Lily’s Diary

The Ostrich Solution

by Lily

March 2
The girls in apartment #6 habitually let their blue recycling box stay out in front of the building for days after pickup. Since we've had words about it before, I hesitate to put it in front of their door. If the box stays on the street more than a few hours, passersby place food wrappers in it. But even without random trash, it is a despicable object encrusted with dried food and god-knows-what. I mean, how hard is it to put a folded newspaper in the bottom of the bin to absorb the dribbles? Never one to miss a chance to be parental, today I finally took a hose and scrubbed it out. I dried it with paper towels, lined the bottom and propped it against their door. I have a feeling I'll be getting attitude for the next few weeks.

March 7
Went to the rent board last night. There was another hearing on Prop H, the measure that was passed by the voters last November (sayonara, capital improvement passthroughs), and it has been stopped in its tracks by court action. Again, I watched dignified oldsters testify that they would have to move out of their "homes" if they got another passthrough. I'm thinking, aren't they protected by the rule that says if a passthrough brings your rent to over 30-35% of your income, you can get an exemption? Well, not exactly, it turns out. I learned that a tenant could file for the hardship exemption only at the start of the passthrough. That means that in a building where an enormous renovation is taking place (like those at Marina Cove and Pacific Place) and the rent escalates 10% each year, you cannot file for relief the year that the passthrough actually kicks your rent over 30% of your income. In my view, there is clearly a mistake in the spirit of the ordinance. If tenants had compromised on some of these things that actually were unfair to them, maybe we would not have lost our ability to pass costs along. Too bad the negotiations attempted by the Coalition for Better Housing, SFAA and others didn’t pan out before Prop H was placed on the ballot. As it is, small property owners like me will never meet the fair return criteria devised by the city attorney's office.

March 16
Had lunch with Marge at People's Cafe on Haight St. She owns a triplex on Duboce and two women who have a baby live in the lower unit. When the child was a month old, Marge spied one of the women fooling around in the flowerbeds in the back of the building. The next day, Marge was presented with two plastic zip-lock bags of something brown and told she had to have the soil tested for lead. Sure? Easier said than done, it turns out. In spite of all the admonitions and talk about lead abatement, the city does not test for it. According to the city’s list, there aren’t any testing labs in San Francisco. So Marge sent the two soil samples over to a lab in Emeryville. Fifty bucks. But they said that the sample was not large enough to be conclusive and that they'd have to do borings all over the area and set up a kind of mini-lab in the backyard. It began to look like serious money. Marge's solution? She had a redwood deck built over a portion of the back yard so that her tenants would have a place where the baby could play without coming in contact with the soil. She calls it the ostrich solution.

March 28
Sam and Leon, who own the two flats next door as tenants-in-common decided to put up a wrought iron gate at the bottom of their entry stairs just like mine (imitation is the highest form of flattery). I warned them not to let the fabricators galvanize it because the metal would reject the flat black paint. They took my advice and it looks great. They wanted a gate that locked (mine is just a psychological barrier) and went to the trouble of wiring doorbells and installing an intercom. I was impressed. They got a rude awakening from our friendly mail person when they presented her with a gate key so she could access the two front door mail slots. Surprise, surprise! The Postal Service won't accept responsibility for a gate or building key unless there are three units or more. Did you know that? The guys were so miffed. They had to have mailboxes custom made that could be accessed from outside the gate and yet were secure enough to prevent their mail from being stolen. As it turned out, they invented some kind of periscope contraption with engraved brass front plates that looks wonderful. Still, I think their relationship with their postal worker has flattened noticeably.

Lily’s Diary is written by a longtime rental property owner who reserves the right to remain anonymous on the grounds that her tenants might gang up on her. The opinions are hers and do not necessarily represent those of the SF Apartment Magazine.