Lily’s Diary
by Lily
June 2
I asked my tenant Poppy, who has always groused at my restriction against pets, if she would have been agreeable to a 5% rent hike for the privilege of keeping something furry in her unit. This is what had been briefly, very briefly, recommended by the city’s Commission of Animal Control and Welfare as an incentive to house the hundreds of healthy animals who wait in shelters to be euthanized. She said she doubted it. Since she got her new job, she realized that it wouldn’t be fair to an animal with her away from home so much. I pressed her further. “But,” I said, “say you didn’t have the new job, would it be worth an extra $75 a month?” She said that, at one time in her life it probably would have been worth it, and quickly added, “but I would have resented it.” Whatever. This was the bright idea that cost a few commissioners their positions when San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin accused them of being pawns of landlord interests–the radioactive third rail of San Francisco politics. They should have known better.
June 9
What benefit do building owners get from neighborhood street fairs? I’d really like to know. The music blasts all day long, the air is filled with smoke from outdoor grills, crowds of people sit on our stairs eating and drinking, and our driveways are blocked. I posed this question to my friend Maggie this evening as we were walking to Zam Zam for a martini. I get into this rumination every year on the night before the Haight Street Fair. She said I was getting old and that it was a kick to see Haight Street transformed one day a year, not to mention visiting the booths, eating the exotic food and seeing your neighbors. “But my friends all hate it and go out of town,” I responded. “While the young tenants use it as an excuse to party hearty. Furthermore, the merchants–those not selling booze–hate it, too. The stalls block their entryways and the smoke ruins their merchandise while all the money is made at the booths.” She looked at me as if I stepped off a spaceship in Roswell. Maggie’s into old-school fun.
June 17
The latest attack on property owners by State Senator Sheila Kuehl was defeated by one vote. This time Kuehl, Santa Monica’s gift to tenants, decreed that a person had to own a building for three years before invoking the Ellis Act. She intends to reintroduce it next year. As a matter of plain fact, I personally don’t give a rat’s behind about this, but it makes me mad as a dog on garbage day when she keeps hacking away at laws that protect the control we have over our property. What gives her this sense of entitlement over what is ours? Where does this vengeance against landlords come from? I know there’s a backstory, but I have a feeling I’m not going to get it.
June 20
The Ed Jew mess has soured my breakfast for days now. I open the Chronicle and I’m hit by yet another rehash of the same story, justified by the addition of some new incriminating tidbit. Talk about blood in the water. Jew was one of three supervisors who seemed to recognize the blatant (and tacitly accepted) discrimination against rental property owners in this city. For this, and other obvious reasons, the whole thing saddens me more than I can say. There has been one article I would recommend to those who don’t know Jew. It was written by the Chronicle’s John Wildermuth on May 27, and is the most complete biography I’ve seen yet. It traces the long struggle of this native San Franciscan to enter politics, his eventual success and ultimate fall from grace. We can only hope that this unfortunate set of circumstances can somehow be explained.
June 30
My friend Reno has three flats in Eureka Valley. He’s always been an easy touch and I’ve tried to toughen him up with my landlady war stories. For example, I told him never to permit any of his tenants on the roof for any reason. But, wanting to be a nice guy during Fleet Week, he allowed a couple of tenants to watch the Blue Angels up there. The next time he was on the roof he saw a cigarette butt, but thought a crow might have dropped it. (He actually said that.) A few weeks later he spied a hibachi, but, not sure it belonged to the same couple, failed to say anything. The day of the Pride Parade he got a call from neighbors saying that there was a full-blown roof party going on with loud music and people dancing alarmingly close to the edge. When he confronted his tenants, they said that he must have forgotten that he had given his permission for them to use it and that they had been going up there regularly for several months. Now they’re snippy about having this privilege withdrawn, and Reno is no longer such a nice guy. By the way, that’s why they finish last.
July 10
My pal Roberta sent me a copy of a newsletter put out by San Francisco Tomorrow, an organization following the progressive canon. Turns out that in their recent forum on the lack of affordable housing, they grudgingly admitted that rent control on small buildings may be contributing to the problem! I couldn’t believe it. It just goes to show that we need to open our eyes to organizations like this with whom we can partner (strange bedfellows), if only on a single issue. In my view, rescinding 1994’s Prop I–which extended rent control from buildings with four units and above to those of two or more–is the obvious first step in releasing the stranglehold of the tenant activists. Division has been our weakness. When even all the rental housing organizations don’t fully work together, how can we expect to attract our natural allies, such as groups representing historical preservation, small business and economic development?
July 16
Maggie and I went down to San Francisco City Hall recently to protest the supervisors’ tinkering with next year’s budget allocations, but we quickly got discouraged. So many constituencies wanted so many things, you’d think we were all children and city government was a rich but derelict father who “owed us.” We were so disgusted we went for a drink afterward at Jardinière. It was then that Maggie told me she had gotten a notice from Sunset Scavenger that a tenant had failed to pay his garbage bill and they intended to put a lien on her property. She was shocked but knew enough to immediately issue a Three-Day Notice to Perform Covenant or Quit. They paid up immediately. I didn’t ask her why she doesn’t pay for the garbage. Me, I like to keep the cans, their condition, contents, odor and pickup under the surveillance of my own squinty little eyes.
July 20
I’ve been volunteering at Homeless Connect for the last year or so and, because I work the intake desk, I hear many sad tales that make me very grateful for my life and property. It’s a great idea to put access to the city’s services under one roof for a day and indeed it’s been copied by over a hundred other American cities. I will continue to go, but there is an intrinsic disappointment built into the project: its name. Homeless people from all parts of the country turn up thinking that they’ll be “connected” to housing, but that’s what the city is least able to do. Sure, they can get shelter reservations and get on various lists for stabilization rooms and other SROs, but not real, long-term housing. I noticed that recently the mayor has introduced a larger program called SF Connect. As a descriptive title, that works much better.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the SFAA or SF Apartment Magazine. “Lily’s Diary” is written by a longtime rental property owner who reserves the right to remain anonymous on the grounds that her tenants might gang up on her. Comments, corrections or ideas are welcome at lilysdiary@aol.com.Copyright © 2007 by SF Apartment Magazine. All rights reserved.