Bornstein in San Francisco: in the past year alone, Ellis Act evictions have risen 170%; since 1997, there have been 3,811, and that number is constantly rising. The obvious solution to rapidly rising prices is to increase supply, as described here ( http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0078XGJXO ) or here ( http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2013/10/san-francis... ). I've posted both…
It's amazing how so many people refuse to accept that out-of-control housing prices are due to artificial scarcity, and that the solution is deregulation, rather than even more idiotic rent control and eviction regulations. David Campos is now trying to enact legislation to penalize Ellis Act evictions. More than two decades after the USSR collapsed, and people are still clinging to socialist ideologies.
I'm pretty sure the ordinances against housing construction in SF have very little to do with socialism or the USSR...
Re: Evicted in San Francisco
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't help but suspect that this is exactly how this story was designed to read. They could have chosen between any of the Ellis Act evictions in the dabrownstein figure (~4000 of them), and yet the person they chose to interview * has health care retirement benefits * has the ability to go back to Germany and use their social programs * has personal attention from social workers and relatives finding her options *…
There are many working-age, highly-paid individuals who rent housing, and are evicted for various reasons, so this may not be the least sympathetic case of eviction.
A sample can be unrepresentative of the mean/median/mode of a distribution without being maximal or minimal.
Re: Evicted in San Francisco
#75We don't have a strong enough social welfare net (or enough resources there-in) to care for folks that need care; but, we're not comfortable letting them starve on the streets either. The result? Essentially innocent people, like the property owner, get "stuck" with "it's your problem now" where various agencies give contradictory mandates, backed with fines. How was property owner supposed to respond when told he mu…
It's too bad that we're focusing on this kind of event, because it gives people a false impression of the reality on the ground. The fact is that right now there are whole families that are being displaced out of their homes and communities with absolutely no fallback net. And as we all know, it's hardest to bounce back when you're down low. I lived through troubled times a few years back, but I always knew in the ba…
It happened to my family. We're definitely not a wealthy or well-connected family. We lost our home in the recession, my dad's business went from doing great to completely closed. We moved to a tiny house in a cheap neighborhood. Started a new business and worked and saved and now we're almost back to where we were before the recession.
I'm not saying we shouldn't help these people, but if you are complaining about not being able to get by in the most expensive city in the country, I really don't have any sympathy for you.
Re: Evicted in San Francisco
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that I don't feel sympathy for her, but yes, cities change and it's something you simply have to be aware of if you're living in one. If you're planning on being a life-long renter, you're really taking a risk that this will happen to you, too, if the prices ever experience a big boom as they have in San Francisco. If she had bought property back when it was cheap, she might be a millionaire today. If over t…
San Francisco has Rent Control ordinances, so as long as the unit was legal, she could have stayed there for the rest of her life (which she probably expected). http://www.sftu.org/rentcontrol.html
That's incorrect according to your own link:
Illegal Units are covered by rent control. Illegal units, such as in-law apartments, are covered by rent control.
Tenants can only be evicted for one of 15 "just causes." Most of these deal with allegations the tenant can dispute (e.g., tenant is violating the lease) but some are "no-fault" like owner move in or Ellis.
Re: Evicted in San Francisco
#77We don't have a strong enough social welfare net (or enough resources there-in) to care for folks that need care; but, we're not comfortable letting them starve on the streets either. The result? Essentially innocent people, like the property owner, get "stuck" with "it's your problem now" where various agencies give contradictory mandates, backed with fines. How was property owner supposed to respond when told he mu…
It's almost as if excessive regulation and NIMBY-ism in San Francisco has created an artifical bubble of hyper inflated housing prices that causes the most harm to the people who are in most need of help. Damn.
almost? this is precisely the case.
Re: Evicted in San Francisco
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Think of it this way: she was renting a room in the house, except as a courtesy to each owner she would to come in through the garage. New owner decides he's tired and wants her out. If he suddenly claims the room to be an "inlaw apartment", then it would be illegal. Now he can start the process to evict. Legal loophole. [Update] The timing is suspicious too, since these units could be legal soon: http://www.sfgate.c…
There was never any question if the unit was illegal. Everyone involved knew that it was (hence my absolutely minimal sympathy for everyone involved, except perhaps^W the cat.) The new owner did not declare the unit to be illegal, the city did. (edit: I definitely feel sorry for the cat.)
> hence my absolutely minimal sympathy for everyone involved, except perhaps the cat.
My sympathy rests entirely with the cat. Pets live more or less at the whim of their owner, no matter how unfortunate, and have little choice in the matter (well, I suppose they could escape...). The poor thing likely has no idea what's going on, and it certainly does not look happy. Breaks my heart.
But then, I'm a softy with animals. Cats in particular.
The people? Meh. I'm inclined to agree with the posters here (yourself included) suggesting that she has a choice. I feel bad for her, don't get me wrong, but considering how many people are often forced by economic reasons to move from one area to another and do so without any public sympathy lends me to feel the same in this circumstance. What she's making on SSI a month isn't very much, but I'd imagine her medications are probably paid for in full or in part by her plan, and there are cheaper and safer areas to live in the country than SF. Many retirement communities out here in NM are populated with people who make about what she does a month, but the cost of living is lower.
As someone pointed out (maybe it was you, I'm not sure), if she were of working age, she'd probably have fewer safety nets to fall back on.
It certainly isn't a good situation for anyone involved (except maybe the lawyers), but imagine if this were a story about some programmer/retired programmer who was having to leave his home of 35 years for greener pastures. I'd imagine most of the comments would be along the lines of "suck it up and move."
Either way, the story is still gut wrenching because it's so uncomfortable.
Re: Evicted in San Francisco
#79The building cited as an SRO is the Hugo Hotel. It's vacant, and not even in the tenderloin.
Re: Evicted in San Francisco
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> that number is constantly rising That's a lie: http://infogr.am/ellis-act-evictions
Not surprising the the housing market crash reduced the eviction rate. While I don't know if I disagree with the law, it is hard to see it being used outside of sale opportunities.
Sometimes people use it to buy a property with a tenant in it (at a reduced rate, usually), then evict the tenant and move into the property themselves (typically after a renovation). It's much less convenient/more time consuming than buying an empty unit and moving into it, but it can be less costly.
Relatives of mine did something similar in Berkeley (I don't think that they actually used the Ellis act per se, but another eviction exemption).