Lily's Diary
by Lily
March 2
Had a drink with my friend Liz at Jardinière last night, and the conversation ranged from Arlene Ackerman (she wasn’t there, by the way) to, of all things, wood rot. Liz has decks on her building, and one of her tenants (Eric) who has a high nesting propensity has filled his deck with large pots of cymbidium. The other morning, Liz, who lives above him, noticed something white and uneven lodged between the boards of the decking below: kind of like caulking applied by a blind carpenter. With Eric’s permission, she took a closer look and discovered a sort of mushroom growth. She scraped it off and realized the wood beneath was mushy. The constant water from the planters had caused the dreaded wood rot—one of the few maintenance issues with no cure. The sections of infected wood have to be cut out and replaced. She told Eric that he’d have to get rid of the cymbidium and not use the deck until she had the work done. His reaction was not one of sympathetic understanding. The next day Liz received a letter (copied to the Rent Board) stating that, since he hadn’t been told not to place the planters there, he bore no responsibility. Furthermore, since he couldn’t use his deck, he was going to file for a decrease-in-service rent reduction. The lesson here is that if you or your tenant must put plants on a wood deck, be sure there is air space beneath them and have the pots on rollers so that they can be moved every two weeks to let the deck dry out.
March 13
Why are some property owners so, well, paranoid about being taken advantage of? It makes me mad because people like that give us all a bad name. I have a relative who just inherited a building in the Marina. She uses the usual PPMA lease but has added a structured late fee so that a $50 fee kicks in on the third day, a $75 one on the fifth day, and, on the 10th day, the late fee is $100. I think that’s overkill. Maybe you have to be severe when you have a big building and don’t have a personal relationship with your tenants, but I couldn’t do business that way. I have a modest late fee of $20 on the fifth day. But before that, I call the tenant to make sure there wasn’t some mitigating factor. They have lives. Things happen. I think high late fees could be questioned as usury and certainly would not be upheld in a court of law.
March 20
I’m swearing off supervisors. The flurry of bills by Supervisor Chris Daly to stem the tide of Ellis Acted buildings and condo conversions was ludicrous. Sure, the mayor vetoed them but—believe me—more are waiting in the wings. The simple solution is to restore profitability to the landlords of small buildings. This is not quantum physics. These are the buildings that are being Ellised. When you only have three units and one or two tenants have lived there over 10 years, you are losing money. There’s no way you can keep up your building, pay utilities and make enough to live on. And that’s exactly what thousands of San Franciscans counted on doing for their retirement. Since they can’t do it anymore, they’re looking for an alternative. If they have enough money (and years left) to go through the condo process, they can remain in their homes and sell off the other units for income. If they’re old, alas, they have no recourse other than to sell to a developer who will, in all probability, use the Ellis Act to convert the buildings to tenancies-in-common. Wouldn’t you think that the leadership of this city would understand the simple economics of this situation and come up with some compromise plans?
March 29
Say it isn’t so. Once again, a “nice-guy” landlord is skewered by his tenant. This time it was my friend Robert, who told me the story the other night while waiting for a movie at the Balboa Theater out in the Richmond District. Robert has a small light-manufacturing building in an alley off Ninth St. in which his grandfather used to produce sewing-machine belts. Over the years, it’s been rented out to a wide range of businesses but has remained within the family. The latest tenant is an artist who makes large metal sculptures and once dated his daughter. After a couple years of tenancy, Robert decided it was time to raise the rent and figured a 5% hike wouldn’t hurt the tenant. The young man responded by saying he was protected by rent control and anything over a 1.2% raise was illegal. Robert reminded him that San Francisco’s commercial buildings are not under rent control, to which the tenant countered that he’d been living in the building’s loft and, therefore, it was now “residential,” ergo under rent control.
By now Robert was getting red-faced telling me the story; and, since people were starting to come out of the screening room, I told him to wait and continue after we got our seats. Once settled in with our popcorn, here’s what he told me: the kid had gone to the San Francisco Tenants Union and found out that if an owner is aware that a commercial tenant is living in the unit, rent control automatically kicks in. Under close questioning by his own attorney, Robert had to admit that, yes, he had once gone in to fix a faucet and seen the tenant in his jammies. Case closed. The key here was the landlord’s knowledge of the illegal behavior. It’s just another example of an owner inadvertently waiving his rights because he didn’t want to play the bad guy and enforce the lease.
April 2
Rita in Apartment 4 wants a new bathtub. She says I promised her one if she stayed two years. (Didn’t I vow not to make promises to tenants anymore?) And, my, don’t two years pass quickly? I called in the contractor to give me an estimate. He hemmed and hawed, took measurements, tapped the tile round the tub and told me he’d fax it to me that afternoon. A bad sign. When the estimate arrived, it said that all the tile in the tub enclosure would have to be torn out, because you “can’t slide in a new tub with the walls intact.” I trust him, so I signed off on the estimate of $2,700. Then buyer’s remorse set in. Should I have instead tried that epoxy paint process you read about? Should I have told Rita flat out that I couldn’t afford it right now? After all, her rent is $400 undermarket. On the other hand, as the owner, I want the unit to be in as good shape as possible, and SFAA President Marc Wilson says to opt for a reasonable upgrade. I always do what Marc says. Well, mostly.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the 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 © 2006 by the San Francisco Apartment Magazine. All rights reserved.