Stone of stumbling and rock of offense ([info]wordweaverlynn) wrote,
@ 2008-04-26 22:51:00
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Current music:Keith Urban, "I'll Fly Away"

Eviction Wars
In Pacific Heights a charming young couple buys a house in San Francisco and rents part of it to the tenant from hell. The opposite story seems to be happening South of Market, where a charming young couple bought an occupied building and tried to evict all the tenants. One, a disabled man, got a year's extension -- rental laws in SF generally favor the tenant. And according to the San Francisco prosecutor's office, the landlords did everything they could to get rid of the guy.

Now, over the years I've had some bad landlords -- ones who refused to do essential repairs, sexually harassed me, stole my possessions, and repeatedly walked in on me with no notice -- not even a knock. One sold the house from under me and gave me ten days' notice to move. On the day I moved in to a different place, I called to report that the ceiling was pouring water, which was three inches deep on the floor. She replied, "What do you expect me to do about it?"

None of my stories come close to the prosecution case against this couple. In addition to using the usual tactics (noise, utilities shutoffs, nasty notes), they are accused of falsely reporting to police that a homeless man was living in the building; the cops came in with guns drawn, but the landlady admitted she knew the tenant. They allegedly had a contractor cut a large hole in his floor and then remove walls from underneath his apartment, making it uninhabitable. The newspaper reported that some of these allegations are upheld by independent witnesses.

The landlords got a restraining order after they received threatening emails in the tenant's name. The prosecution alleges that the landlords forged the emails and even sent nasty emails to his lawyers in his name.

Now, either they are a monstrous pair, or the tenant is amazingly clever at framing them to look like monsters. ETA Or maybe this is how it happened.

I'll be watching for the results of this trial.


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[info]klwalton
2008-04-27 06:04 am UTC (link)
I'm following this story with great fascination, because it all sounds so over the top.

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[info]sabyl
2008-04-27 07:14 am UTC (link)
The sad thing is it would probably have been cheaper for the evil landlords to be nice and help the tenant move faster. I don't know that the tenant would cooperate, but perhaps helping to pay for the cost of the move, or even outright paying for the move, and helping him find a place etc would make the tenant amenable to moving sooner rather than later.

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[info]whipartist
2008-04-27 08:57 am UTC (link)
Yeah, but it was probably an illegal fake-Ellis-Act eviction anyway.

The Ellis Act lets you evict all of the tenants in a property in order to stop renting it. If you do this, you aren't allowed to rent the units again for five years unless you do it at exactly the same price as before.

What sometimes happens is that landlords evict all of the tenants, jack the rents, then rerent the building. If they get away with it they've essentially managed to dodge the rent control laws.

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[info]wordweaverlynn
2008-04-27 11:26 am UTC (link)
Greed does terrible things to people.

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[info]wordweaverlynn
2008-04-27 09:38 am UTC (link)
That's a smart and humane way to look at it. Unfortunately, people can be incredibly stupid over territorial issues. The reptilian brain kicks in and they can't see it except in life-or-death terms.

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[info]elusis
2008-04-28 08:44 am UTC (link)
There are requirements in SF law about compensation for moving costs if you evict a tenant to have family move in, which is what some of the news reports say was the owners' initial tactic. But of course it's far cheaper to just boot people rather than actually complying with the law's requirements.

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[info]caladri
2008-04-27 07:45 am UTC (link)
Kip didn't seem like a sociopath the one time I got to hang out with him for any real length of time. Just normal geeky amounts of introverted and obsessive-compulsive and uncomfortable in social situations.

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[info]weirdodragoncat
2008-04-27 07:51 am UTC (link)
you actually know one of the people accused?? wow....small world.

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[info]caladri
2008-04-27 08:01 am UTC (link)
A fair bit. He's a FreeBSD developer (as The Register and others have pointed out) as am I, and I've gotten to know him through that.

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[info]weirdodragoncat
2008-04-27 08:02 am UTC (link)
huh. Interesting. Have you been in contact since this whole mess started or had you already drifted separate ways?

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[info]caladri
2008-04-27 08:04 am UTC (link)
My contact with him has been sporadic since I stopped IRCing. I've not heard his side of this at all, and other people in the FreeBSD project seem mostly baffled.

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[info]weirdodragoncat
2008-04-27 08:06 am UTC (link)
Nod. Well...at any rate, it will be interesting to see how this plays out. Sadly though....even if he wasn't the driving force behind all this (and I suspect he isn't...the articles I've read seem to indicate more drive on the part of the wife), the press will vilify him anyway. Guilt by association.

