Lily’s Diary

by Lily

February 25
Had brunch at Baghdad Café with my friend Sally, a retired Lincoln High School teacher. She has a long-term tenant who quit her job several years ago and lives la vie Boheme in her large Victorian flat with three young roommates. Sally believes the roommates, all professionals, pay top price for their space. She swears that her tenant (let’s call her Mimi) is living off the rents these subtenants pay her. “I’m sure she’s making a living from property I worked hard to buy, and all she did was live there nine years,” quips Sally. I told her about the rule approved last year that prohibits a master tenant from charging a subtenant more rent than that proportional to the space he or she actually occupies. It’s all supposed to be even-steven now. But how, Sally wants to know, can she let the subtenants know about this? I asked her why she cares since it doesn’t mean any more money for her. “It’s the principle of the thing,” she spit out. I suggested she make an official-looking flier simply quoting the new law and put it through the door some evening just before the worker bees arrive home. Now, though, I’m having second thoughts about that. Purposely breeding contention could backfire.

February 28
Remember the 1999 effort to study the effects of rent control put forth by then-Supervisor Amos Brown? As you recall, tenant activists made sure the legislation was watered down to become a study of all the city’s housing, and affordable housing at that. Now fast forward. The first part of the study has finally come out and is called the San Francisco Housing DataBook (see page 7). I started to download it by going to the Web site of Bay Area Economics (www.bae1.com, “Housing Study”), the firm that made the study, but I could see that it was going to produce more pages than I wanted floating around my desk unbound. So I went down to the Rent Board to buy a copy but they told me it cost forty bucks. I’m interested—but not that interested. I finally settled for the introduction and summary on the Rent Board’s Web site. Well, it turns out that’s more than enough information for me. What surprised me most was that people with incomes of $100,000 or more hold 25 percent of rent-controlled apartments. That means that small property owners like me are by law required to subsidize rich people. Where’s the justice? It was also interesting that single individuals occupy nearly half of all rent-controlled units. And did you know that there are more seniors in rent-controlled apartments than families with children? To those of us who complain about getting lower rents, there was the reminder that rents rose far more in 1999 than they decreased in 2000. By the way, the housing forum on Craigslist also put out a summary that is more complete.

March 2
Apartment #4 has been vacant for nearly two months. When I finally got a taker with good credentials (Derrick is a UCSF Hospital resident), he said he needed to give six weeks notice to his current landlady. I told him that only 30 days notice was required, but he said his notice would only be accepted on the first of the month. Since it was the 15th, he had to continue paying rent at his present apartment for a full six weeks. He wanted to know if I would let him move in later so he’d only have to pay double rent for two weeks. I felt lucky to have found a good tenant in these times, so I agreed. I did feel cheated though by his landlady. The next day I went to the Rent Board and asked if her action was legal. Does a tenant have to give his 30-Day Notice on the first of the month or can it be any 30-day period? The answer was, as you may already know, any 30-day period is sufficient. I called Derrick and he told his landlady, but she showed him a hand-written stipulation at the top of the lease (he afterward showed it to me) requiring notice of vacancy to be given on the first of the month. What a dilemma. It was technically illegal according to California state law, but he had signed his name to the agreement. As much as I resent her getting away with something illegal, I also hold the belief that adults who agree, sign and are of sound mind can be held to anything. However, because of it, I’m out two weeks rent.

March 6
The city is tearing up the street in front of my flats. There’s dust all over the windows, the planter boxes and my car. When they pound the streets with their giant mallet, the windows rattle. I fear the poor old building will be even less firm on its foundation than it is now. Already the back door is sticking and I had to get a screwdriver to open the built-in china cabinet. Hey, what are my rights here? I called DPW but they told me to call the contractor. I did, and nice as they were, they made me feel self-serving. “The sewer needs replacing,” said the woman who answered. “We”re just doing our job. But I’ll pass your concerns on to the foreman.” Sure.

March 10
When I was up in Apartment #6 with my snake dislodging hair from the bathtub drain, my eyes happened to spy a large planter with, get this, a terra cotta dish underneath it. Not glazed but porous terra cotta. Why don’t these saucers come with warning labels: “saucer will leak water on to hardwood floors?” I don’t want my tenants to think I look around when I’m in their apartment on a repair, but what are you going to do? You have to take advantage of the opportunity to make sure things are OK. I couldn’t budge the plant to actually check it out, and now I’m obsessing about it because I think the moisture has made the saucer stick to the floor. I’ve decided to buy a glazed saucer and put it outside the door with a note to replace it. What else can I do? Whatever damage it caused has been done. But be assured, the piper will be paid when they move out. The piper, that’s me.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the SFAA or the SF Apartment Magazine. A longtime rental property owner who reserves the right to remain anonymous on the grounds that her tenants might gang up on her writes Lily’s Diary. Comments, corrections or ideas are welcome.© Copyright 2002.