The President's Report
by Marc Wilson
One of my tenants called yesterday: he wants a raise. I pay “Fred” $125 a month to pick up litter in front of an apartment building on McAllister Street. The litter, which originates from three corner stores and a bus stop, swirls up the block and, as if guided by a higher power, floats to earth in front of my property. It takes Fred two minutes a day to keep the front of the property clean by picking up this litter. I mentioned to Fred that “two minutes a day means one hour per month. At $125 a month, that’s $125 an hour.” I went on to say that “I pick up the litter in front of my own house and nobody compensates me.” I asked Fred if he could explain this phenomenon to me. “Why do I pick up the litter in front of my house for free, but you require compensation to pick up the litter in front of your house?” Fred said, “But you own your house and you own this apartment building. I’m just a tenant.” Then I understood.
There are certain characteristics by which one may begin to understand the soul of a community. And things like neighborhood school performance, crime statistics, activities for school age children, the percentage of families in the community and the prevalence of vagrancy, begging, graffiti and litter define the soul of San Francisco. I don’t think that there is any one issue that more clearly defines the lack of soul, the striking absence of character, in San Francisco today as much as our litter problem. By any form of measurement, San Francisco is filthy.
And litter, like all politics in San Francisco, is a landlord-tenant-rent-control thing. The litter is so rampant on McAllister Street you can actually watch it happening. Just stand near the corner of McAllister and Divisadero. Before long, you will notice people leaving the corner stores with candy bars, potato chips and sodas. By the second or third block, some of these people will simply throw their wrappers and cans on the sidewalk or street. Who are these people? Where do they come from? Where do they live? Then it dawned on me: I believe they are all tenants. Do you honestly think that a homeowner (some poor slob paying $500, $600, even $2,000 a month in property taxes) would throw her empty soda can on the sidewalk? Where do you think those discarded mattresses are coming from? Did a homeowner dump the mattress? Don’t bet on it. It takes someone who is seriously disenfranchised to commit this quality-of-life crime.
I read multiple sociological and psychological studies on who litters and why. These studies, without exception, share one common conclusion: people who litter do so because they have no sense of ownership or community. I don’t think anyone in the world has less of a feeling of ownership than a San Francisco tenant.
It soon becomes clear that we don’t have a litter problem; we have a housing problem. Too much of our housing is occupied by tenants and not enough of our housing is occupied by owners. What is the easiest, surest way to reduce the amount of litter in San Francisco? Increase the amount of homeownership. In my opinion, San Francisco tenants litter at an astronomically higher rate than San Francisco homeowners. This is not a crazy assertion. I challenge anyone to stand with me in front of a convenience store and wait for someone to drop a candy bar wrapper. It is guaranteed that the perpetrator will not be a homeowner.
Some supervisors simply don’t care about litter in San Francisco, crime or the pathetic state of our schools. If they cared, they would be doing something about these problems. All they care about is getting re-elected, and pandering to tenant voters is the easiest way to do that in this town. Take for example Proposition B, the Eviction Disclosure Ordinance (this beauty will appear on the June ballot). Instead of encouraging homeownership and a sense of community, they want to demonize the strong desire of San Franciscans to own their own homes. Prop. B is the tenant advocates demagoguery du jour, which requires real-estate sellers to notify potential buyers at an open house that a tenant was evicted under the Ellis Act to make the property vacant. I’m not sure which is more pathetic: the supervisors’ desire to diminish homeownership opportunities in San Francisco or their belief that any real homebuyer would actually care if a tenant was evicted so that the house could be sold. I’ve been selling real estate in this town for over 20 years, and believe me when I say that no real buyer is going to walk away from a home purchase simply because the tenant occupant was asked to vacate (evicted) before the property was put on the market.
Besides, our supervisors are already doing an excellent job of diminishing the desire for homeownership in San Francisco; they really don’t need Prop. B. Their de facto promotion of filthy streets, ridiculous school choices, pot clubs, vagrancy and a broken infrastructure are all doing wonders to discourage would-be homebuyers. Keep up the good work!
The 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. Marc Wilson is the president of SFAA and has specialized in the brokerage of San Francisco apartment buildings for 20 years. He can be reached at 415-229-1275. Copyright © 2006 by the San Francisco Apartment Magazine. All rights reserved.