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Evicted in San Francisco

priceonomics.com

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Re: Evicted in San Francisco

#141

Post by refurb »

radley wrote: post #47
nilkn wrote: post #42

Earlier 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

Not the rest of her life if the owners decided to remove the unit from the rental market.

Re: Evicted in San Francisco

#142

Post by raldi »

How come they never write articles like this profiling the 22-year-old who's just starting out in the world and is desperatly trying to make ends meet while paying market rate for a tiny apartment?

Or three of them packed in a walkup one-bedroom and paying double the rent of their downstairs neighbor who's of much greater means but had the good fortune of being born a few years earlier?

Or the young artist who had to leave SF altogether because they couldn't afford to pay market rate and didn't have enough San Francisco seniority to qualify for a hefty rent-control subsidy?

Re: Evicted in San Francisco

#143

Post by jonknee »

flomo wrote: post #109
jack-r-abbit wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts too. As soon as the DBI saw that the unit was illegal, I would have assumed the occupants would have been removed almost immediately. It should not have taken that long for the owner to be able to do what he was legally required to do. But instead he was legally prevented from doing what he was legally required to do. Makes no sense.

San Francisco almost always looks the other way regarding these 'illegal' units. Many of them are in plain sight and the rent/tenancy control laws still apply. I would guess the unit must have been a serious health/safety hazard for them to do anything.

Which actually makes sense if you think about it--if it was an instant eviction it would be very valuable to the landlord. They can rent and take your money for years and whenever they want to get rid of you and flip the property they report the unit and boom you are gone without any rights.

What would make even more sense is very severe fines to the landlord for renting illegal units. Something like a multiple of all the rent they have ever collected on it.

Re: Evicted in San Francisco

#144

Post by brc »

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #56

The empathy deprived Randian hordes that flock to these stories on HN to display their superiority over those less well off than them make me physically ill.

I'm sure plenty of people, including myself, have sympathy for everyone involved, including the tenant, landlord and social workers. I don't have any sympathy for the lawyers who got to profit from other peoples suffering.

HN is a place devoted to people interested in technology, slanted towards startups. Startups absolutely require the concept of private property and the ability to determine the use of that property. The makeup of the majority of visitors determines the point of view taken on stories like this.

The thing at fault here is rent-control laws. They are insanity and lead to perverse outcomes, including housing shortages, high prices, sub-standard housing and cases like this one where someone is allowed to make other peoples lives a misery because they somehow became part of a protected class - a privelege denied to just about everyone commenting here.

Re: Evicted in San Francisco

#145

Post by jonknee »

pilom wrote: post #40
fishtoaster wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like she moved there when it was cheap. Is it reasonable to expect her to leave her friends, contacts, etc that she's built up over decades because the city is changing? Housing isn't widgets: it's not easy to move to a cheaper type if your current type gets expensive. There isn't an easy answer to this sort of problem, but to imply that she should simply "move somewhere else" is simplistic in the extreme.…

>Is it reasonable to expect her to leave her friends, contacts, etc that she's built up over decades because the city is changing? YES! Absolutely reasonable. There is no right to live exactly where you want for the rest of your life (especially when where you want to live is an illegal residence). Nor should there be.

The ironic part here is that it was an illegal unit and the owner of that unit is making nearly a million dollars while the person who has paid rent for decades is homeless. Why isn't there a huge fine for renting an illegal apartment for years? Seems like a great gig to collect money from someone until you want to report yourself and get permission to evict them and flip the property.

Re: Evicted in San Francisco

#146

Post by malandrew »

hack_edu wrote: post #112
smtddr wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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. I have sympathy for them, because the current tech-boom is displacing (or greatly accelerating a process that was already happening much faster than they can handle.) them and I think that's a shame. IMHO, what makes SF great is…

Build baby, build.

This. The tech boom isn't at fault here. The refusal to make the necessary changes that allow the housing supply to grow is to blame.

Basically, San Francisco voters are responsible for the evictions, whether they be natives, long-time residents or recent tech transplants.

Re: Evicted in San Francisco

#147

Post by brc »

trhway wrote: post #64
roc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even think a stronger safety net would have helped in this case. It sounds like she simply wasn't interested in changing anything and that just doesn't work when you have to move and have to change your lifestyle (e.g. stop hoarding). This is all-too-familiar to me, after having helped a couple older relatives through serious late-life changes like this. Further, the general lack of safety net doesn't really…

>she simply wasn't interested in changing anything and that just doesn't work when you have to move and have to change your lifestyle not interested? or not being able to? it starts to look like a diagnosis (as an extreme illustration Rain Man comes to mind). It is not a big stretch of imagination to allow that after 20 years of being in the same situation an elderly person may lose ability for "changes", just like m…

The problem is that, via rent control, she was given 20 years protection from reality evolving around her. That is the issue here.

There would be much less sympathy for a tenant who moved into a place at below-market rent, and then the rent was adjusted to market. But because a feel-good policy has created a broken market, the day of reckoning eventually had to arrive.

In a city of housing shortages, giving a small minority special protection under the law is a very bad outcome. Too bad for those not under the umbrella, too bad for those when the time comes and the umbrella is removed.

Re: Evicted in San Francisco

#148

Post by jonknee »

ryguytilidie wrote: post #86

I just don't get how you can defend this tenant at all. She was constantly unpleasant, didn't pay rent, didn't even bother trying until the last possible second at which point it was "well what options do I have?" It's as if she believed she deserved to live in a house she didn't own for the same price in perpetuity. How does this belief make any sense and why should people sympathize with it? The idea that the owner…

It wasn't until she was aware the owner was trying to evict her that she stopped paying rent. Why would anyone continue to pay rent in that case?

> Over the years, Inge’s rent had gradually increased from $480 to $560 per month; in late 2012, in the midst of the permit debacle, she decided to stop paying rent altogether. Withrington says he “couldn’t do a damn thing about it,” since he was renting an illegal unit.

Sounds pretty smart to me.

Re: Evicted in San Francisco

#149

Post by tsotha »

flomo wrote: post #109
jack-r-abbit wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts too. As soon as the DBI saw that the unit was illegal, I would have assumed the occupants would have been removed almost immediately. It should not have taken that long for the owner to be able to do what he was legally required to do. But instead he was legally prevented from doing what he was legally required to do. Makes no sense.

San Francisco almost always looks the other way regarding these 'illegal' units. Many of them are in plain sight and the rent/tenancy control laws still apply. I would guess the unit must have been a serious health/safety hazard for them to do anything.

The problem was someone filed a complaint. Like any bureaucracy, once you put something down on paper they have to do something. If she hadn't been such a difficult person to get along with she'd still be living there.

Re: Evicted in San Francisco

#150

Post by jonknee »

johnvschmitt wrote: post #120

People just don't understand inflation/math: "...$1.4 million; it’s a good time to sell, considering he bought the place for $627,000 in 2002." Wow! Sounds huge right? Well, 12 years to double? That means it's a ~6% yearly increase. That's LOWER than medial bills, college education, & almost exactly what you'd get from any stock index (S&P 500) for that time period.

If you don't count the rent during that time... It housed her illegal apartment as well as two other families. Her $500 rent alone would be $72,000. I'm sure the other units (non rent-control) were fetching quite a bit more.
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