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In Memoriam: Charles W. Mosser 1924-2007
By Emily Landes
Charles Mosser had a way with words. On the subject of his five marriages: “It’s cheaper to keep her.” On his children’s “lavish” lifestyles: “You live like the prince and princesses of Monaco.” On the reasoning behind his attentiveness to his properties: “The eye of the owner fattens the horse.” On his famously stubborn tendencies: “I’m not unfair, just unreasonable.”
Almost as often as his family and friends heard these quips, they would also hear Mosser promise that he would live to the ripe old age of 107. Unfortunately, he was not quite able to reach this lofty goal. He passed away at the age of 82 this past October, after more than a decade battling prostate cancer.
Mosser was born in rural Grass Valley, California, and often claimed to have read every book in the Grass Valley Library. As a young man he joined the Navy and served in the Pacific Theater during World War II, where he was stationed in the Philippines. This early introduction to the islands proved to grow into a lifelong affection. During the last 10 years of his life, Mosser lived most of the year in the Philippines, where he worked on literacy and other educational projects, sustainable forestry initiatives and had recently started an organic banana plantation.
But whenever Mosser would return to San Francisco, he would always tell his family that there was no place like it in the world. As a crooner and songwriter with 5,000 ditties to his name, he relished the arts scene in the city and would attend every production possible while he was in town, from the symphony to the theatre.
In fact, Mosser often told people that he would have rather been in the arts than a businessman and property owner. Yet, while his son, former SFAA President Neveo Mosser, says that his father only performed for “captive audiences,” he was much more successful in his business pursuits. In 1958, he became a real-estate agent with an office out on Geary Boulevard. His brokerage soon had 20 agents, but Mosser knew the real money was in ownership. He began taking pieces of ownership instead of commissions on the deals he brokered. As soon as he was able, he started buying buildings on his own, specializing in distressed or mismanaged properties. “He wasn’t interested in the easy deal or the quick flip,” says his son. “He had an addiction to proving that he could succeed where others had failed.”
One example of such a project is the Central Towers in the Tenderloin. Mosser bought the property in 1990 and at the time “what was going on on the street was no different than what was going on in the building,” his son recalls. Mosser began a several-year process of working with the tenants and the community to make the building a safe and habitable place to live. He got rid of problem tenants and invested a lot of time and money into turning the building around. Today his son believes it is an asset not only for the company, but also for the community.
Of course, Mosser did not prevail in every challenge. In one early deal, he invested thousands in developing an area near Irish Beach in Mendocino, only to have the California Coastal Commission declare the property a part of the state beach system and take it away. But Mosser was never bitter about his losses. He believed that as long as he learned from them and didn’t repeat the same mistake, then they weren’t really failures. “He didn’t take no for an answer and never admitted defeat,” says his granddaughter, Melissa Farris.
An exemplary case of this never-back-down spirit was Mosser’s reaction to a 2002 lawsuit brought by the City and County of San Francisco. Mosser was accused of unfair business practices, including “musical rooming” (the practice of moving tenants every few weeks so that they would not fall under rent control) in his single-room occupancy hotels. From the beginning, Mosser fought back and declared that he was completely innocent. To him, any besmirching of his name or reputation was a direct affront to all the hard work that he had put into making his properties better places to live. Over the next five years, many friends and colleagues told Mosser to settle the case. But he refused. In September 2007, he was vindicated as the judge threw out most of the city’s case and instructed the city to repay hundreds of thousands of dollars in his attorneys’ fees. For his son, Mosser’s legal fight provides a good perspective to his outlook on life in general: “Against great odds, you should stand up for your principles, your name and what you believe in. That is the way to overcome any adversity.” That the timing of the decision came only a few weeks before his father passed away was the ultimate vindication, he adds.
Even before the decision, Mosser was in great spirits, his family reports. He was buoyant even after the prostate cancer that he had successfully fought off more than a decade earlier through a raw, macrobiotic diet reappeared late in 2006. He came to San Francisco from February to May of 2007, an especially lengthy and joyous visit for him and his family, most of whom reside in the Bay Area. But by the time he returned in October, everyone noticed a marked change in his appearance. Mosser, who had refused traditional treatment, told his family he was just jetlagged, but his son knew that it must have taken all of his strength to make the flight to San Francisco. “He found peace with himself and we all said goodbye,” he says.
Unfortunately, even in times of grief, the business marches on, just as Mosser would have wanted. Neveo has moved into his father’s office, a change he calls “surreal” even though his father didn’t use the office most of the year. He has already been to the Philippines to check in on the many continuing projects there. “My father wanted to create a legacy, not only for his children and grandchildren, but for the world,” he says. But even as life moves on, he is deeply feeling the loss of his father and his decades of experience. He also feels a new understanding of his father’s strange practices, like calling at all hours of the night. “I understand the sleep habits now because of the responsibility that’s been placed on me,” he reveals, “and I really miss the 1 a.m. phone calls. Now instead of talking to him, I have to talk to a lot more people.”
Mosser may not have lived to his promised age of 107, but his family feels that he fit more into his 82 years than most. His granddaughter recalls how much joy he would get out of simply walking around the city and extolling the beauty of its buildings, just as he could hike through a forest and describe with equal passion the wonders of nature. To his son, Mosser was a man perpetually excited by life and by what was around the next corner. “He saw World War II, the Kennedys, the rise and fall of communism and the creation of the internet. And he realized, as he looked back on his life, that you have to be able to enjoy the fruits of your work,” he says. “I hope my life will be half as full as his.”
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of SFAA or SF Apartment Magazine. Emily Landes is the managing editor of SF Apartment Magazine and Rental Housing. Copyright © 2008 by SF Apartment Magazine. All rights reserved.