Lily's Diary
by Lily
January 5
My cousin, Marc, has three children who are the joy of his life. The trouble is that when he and his wife opened a catering business ten years ago, they had no idea how their long hours away from home would affect the kids—well, at least one of them. The youngest, Stuart, started acting out in junior high and was picked up by the cops at age 13. He solved his drug problem by switching to vodka and was kicked out of high school. Then a series of private schools followed, each farther and farther away. End of prologue. This month Stu will return to the city along with an impressive record of petty crime. Marc doesn’t want him living at home (really?) and, at a family get-together, he told me he had found Stu an apartment in the Haight. When I asked how in the world he passed the credit check, Marc said, “Oh, I just said the apartment was for me. How will the management company know who’s actually sleeping there?” My blood ran cold. My face froze. To think, a member of my own family would do a thing like that. A cautionary tale to those who have applicants who seem too good to be true and own homes elsewhere.
January 14
I am still fuming over the holiday gifts Supervisors Daly and Gonzalez bestowed, with varying degrees of success, on their tenant constituents at the end of last year. Always generous to a fault (with our assets), Gonzalez was able to pass a measure that will allow a wide circle of family members to join tenants in their units—and all without any rent raise to compensate for added utility costs or wear and tear. Innocent enough on the surface, the impact on real life situations in this city of multiple roommates could be devastating. (The worst experience I ever had was a tenant who brought in her daughter, fresh out of rehab, “until she could get on her feet.” While the mother was at work, the daughter was entertaining bikers, six at a time.) A saving grace is that there’s a limit of two people per bedroom. (Note the gratitude for crumbs.)
Daly, on the other hand, was continuing his crusade against condo conversions. He wanted to remove the lottery exemption for two-unit buildings; and if a protected tenant had been evicted (through legal means, mind you), these units would then be placed in a special lottery of only 25 slots per year. All this would have been retroactive, of course. Thank God, this was drastically watered down by Supervisor Alioto-Pier to apply only to two-unit buildings with evictions and will not be retroactive. At least the owner knows the liabilities up front for evicting disabled or senior tenants. But again, Daly and Gonzalez managed to reduce our chances in the condo lottery and took another big bite out of our rights as building owners. Where do we send the thank-you notes?
February 10
My friend, Robert, is doing his first passthrough. He and his partner finally got enough money to paint the exterior of their three-flat building in Bernal. All during the painting, one tenant complained that the sanding was disturbing his concentration, since he works at home. At the same time, his roommate protested that the scaffolding and draping deprived him of sunlight in the kitchen. Robert, knowing it is indeed inconvenient for everyone while painting is going on, went out of his way to accommodate them even to the point of asking the painters to begin at 10:00 in the morning instead of 8:00 and to make a slit in the netting so that light could enter the kitchen window when the painters weren’t actually working. Mercifully, the priming and painting was over in 10 days and nothing more was heard. Robert filed his passthrough at the Rent Board and a hearing date was set. As prescribed, the building tenants were sent a notice of their right to appeal the petition. “I don’t think they’ll show up,” Robert told me over coffee. “After all, they had tried to get me to lower the rent on the basis of a reduction in service last year, principally because the building needed painting.” When the hearing date came, Robert found out how wrong he was. Both tenants presented themselves. Now they were saying that they didn’t feel they had a responsibility to pay the passthrough (approximately $70 per month), because it wasn’t truly a capital improvement. The hearing officer disagreed, telling them that according to the rent ordinance’s passthrough criteria, exterior painting was considered a capital improvement. “But the owner waited too long to paint,” claimed one of the tenants. “At this point,” he continued, “it’s obviously only maintenance, and we shouldn’t have to pay.” Robert is now awaiting the judgment but feels secure that it will go his way.
February 12
A few years ago, in a moment of benevolence (or was it the wine?), I sent a check for $50 to an organization of small property owners based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I joined them because I had heard that in 1994 these folks waged a successful campaign to have rent control abolished throughout the whole state.
Tenants’ rights organizations in Massachusetts have been fighting back ever since. Last year, a group called Eviction Free Zone (EFZ) got enough signatures for a referendum in Cambridge. It was defeated 61% to 39%. The most recent appeal by EFZ occurred in Boston last December. With some pomposity, their allies on the city council labeled it “Boston’s Community Stabilization Act.” After an impressive organization effort by property owners, Boston’s City Council voted it down. The hard-won successes of this organization give us all hope and also warn us that even after victory there is struggle. Bummer.
opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of SFAA or the San Francisco 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. Comments, corrections or ideas are welcome at lilysdiary@aol.com. Copyright © 2005 by the San Francisco Apartment Magazine. All rights reserved.