Posted on 10/26/2014 6:46:21 AM PDT by Kaslin
San Francisco is a cauldron of rights, unless you own a home.
Buy a property here and you might as well paint a target on your back. That's what Dan and Maria Levin discovered after they bought a two-unit North Beach home in 2008. They moved in to the upstairs one-bedroom apartment and told the downstairs tenant that they eventually planned to use the downstairs apartment for friends and family. (The state Ellis Act allows property owners to evict tenants without cause if they plan to take the property off the rental market.)
Five years later, the Levins served a notice of termination of tenancy and paid their tenant $2,600 -- the first half of a city-mandated relocation payment, with the second half due when the tenant moved out 120 days later. The tenant claimed a disability, which entitled her to a one-year extension and an extra $3,500.
Dan Levin told me the couple knew the rules and expected to pay off the tenant. They were OK with that. But the couple didn't expect what happened next.
In the spring, by a 9-2 vote, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors adopted an ordinance that "enhanced" the amount landlords would have to pay so it would compensate tenants for renting a comparable place for two years at market rates. Mayor Ed Lee didn't sign it, but with a veto-proof majority, it went into effect in June, even for cases already in the works. Factor in city rent control and the new ordinance can mean a big chunk of change. Suddenly, the Levins had to pay their tenant $118,000 to leave.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, a Bill Clinton appointee, found the ordinance unconstitutional. Breyer wrote that city law "requires an enormous payout untethered in both nature and amount to the social harm actually caused by the property owner's action." That is, the city wrongly is asking a handful of landowners to shoulder an unfair burden of the cost of an on-fire housing market.
No lie. The new San Francisco ordinance makes getting evicted akin to winning the lottery. There's nothing to stop the recipient from using the windfall funds for recreation -- or as a down payment on a property in a city that recognizes property rights. And without any needs test, Breyer wrote, "the ironic result" of the law is that "those tenants who can afford to pay the highest current monthly rents are entitled to a correspondingly higher payout amount." Two tenants who moved in to another building in 1997 and paid $8,500 per month in rent are now entitled to a payout of more than $220,000.
And then there's the fact that these huge new fees apply essentially retroactively. "I have talked to many people about this law, especially non-lawyers, from all sides of the spectrum, and I haven't found one that thinks it's reasonable," said J. David Breemer, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing the Levins pro bono.
Supervisor David Campos, who sponsored the ordinance, disagrees -- and he's a Harvard Law School grad. When you consider "what landlords are making in this market," he said, the ordinance "makes sense. I believe that it's reasonable." Evicted tenants will have to spend money on housing elsewhere. To Campos, the issue is "not just how much money (the Levins are) paying but also how much money are they making in the sale of the property." Except they aren't planning to sell the property now.
The Levins' relocation payment, Campos added, presents a "most extreme case." Better to look at "a typical case." OK. The city controller's office computed a payout of $45,000 for a $900-per-month apartment. That's a lot of money to pay someone to move.
Breyer doesn't disagree that San Francisco has a housing problem. He just doesn't think it's fair to make the Levins pay six figures to atone for a market that is unaffordable for a host of reasons not of their making.
City Attorney Dennis Herrera will appeal Breyer's decision. Campos argues that the ordinance is not retroactive, as it applies only to uncompleted and future evictions. Breemer would counter that the ordinance upset the "legitimate expectations" of property owners by levying an "exorbitant" cost without proper notice.
It came like a bomb you couldn't hear until after it landed.
I asked Levin about his politics. "I'm a lifelong Democrat myself," he told me. "My wife is, too. We vote that way." It bothers the couple that there's no means-testing for tenants, that people with six-figure incomes enjoy a windfall that small-property owners can ill afford.
City Hall drove these Democrats into the loving arms of the usually conservative property rights crowd. Levin told me he doesn't think it's political; it's "a constitutional issue." Don't be so naive. In San Francisco, everything is political, especially the U.S. Constitution.
I found a video by a Canadian couple living in Seoul South Korea, they hired movers for the first time after the landlord tried to triple their rent (gonna rip off those foreigners, I guess). For about $600-700 these 6 guys and one lady came and packed everything for them, laid down rubber mats in the hallways to keep from scuffing the floors and then carried it all to the new apartment, unpacked everything (You gotta be there to tell them where to put the dishes and stuff or spend all day rearranging it), installed everything, like plugging in the microwaves and TV’s and stuff and then they cleaned the new apartment. Basically they worked all day for about a hundred bucks each. That is some detailed moving service.
(oh they also had to “rent” the elevators in the buildings for this moving out and moving in)
They did give them enough extra for a meal (traditional to feed these guys)
I also learned that you don’t clean apartments when you move out, and they are not cleaned before you move in. (!!) Some traditions are weird.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6VF9Ep60kw
If they seem a bit off, they are Canadian...
“Pretty soon there will be no rental properties in pervtown “
Wrong, the employees of Google and Facebook, with their high-flying salaries are taking over areas of SF that were blighted and turning them into high-end residential areas (Just take a look at Potrero Hill and the Third St. Areas). It’s so bad that those being pushed out are lying down in front of the company motor coaches that carry these people from SF to the Peninsula to their workplaces. And FB is trying to set up Ferry Service for their people to avoid the traffic. FB is located on the Bay in Menlo Park in the old Sun Microsystems “Sun Quentin” facility that was originally supposed to be where Raychem was going to expand, but later sold. It’s fun to watch rich liberals f—k poor liberals. Sorta like Russia under Communism!
We didn’t go there to see the freaks - I guess that’s what you’re asking. Why would anyone seek them out when the city is the attraction, not the people?
My wife and I are currently remodeling her mother's vacant home in San Francisco. When she became unable to care for herself, we took her in for a year, then we placed her in assisted living. A couple of my wife's siblings took legal action against us, trying to wrest control from my wife, because the greedy jerks wanted an early inheritance (trying to borrow against the mom's assets). One of their lawyer's claims was that we were not generating income from renting the vacant house. We successfully fended them off.
We could get easily get $3500 to $5000 a month rent from the property, but see no reason to do so because of the SF rental rules being against property owners. So it's been vacant almost three years while we slowly renovate it for potential sale. Meanwhile, it goes up about ten percent in value every year because of the hot real estate market. That more than offsets any profits from rent. Potential $40,000 a year in rent before deducting expenses, versus $100,000 a year in increasing value while vacant. Home is worth well over $1 mil, multiple bidders common with sales hundreds of thousands over asking prices. Lots of buyers as well as renters. Lots of people afraid to convert to rental market. We're keeping it off the rental market.
It would have been easier for the tenant to have an accident.
This amounts to “exploitation” (to use Rat jargon) of hardworking property owners pure and simple. Of course, Rats with high level political-connections get waivers from these very laws.
It is
naturally, they'd trashed the place. Cost me serious $$ to get everything in shape for the next folks. Fortunately it only took a few days to find and vet new renters.
a few years later when we were living there again, a fellow running for sheriff came by and I mentioned the situation. He knew exactly who I was talking about. Even knew their names. I was not apparently not the first on to be suckered by these lowlifes.
funny thing is, I never actually had to threaten any violence. Texas' laws regarding long guns are excellent. Handguns, not so much.
I don’t quite get it.
What I understand here is that the city supervisors created an ordinance that allows people to essentially live free for two years, with the landlords footing the costs. Then a district judge found the ordinance unconstitutional.
But the article goes on to discuss the ordinance as if it is in full effect? What did I miss?
If the city got a stay of the court’s decision pending appeal, then the ordinance is still in effect.
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