Lily's Diary

by Lily

August 10
I was thumbing through the monthly magazine published by San Francisco Planning and Urban Research and saw an upcoming presentation by Trinity Properties about the 1,900 units they’re about to build on the old Del Webb Town House site on Market Street. Evidently, it will be the largest residential building constructed in the city in 50 years. It’s hard for me to get my mind around managing 1,900 different tenants with a like amount of rental agreements, not to mention the implicit grief and aggravation. Still, I have to admit that there are times when I’m sitting at a SFAA meeting and I ask myself how fate deemed that I be a small property owner, rather than a big one. Is it in my genes? Was I destined to think small? Maybe. I come from a long line of small thinkers. In fact, most of the time I’m just awfully grateful for my one little building. Still, there’s always that dream of a kitchen table covered with monthly rent checks.

August 17
My cop pal Gerrie tells me that the security cameras they’ve placed in public housing projects aren’t working. She says that nothing on the tapes has helped them identify an offender. I asked if they didn’t present a deterrent anyway. “Not when their ineffectiveness is splattered all over the front page of the Chronicle,” she replied. As far as I’m concerned, the pervasive crime in the city’s housing projects is nourished by the break in the traditional relationship between landlord and tenant. Once your landlord is the government, the delicate balance of reciprocal obligation, both written and unwritten, is gone. When there is no expectation of personal responsibility, none is taken. But maybe I’m stuck in a twentieth-century mindset.

August 22
Once again, the mayor and supervisors have snuck measures on to the November ballot at the very last minute–far too late to be vetted by anyone. By law, a supervisor needs only four votes to place an initiative on the ballot. The mayor doesn’t even need that. Every election sees abuses of this privilege, and face it, most of the propositions are a complete waste of time. Do we really need a citywide vote on simple management decisions like whether to reopen the stables in Golden Gate Park or allow advertising on bus shelters? The good news is that Supervisor Sean Elsbernd has introduced a measure drafted by SPUR to finally end this last-minute “gotcha” game. It requires that every ballot measure have a 45-day period of public hearing, review by the Board of Supervisors and a fiscal analysis. This is one we’ll want to vote for.

August 25
Tiffany in Apartment 2 is finally going to marry her main squeeze, Michael. After the series of losers I’ve seen come and go in that unit, I must say I am greatly relieved. She asked if they could have their wedding in the garden. What could I say? A week’s gone by and I now have a feeling I got carried away with the romance of the thing when I agreed. I forgot about the pressure of getting the yard in shape, the wear and tear on the lawn, the noise and the impact of parking. But, it’s too late now. As I write this, I can see Tiffany talking to the wedding planner in the back yard. She is looking at the old whitewashed arbor and making broad gestures. If they scrub it clean, I’d be very grateful. If they’re planning to paint it a different color, I’ll be cross. Too late. I’m remembering former SFAA President Merrie Turner Lightner, who is the first person I ever heard say, “No good turn goes unpunished.”

September 1
Laurie in Apartment 4 can’t seem to understand my repeated requests to tie the garbage bag tightly before lobbing it into the bin. I caught on to her slovenly ways because of the smell coming from the bins as I walked by on my way to the basement. I wrote her a note and she shaped up for a while, but a few weeks later she did it again. Finally I pulled out the big guns: the rodent threat. In my latest note, I mentioned that several years ago we had been visited by rats and had been advised by the exterminator that the smell of rotting food drew them like, well, rats to rotting food. That did it. Under the rodent specter she reformed, and I haven’t had a whiff from the bins since.

September 5
If you’re cleaning a unit for a new tenant and planning to wash mini blinds in the bathtub–and I only advise this if they are custom made, since they’re relatively cheap to replace–be sure you separate the individual slats from each other before you let them dry. Yesterday, I got distracted while they were standing on end shedding excess rinse water. (Truth is, I went to the gym and forgot all about them.) This morning, they were dry as bones with every other blind stuck fast to its partner. When I laboriously pulled them apart (sayonara to the manicure), I found that big chips of one slat’s paint stuck to the other, revealing its aluminum base. Martha Stewart, who is so fond of crackling paint effects, would probably love it. Nevertheless, to a prospective tenant, I don’t think it will fly. So down I went to Home Depot and waited an hour to place a custom order.

September 7
My neighbors Roberta and Eric are in the process of a contested eviction. It’s a long story, as most tend to be, but the bottom line is that their tenant is trying to claim bad faith by showing that his checks were not usually cashed until several weeks after he had put them through the mail slot. He claims that the owners weren’t really inconvenienced by his habitual late payment, which is what Roberta’s attorney had claimed. They eventually won their case, even after the tenant, on the advice of his attorney, started taking in children for day care.

Seems that, in an effort to make the city more “family friendly,” there’s a clause in the rent ordinance giving tenants who provide childcare extra eviction protection. In this case, it was such an obvious setup that the judge rejected it. But the message I went away with was to make sure I deposit my rent checks in a timely fashion.

September 12
There are a couple of buildings on my block with absentee owners. I know them well because every time the walls get graffitied or a departing tenant dumps unwanted junk on the sidewalk, I’m the one who has to call them. Is it such a hard concept to grasp that, just as the old bromide “location, location, location” applies when you buy a property, there is an equal obligation to preserve and improve that location after you own it. Some of the nicest people I know feel no responsibility whatsoever to the neighborhood of a building they own if it isn’t the one they live in.

On the other hand, my friend Raymond lives in San Mateo but owns a four-unit building on 36th Avenue and Noriega Street. At my suggestion, he joined SFAA. He’s also joined the neighborhood association (SPEAK) and has the Sunset Beacon newspaper sent to his home. He even attends the monthly community meetings at the Taraval Police Station. Because he takes the time to get involved, his tenants respond in kind. Because he’s around frequently doing routine maintenance, he has gotten to know the neighbors on each side of his building–vitally important when you don’t live on site.

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.