Lily’s Diary

by Lily

March 11
Received another note from Lara in #6 written on her famous bunny paper. She wants to know if she can put window boxes outside her living room windows. She assures me she will pay for them—as if that is even among the first five reasons I will not allow her to do it. Besides puncturing the front of my building with lag bolts, planting god-knows-what kind of greenery in the boxes, and screwing up the entire look of the Victorian facade, there’s also the problem of water dripping down on everything beneath it. I have to remind myself of that oh-so-strong nesting instinct of a woman in her twenties. I remember blissfully changing everything that could possibly be changed in the first few apartments I rented. Without ever thinking to ask permission, I brought in a stray cat, dyed my bedspread in the washer, made candles out of molten wax on the kitchen range and bought a used portable dishwasher that leaked during the rinse cycle. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, I feel so ashamed. What did those long dead landlords think but never expressed to me?

March 18
This afternoon I watched a meeting of the Board of Supervisors, on cable channel 26. I have a huge problem with Supervisor Matt Gonzalez. I absolutely admire his intellect, demeanor and integrity, but I hate his attitude toward owners of small residential buildings. His early remark to my plea for more fairness for owners of rent-controlled units was, "Maybe you should invest your money in something more stable." Stable? Stable? Starting with my grandmother who ran a boardinghouse on Ashbury, the women of my family—all unlucky in love—have supported themselves and their children by being owner-occupants of small buildings. This was always considered the most conservative investment possible. But to Gonzalez, this is a speculative and risky choice. And considering the tenants' voting block and the makeup of the Board of Supervisors, he's probably right. His recent move to establish so-called community trusts is another way of saying that private ownership is only okay if the city owns the land and the owner can't make a profit on the resale. We need to educate this estimable man who now sits as president of the Board of Supervisors. By the way, he just reintroduced a laundry list of amendments supplied to him by the Tenants Union—all attempts to "plug the loopholes" of the Rent Ordinance. God help us.

March 25
Got a surprise call this afternoon from Michael, with whom I was once close (close enough to nearly go into joint ownership on a pair of flats). He calls me out of the blue and asks if I have any suggestions for finding a tenant for his vacant unit. I tell him (after several more personal things) that he has to be more competitive by making his offering more attractive. I tell him about our mutual friend Bruno, who had a nice five-room flat in the Richmond that remained empty for three months. Bruno decided he would accept pets. Bingo, he got a taker. When a garage in the neighborhood became available for rent, my friend Maggie grabbed it, and even though she simply added the monthly rental fee on to the price of the apartment, her empty unit rented immediately. And if you have a unit that shows well, MetroRent has a new feature that will allow you to upload photographs on their Web site, which can give you a real advantage over those offering less attractive units.

April 2
Rent control as a plus? Well I admit that I never exactly thought of it this way. At a recent SFAA meeting, however, some smart guy in the audience reminded us that a rent-controlled unit can be marketed as something much more desirable for a prospective tenant than a newer unit that leaves the tenant subject to the whims of the landlord. When showing a vacant unit, let the shoppers know they will be protected from arbitrary rent raises and from no-fault evictions. And should they, God forbid, become disabled, or seriously ill, or turn 60 years old, they will each have lifetime immunity to an eviction by a new owner. Hey, what a deal. Time to make lemonade from those lemons we’ve been given over the years by the Board of Supervisors.

April 6
Last night Laurie and I went to a neighborhood meeting, and the topic of discussion was a chain drugstore going into Cole Valley. Nearly 200 people crushed into the Park Police Station to decry "chains." Of course, there were chain drugstores in the Haight when my mother was a girl, and also when I was growing up, but these young Turks think that they are something new and evil. A more legitimate concern is the intensification of traffic, both foot and automobile. But even with that, the issue of negative impact is difficult to establish. Neighbors criticized Walgreens for having 53 venues in the city, not realizing that it was prima facie evidence that Walgreens is, in fact, a neighborhood drugstore.

April 8
Feeling particularly strong this morning—blame it on spring—I visited the Tenants Union Web site (www.sftu.org). Not only do you learn there that we are money-grubbing, heartless capitalists, but you also get a whiff of the plans these paid organizers have in store for us. They revel in the fact that the new Gonzalez legislation will curtail banked rent increases and disallow rent adjustments for utilities used by additional roommates. One of the most frightening proposals, not currently on the Web site, calls for the election of Rent Board Commissioners. Right now they're appointed, with an equal balance of tenant and landlord representatives along with one "neutral" member. But if all commissioners are elected, the 62 percent of the electorate who are renters will have the power to insure that all members of the commission will represent them. The founders of our country carefully crafted the U.S. Constitution to protect us from the tyranny of the majority, but I doubt that the leaders of the Tenants Union care deeply about such a notion.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view point of the SFAA or the San Francisco Apartment Magazine. The information within this article is general in nature. 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." Copyright © 2003 San Francisco Apartment Magazine