rofl!!
you COULD make no living while paying almost nothing for 34 years.
OR, like i did, when rent was still only 500 a month on staten island, work TONS of overtime in Manhattan and save a bundle to take advantage of the situation.
I’m crying a river for this guy.
I think this was posted within the last day or so, but I’m not sure.
In any case, he paid rent for 34 years? he could paid of a house.
He’ll still find a way to blame the GOP for the eviction.
Ain’t nothing so funny as a tenured Marxist professor living in a rent-controlled apartment downtown on government grants in a government office with government-paid students ... lecturing about the evils of the capitalist system.
The poor guy probably saved at least $400K over those 30 years so I can’t get too tore up about this.
He’s been paying rent since 1982. If he had somehow managed to buy a shack on a small lot back then it would be worth many thousands of dollars today. I could have bought a houseboat in Sausalito back in 1971 for two grand. Didn’t, of course.
yes it was posted a few days ago, but it is still good for laugh. I have a friend in the same boat almost, 57, lived with cheap rent his whole life, never worked full time, and worked under the table to boot, thought the hippie lifestyle would get him through.
Now life is about to smack him right across the head with a 2x4 because he can barely do the construction job he has done all his life and doesn’t even have any SS credits built up. So his golden years will be HOMELESS with $300 a month from SS.
Everyone, myself included has been telling him for 30 years what a big mistake he is making. He will be Homeless by the end of the year with nothing.
Rent control is a backdoor method of appropriating the ownership of real property and vesting it in some other claimant called a tenant. Granted, the ownership of real property is never absolute, there are limits such as limits on creating pollution which encroaches onto neighbors property, limits which prohibit the maintenance of public nuisances, even limits which have to do with zoning, limits which have to do with legitimate property taxes but rent control takes some of the indicia of ownership, the right to charge market rents, away from the landlord and regulates that rent to the advantage of the tenant. In doing so it transfers some of the elements of ownership of real estate from the landlord to the tenant.
Politicians are motivated to do this because as stupid as they are they can still count and they know that there are more tenants than landlords and there are more tenants who vote than landlords who vote. Nevertheless, politicians like to have to have nice sounding rhetoric with which to rationalize their depriving a segment of society of its rights. So in this article we read about market forces driving out middle class and lower class tenants. Have you ever heard of a rent control ordinance that requires tenants to pay above market rents when a neighborhood deteriorates? An ordinance which prohibits tenants from moving out of their apartment?
Rent control ordinances are wealth redistribution at the micro level but they really hurt individuals as they damage the local economy. They are even worse than condemnation for private benefit because rent control ordinances provide inadequate compensation to the rightful legal owners of real estate for the taking of their property.
Worse scenarios have occurred in which landlords face criminal charges for failure to maintain rent-controlled property when the rents are regulated below the price needed to perform maintenance. Many landlords have been forced out of their property because of the squeeze, but then they face the ultimate irony, if they abandon their property they can be criminally charged.
The guy got lazy....he has an Ivy League college degree & went to grad school in London. Smart guy, on paper. He should have planned better.
What a load of crapola. What's "heartbreaking" is the lousy bastard stiffed some poor landlord by preventing him from ever raising the rent or selling his property. The landlord probably didn't invest a plugged nickel in the property and it no doubt deteriorated into a broken down dump. A pox on all "rent control" and the theft of private property under guise of "fairness. If Sanders should ever become president of the US, expect nationwide rent control, wage/price control, horrendous tariffs, confiscatory income tax rates, exorbitant capital gains taxes, the confiscation of your lifetime of savings and other such niceties.
My last apartment in San Francisco sold for over $1,000,000.
This guy is a moron.
There...fixed. It always amazes me that, while markets make billions of decisions each second, some idiot thinks he can do it better.
Sorry pal, you used up all the karma you were owed. Now you have to go out and actually work.
Brenkus is an experimental photographer whose home doubles as his studio and gallery.
Artist David Brenkus has lived on the top floor of a three-story building in Duboce Triangle for the past 34 years. [...] He pays $735 a month for the two-bedroom unit.
The Harshawat family purchased the building in 2013 - the ground floor unit for the grandparents, middle floor for [Emma Acker and her husband Ish] and the top floor for brother Kaveet.
Only Kaveet can’t move in because Brenkus refuses to move out, even after the family offered him an $80,000 buyout.
“I think our lawyer said it’s the most generous offer he’s seen in 25 years,” Ish said.
In February, they filed for an Ellis Act eviction, which allows landlords to evict tenants if a family member plans to occupy the unit.
He’s paying $365 a month for a two-bedroom apartment in the pleasant, tree-lined Duboce Triangle neighborhood, where two-bedroom units are advertised for $5,550. The new owners have offered him $80,000 to vacate (plus $50,000 for his roommate), but he’s turned it down. He’s hinting he’d listen to a higher offer.
And now he’s enlisted the help of the firebrand advocacy group Eviction Free San Francisco, whose battle cry is: “Whose homes? Our homes! No more speculation, no more evictions.â€
So maybe it is time for a reality check. Asked how he made a living, Brenkus didn’t have a straight answer. He does a little carpentry and odd jobs. He admits he hasn’t sold any photographs for some time.
“The idea that this guy is some sort of an artist?†Zachs said. “Try to find him on the Internet. I don’t see him as someone adding to the artistic fiber of the city.â€
Frankly, Brenkus’ greatest asset was a sweetheart rent-controlled apartment. He had a great run with it for 34 years, but now the numbers don’t add up.
“As far as I can tell, he doesn’t work,†Zachs said. “He can’t afford to live here. And you don’t have a right to be here just because you came here 34 years ago.â€