Posted on 03/28/2017 8:12:27 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A 100-year-old woman who was evicted from her apartment in San Francisco's Western Addition neighborhood last month after a lengthy legal battle with the building's owners has died, according to tenant advocates who backed her efforts to remain in her home.
Iris Canada, whose fight to avoid eviction by landlords seeking to convert the building to condominiums became a cause celebre among local housing advocates, had been hospitalized since her Feb. 10 eviction and suffered a stroke last week, according to a post on the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco's Facebook page.
Canada, who had lived in the unit since 1962, became a symbol for many of African-American displacement from the Western Addition.
The story of her legal fight, however, was in many ways a complicated one.
In 2005, after property owners Peter Owens, Stephen Owens and Carolyne Radishe bought the building and enacted Ellis Act evictions on most units, Canada was able to negotiate a lifetime estate allowing her to remain with the help of an attorney.
The property owners then moved to terminate the lifetime estate in 2014, alleging that Canada had effectively been living with family members in Oakland and allowed the unit to fall into disrepair.
In court, attorneys for the property owners made it clear that they would be willing to have Canada remain if she signed paperwork that would allow the building, which is currently made up mostly of tenancy-in-common units, to convert to condominiums.
Canada repeatedly refused to sign those papers, a decision that property owners alleged was motivated by family members hoping to force a sale of the unit at a discounted price.
Family members alleged in turn that the property owners and other tenants had harassed Canada because of her refusal, and said they did not believe she would be secure from eviction if she signed.
A judge ruled in the property owners' favor last April, terminating her lifetime estate and finding that Canada could only stay in the unit if she accepted strict limits on her occupancy and paid their attorneys' fees, which totaled more than $150,000.
A call to Canada's family members was not immediately returned Tuesday morning.
Housing advocates plan to hold a vigil outside Canada's building at 5 p.m. Wednesday.
So she wasn’t even living there.
Pay your damned rent!! It’s not your property!~! What is the message here. Get old and take property and money from others? Aint gonna happen.Work hard. Lay away for old age or hit the street!!
I heard the elderly lady had already moved out of that apartment. A family friend was hoping to be ‘grandfathered into’ ownership of the place. The owner wants a complete redo. Some local renter find it hard to accept that a property owner may want to upgrade the building and afterward rent at higher prices for a better profit. It’s not always ‘nice’ but it’s usually legal with proper notice.
Just that she did not live there.
Do you have a link to where it says she was not paying her rent?
I could potentially reconsider my position on the issue of “rent control” if they made sub-letting a felony and enforced it. Right now landlords are getting screwed, big time.
Communists have no regard for Private Property Rights.
What are the Snowflakes protesting for outside the Building, Squatter’s Rights?
The Woman made her own decisions and she wanted to be a Renter, not an Owner. If she did own a Home and a Renter decided not to leave when she attempted to Sell it, who would the Protestors go after?
Just askin’...
What do you think she got evicted for? Too many cats?
Well it is not as if they threw her out in the street.
I always thought a life estate was just that, the property is yours as long as you live but it belongs to someone else. Usually those clauses do specify upkeep etc. So they might have a case to evict her especially since she wasn’t even living there.
100-Year-Old Woman Dies a Month After Eviction From SF Western Addition Apartment
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what are the odds?
Yes because the story said anything about her not paying rent you dumb ass
Umm Sublette ng is a common law right of leasehold. But I guess you are smarter than 1000 years of legal tradition?
Here is a link Ellis Act Evictions
So I ask again if you can tell me where you found that she did not pay her rent or if that is just an assumption on your part.
No need to be a smart ass, if you want to have a conversation. The abuses of subletting in SF specifically are sufficient to cause a reconsideration of the leasing regulations.
Canada kicked out of San Francisco.
When your 100, you can pretty much die at any time.
She made it 100...did she die in Oakland?
Better to own, and now she will have her own urn or cozy place of her own.
I’m sorry, having handled buildings for owners and seeing the BS pretty much all renter try to pull, I am never in favor of too many rights being taken away from owners.
100+ is a nice life, I wonder who talked into the stress of $150,000 in lawsuit bills?
Ahhhh, the real victims in this case. Who will pay the lawyers now? Or, who was ever going to pay the lawyers?
I am sorry for this woman’s death.
Elderly people, I have observed, do not handle change well.
That said, if we make it illegal to evict people over aged 70 or whatever, there will be all sorts of bad ramifications.
One of which is, no one will want to rent to anyone who is over 50.
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