lily's diary

By Lily

February 8
Supervisor Tom Ammiano is at it again. This time he’s advancing legislation that would put a total ban on chain stores (so-called “formula retail”) in the Mission District. Hey, the Mission should be so lucky to attract a chain store. Have you been out there lately and seen the number of empty storefronts? When I was a kid there was a huge Sears there, not to mention a Woolworth’s, a Hale’s and an Owl drug store. And, although I don’t think it was a chain, there was another anchor store on the corner of Mission and 16th streets called Lachman Brothers, a huge furniture store that provided a generous layaway plan. More important to me was the miniature cedar “hope chest” they gave to every girl graduating from a San Francisco high school. It was a cherished right of passage. We can put controls on gentrification when there’s some indication that it’s going to be a problem, not when a neighborhood’s business corridor is struggling for survival.

February 13
I feel so out of it when I hear about the things burdening some building owners. As we were having a drink at the Sundance Kabuki bar (before seeing the film “The Savages”), I asked my friend Maggie if she ever had evidence of human trafficking in any of her apartments. She looked at me like I was crazy. I told her that it starts out with men coming and going at all hours. “Like those nurses I have in my second floor rear unit?” she asked. I told her that some of the city’s apartments are being used as brothels. (Maggie doesn’t go to SFAA meetings, so she didn’t hear the police department’s report on this growing issue.) “Couldn’t the coming and going indicate drug dealing, too?” she asked, quite reasonably. I explained that we all know landlords have no control over that: the Rent Board wants witnesses and no one is willing to testify. But, right now, there seems to be political will to get at these human traffickers who usually use their victims as prostitutes, seamstresses, manicurists—some kind of service done by people who don’t have to speak English. “Yeah, and the Feds are putting the squeeze on people who’ve rented to pot clubs, too,” she added. We could only shake our heads and look down at our now empty glasses. When stories about sex slaves and pot clubs hit the front page, small owner-occupied buildings are usually not involved. Thank God.

February 18
Michael, a friend who owns two flats in the Tendernob, has been dealing with a problem tenant for nearly three years. The guy uses methamphetamines. When he finally moved out, the unit was in sorry shape. Evidently, these so-called “tweakers” like to methodically engage in detail work, staying awake for hours in the belief that some manual project is of vital necessity without having any intention of completing it. In this case, the tenant had disassembled the faucet in the bathtub in an attempt to improve water pressure. He had also taken apart the gas stove, feeling it needed cleaning but not knowing how to put it back together—resulting in escaping gas. There were hundreds of pinpricks on the cabinet doors (who knows what that was about) and weeks of garbage sorted in some kind of arcane allotment. Anyway, Michael had a long list of damages that took time to repair. As the 21 days allowed to return the tenant’s security deposit approached, Michael knew he wouldn’t have all the final bills to document why the tenant was not going to get any security deposit back. The time lapsed. Long story short: because of a rule in the San Francisco Rent Ordinance, he was forced to forfeit the entire security deposit, some two grand. Because he did not communicate to the tenant within the required 21 days, he couldn’t keep a penny. This is a cautionary tale. If you aren’t able to produce the bills for repairs in 21 days from the move-out date, you must, at least, send the tenant a letter saying why and giving some kind of estimate as to what the cost will be.

February 20
Boy, was I living in a dream world. I thought that the interest on security deposits had dropped from the ridiculous 5% of prior years to the actual percentage we could expect from a liquid account. I hadn’t had a vacancy for the last two years, so I was clearly out of the loop. As I was reaching for my second turkey roll at last month’s SFAA meeting, I overhead someone complaining about having to pay more than 5% on a security deposit. Never one to hold back, I corrected her, explaining that there had been a lawsuit and now we only have to pay the amount of interest we would actually get if we deposited it. Was I ever wrong. I went to the San Francisco Rent Board website and found that the new rate is a whopping 5.2%, the same as it was last year. What the hell happened? I feel like such a dummy. I’m only admitting this because maybe someone else out there lives in woo-woo land, too.

February 22
I just got off the phone with Rachel, a woman who used to be on my bowling team when we both worked for a company that was long ago acquired, downsized and, finally, exported. She knew I was a small-time owner of rental property and wanted some advice about her tenant’s replacement roommate. How much control should she exert over the choice of the incoming subtenant? The more she talked, the more I remembered this gal. She was nearly six feet tall and deeply into Bonsai. Strange, I thought, for a pretty good bowler. I told her that she had every right to do a credit check and, in fact, had the right to turn down her tenant’s choice on a number of grounds. However, I warned, “You might not want to go there, lest your input be mistaken as assumption of responsibility over the newbie. As for me, I tell my tenant, ‘Hey, it’s you who have to live with him. If he’s good enough for you, he’s good enough for me.’” If the original tenant is young, this advice usually triggers a coming-of-age epiphany as he realizes that he has, in fact, become a landlord himself and must bear the burden of having to do a credit check, set standards and possibly make a major mistake that he will, literally, have to live with.

February 24
Never in my long life have I encountered a presidential primary race so fascinating. I don’t care what your politics are, the days of voting for the least objectionable have temporarily been suspended. Well, almost. Even Mike Huckabee, whose views are Roswellian, is fun to watch and hear speak. I’m sure that even tonight’s Academy Awards ceremony will pale in entertainment value to the presidential debates. Or am I weird? Speaking of politics, in June, Californians will have the opportunity to curb the government’s control over private property. Under a bill called the California Property Owners and Farmland Protection Act, the current city laws that limit the amount of return a person can receive from the rental of his property (rent control) will be illegal. By the way, this does not apply to the rent of sitting tenants, but kicks in after they move out. It is the opportunity to correct laws that are blatantly unconstitutional. Never did I think that my interests would overlap with those of pigs and cows. Don’t confuse this with a competing measure, which has no impact on rent control. Just remember the word “Farmland” in the title. And if it  passes, I won’t be the only one to raise my head and give a loud moo-o-o-o-o.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of SFAA or SF 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 © 2008 by SF Apartment Magazine. All rights reserved.