Onsite Insight

by Riley

The life of a resident apartment manager can be busy, hectic, full of drama and entertaining–all simultaneously. Every day is an education. While the building you manage and the neighborhood you live in can dictate the type of tenants that live in the building (for example, the tenants who live at the top of the hill in Pacific Heights may have different needs than the tenants who live in the Tenderloin), most buildings have that one “special” tenant. You know the one: the tenant who is just a bit too needy; the tenant who finds a second home at the San Francisco Rent Board; or the tenant who reads, or even senses, a new or existing house rule and must break it. In all of the years that I have managed apartment buildings, I have taken many classes to educate myself on laws, rules and compliance, and I have even read the San Francisco Rent Ordinance cover to cover; but my “special” tenants also provide a doozy of an education.

In the upscale, multiunit building that I call home and have managed for over a decade, I have such a tenant. He is the person that no one wants to share the elevator with (not that he would share it anyway) and has a unit that no one has entered in at least all of the years I have been here. He has lived in the building from its inception and will only leave in one manner: feet first. No one will drag him out kicking and screaming, as I have unfortunately had to witness in other buildings. He is what I call a “lifer”–it is a true “tenancy for life.”

I have nicknamed him “Crazy Is as Crazy Does” or CCD. What could make a reasonably compassionate resident manager, such as myself, resort to such awful name calling, usually under my breath as I walk away from him? A number of situations come to mind. For example, he leaves notes in the lobby complaining to the rest of the tenants about security deposit interest checks; when the interest rate fell from 5% to 3.4% and subsequently 1.2%, and the interest checks decreased, it was not because there was a change in the system, but because I was a “thief.” He shakes his fist and accuses me of attempted murder when I mop; I must be doing it to cause a slip and fall, not to clean the floors. He takes this bizarre behavior outside the building as well, walking down the middle of a very busy street, parting speeding cars like Moses and leaving my neighbors in horror as they watch from their balconies. None of these actions are enough to call the men with the white coats, but they do make the rest of the tenants slightly nervous. He has screamed at some of them, and some of them have reciprocated and done the same.

His unit has a huge private outdoor space, as does the unit next to his. Years ago, in the infancy of my management, I participated in my first eviction involving CCD’s next-door neighbors. This was not a messy eviction with tenants using every tool within the many at their disposal to keep their ridiculously underpriced, rent controlled apartments within their tenancy, but instead an “easy” eviction for a planned nonpayment of rent. The tenants came home late and held barbecues at odd hours, over his screams and rants; the more he ranted and screamed, the later the party became. One month, the eviction began when the tenants came to me declaring that they were done paying rent and that they knew that an eviction would take two to three months, so they would stay for free until then.

CCD yelled through the walls and over the patio fence every night about his neighbors. On the evening before the sheriff was to escort the delinquent tenants out, with or without possessions, the screaming reached an all-time high. When he was asked what the problem was, I was told to go away as I was more trouble than they were and my help was not needed. As the police arrived to settle the dispute, all became quiet and neither unit would answer the door, wasting the time of the officers and ruining any chance for sleep on my part, as the rest of the evening I waited for the fray to begin again.

The next morning, when the sheriff arrived, the partying tenants were gone, but the evidence of what transpired remained; thousands of thumbtacks and the hammer used to deliver them were in the common living room wall in the unit, located just above CCD’s sleeping quarters. The tenants pounded those tacks in one at a time during the night just to irritate the lifer. They were a parting gift, one hammer blow at a time. Even though this was socially deviant behavior, it still makes me giggle a little bit to think about the use of crazy against crazy. What class could teach a person about thumbtacks in the wall? What part of the Rent Ordinance could possibly define the evicted tenants’ actions or the equally disturbing behavior by CCD, who always pays his rent on time, but makes everyone miserable?

While the behavior described above is arguably harmless, CCD has been worse. A tenant, who I have never known to be anything but truthful, told me that just before I arrived a relative came to visit CCD, and tragically died in his studio unit. Known for frugality and irrational behavior, he lived with the body in the unit for three days, trying to find alternative transportation for the now-deceased relative, as the ambulance used by the coroner was too expensive. The smell required the other tenants in the building to take matters into their own hands, forcing him to shell out the funds and stop living in a studio with the corpse. They thought it was disgusting, but I think it could have been an evictable offense, and therefore a missed opportunity.

Besides the above-mentioned incidents, he makes the other tenants uncomfortable by screaming, being irrational, accusing others of actions that happened only in his head and being an overall pest. Yet CCD is considered sane in the eyes of the Rent Board. How crazy is too crazy? I shudder to think of the activity that will lead to eviction by crazy–not one of the just causes in this city. It will come, but when and how scary it will be will be determined at a later date. I hate to think it, but CCD may just be the test case as to just how crazy is too crazy to live in a rent controlled unit in San Francisco. Maybe the judge will determine that we should have a new phrase: tenancy until no longer sane. It’s an unlikely outcome, but, hey, a manager can dream.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the SFAA or SF Apartment Magazine. “Riley” has been a San Francisco resident manager in a large, well cared for building for 12 years. Copyright © 2007 by SF Apartment Magazine. All rights reserved.