Lily’s Diary
by Lily
January 10
How do you tell a tenant that he is not capable of removing
the shelves he has installed illegally? This is what
happened today when I did my first “walk through
inspection” per the new state law. Thank Carole
Migden for that. But don’t get me wrong. The idea
of a pre-move walk-through is fine. Sure, I dread face-to-face
confrontation as much as the next guy, but I also understand
the basic fairness of the principle.
My gripe is with the part about the tenants having the right to repair the damage themselves. This is wrong, wrong, wrong. The tenant who put in the shelves (Randy) is clueless about the damage to the plaster wall when they are removed. An unskilled person with a can of Spackle can cause a lot of grief. And yet he insists he can do it himself. I said “no way.” Now he is mumbling about Small Claims Court.
January 16
I’m trying, God knows, I’m trying. But the
waste can for compost is giving off a certain smell
down there in the basement area. Faithful readers will
remember how I have often congratulated myself that
my garbage cans are free of odor. But as my grandmother
used to say, “pride goeth before a fall,”
and these days I find myself holding my breath when
I pass the green can. Cole Hardware has some compostable
liners that come five for $4.00 (add that to your garbage
rate). So the next time the can is empty, I’ll
hose it out and start using the liner. But that really
isn’t an option for property owners who don’t
live in their own buildings. The Sunset Scavenger people
keep talking about using milk cartons. The idea is that
a half-gallon milk carton fits into the little green
can you keep in the kitchen. When it’s filled,
you refold the top before placing it in the big green
can downstairs. Well, even if I did buy milk in half
gallons and disciplined myself to do it, how could I
force my tenants to follow suit?
January 23
I’m taking this 24 hour-written-notice thing seriously.
Even though I’ve known most of my tenants for
years, you never know. People
change, times change and it is now the law. Every time
I have to enter an apartment, I make sure the tenant
has gotten something on
paper beforehand. I don’t make a big deal out
of it, just hand-write the note and slip it under the
door. Of course, as with anything I give a
tenant, I make a copy first. I have a fax machine that
doubles as a copier. Now, that is handy.
January 25
Today my friend Rhonda told me she has cracks in her
terrazzo steps and asked for advice. When it happened
to me some time ago, I was told that the turn-of-the
century composite of crushed marble and concrete couldn’t
be repaired. One guy gave me a $7,000 bid to replace
it; another came in at $8,500. The cracks originally
appeared when a vacating tenant was moving his video
arcade game on a huge hand truck and just let it fall
from step to step, bounce, bounce, bounce. The cracks
got wider over time and I knew I needed to do something
before the heel of one of Poppy’s Manolo Blahniks
got snagged.
I found a guy named Sal Mayorga who, with no prompting from me, offered to fill the cracks with the same composite for half the cost and guaranteed the results. Five years later, they still look good. It wasn’t an easy job. The worker sanded for two days hunched over the stairs in a cloud of marble dust. But when he was through you could hardly see it. It was like a well-done weave on grandpa’s favorite jacket. Not like new, but proclaiming loudly, “well maintained.”
January 28
If you own property in a neighborhood where there are
people living on the street, you might have rejoiced
to see that the state legislature
finally passed Laura’s Law, the bill that would
make it easier to pick up and care for the homeless
mentally ill. People from outside of this
crazy city might well have raised their eyebrows at
the Chronicle headline, “Mentally Ill May Be Forced
Into Care.” Excuse me? My nemesis
John Burton fought this bill in different forms for
years. He said the bill made it too easy to take mentally
ill people into custody. I say the
existing laws, or lack thereof, are keeping people who
need care out on the city’s streets. The San Francisco
Police Department cannot (and
should not) pick up these folks as criminals, and the
mental health people haven’t had legal grounds
to do it because of the way the
applicable ordinances are interpreted here in the “Open
City.” Will Laura’s Law mean fewer mentally
ill people sleeping in our doorways?
Let’s hope so.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reect the viewpoint of the SFAA or the SF Apartment Magazine. “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. Copyright © 2003 San Francisco Apartment Magazine