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[info]caladri
2008-04-27 08:10 am UTC (link)
Yeah, I dunno. The accusations are so ridiculous that someone is clearly crazy. I've had a hard time drawing any conclusions because, well, I've met the guy, and that's some crazy shit and it's hard to imagine a real person actually being like that. Or there's a lot of context missing. Like, person refused to leave apartment, hole was drilled in floor to bring apartment below up to code with plenty of warning given, occupant refused to accept that whether they vacated their apartment or not the landlords would move forward on their rework of the building. Water and such were turned off to rewrite/replumb. If you view it through that lens it makes a lot more sense and sounds less random, and I think most of it fits the narrative. And if you have somebody crazy enough to view those as incidents unrelated to an actual process ongoing in the building it's easy to imagine they also thought the CIA was broadcasting through their teeth and their landlords were stealing their possessions. But, on the other hand, sometimes it's not the tenant but the money-grubbing couple that go nuts.

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[info]weirdodragoncat
2008-04-27 08:13 am UTC (link)
That all makes sense.

Of course there is also the possibility that they (the landlords) really were that nuts. I've heard some pretty horrific stories from friends of shitty things that landlords have done to get rid of them.

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[info]caladri
2008-04-27 08:17 am UTC (link)
The landlord thing seems to attract a certain type of person. I've dealt with minor horrors with almost every one that I've had.

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[info]wordweaverlynn
2008-04-27 10:12 am UTC (link)
My ex-husband's grandfather owned some rental properties, and his father was a cop. According to my ex-husband, who saw nothing wrong with any of this, they routinely searched their tenant's apartments without notice (choosing times when the tenant would be out), and used police resources to check out prospective tenants. They felt their livelihood was at stake.

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Hypotheticals
[info]wordweaverlynn
2008-04-27 10:07 am UTC (link)
You know, I can see ways it could happen without actual certifiable insanity. I've bought and sold three houses, and I have rented, and I have shared space with housemates and family -- and they're all potentially volatile situations. We're talking huge freaking amounts of money, personal territory, and all the emotional and psychological complexes people have around their home. It's guaranteed to be a real mess.

Scenario:

The Landlords buy the place (apparently stretching their finances to do so) intending to move in themselves, maybe selling some share as tenants-in-common. They'll fix it up, sell the Palo Alto place, and live happily ever after.

Given Ms. Landlord's real estate expertise, they think they can easily get Mr. Tenant and all the other tenants out.

Then Mr. Tenant digs in his heels and gets an extension. Maybe there has been some argument. Everybody feels angry, and there gets to be some personal feeling in this.

The Landlords have ongoing money pressures -- they're paying two mortgages, they're stuck with this guy, and they're feeling aggrieved. They get angry and resort to childish tactics. Maybe they have entitlement issues. Maybe they're really scared and angry about the money. This guy has no right to be in their space!

The nastier they get, the more Mr. Tenant digs in his heels. He's got migraines anyway and is cranky from the pain. All their assaults are not going to make him feel any better or any more able to find a place quickly. Or any more interested in helping them find any easy solution.

Ms. Landlord may feel a lot of pressure because this was her idea -- she thought they could do the deal, and now they're stuck paying a lot of money on a totally unusable property. It's theirs, and they're caught. Mr. Landlord is pissed, too. Maybe he blames her, and she passes on the anger and blame to Mr. Tenant.

So they try harder and harder to get him out -- Mr. Landlord with high-tech, Ms. Landlord with direct solutions like, you know, arson or calling the cops.

And they all end up in court. At least nobody's dead -- New York City had at least one murder over a disputed eviction.

Edited at 2008-04-27 11:18 am UTC

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[info]klwalton
2008-04-27 08:17 am UTC (link)
Guilt by association.

Um, really? Because if he *is* one of the landlords and this stuff has happened? Legally? Guilt, period. And I can't imagine that "the wife" did any of that stuff without his knowledge.

From SFGate:
Kip Macy got so mad, Morrow told prosecutors, that he jumped up and down in the upstairs unit with sufficient force that Morrow's ceiling paint started to crack. Nicole Macy shouted his name from the backyard and tossed pebbles against his window. Loud music blared for six hours.

At 5 a.m. the next day, Morrow said, the music and stomping started again. An hour later, Kip Macy knocked at Morrow's door and asked, "How's it going, Scott?"




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[info]weirdodragoncat
2008-04-27 08:20 am UTC (link)
wow....nevermind then. Yeah...if this doesn't turn out to be a gross exaggeration then I hope they throw the book at both of them.

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