
San Francisco man fights eviction after rent increase from $1,800 to $8,000 - adamnemecek
http://abc13.com/realestate/man-fights-eviction-after-400-percent-rent-increase/1401148/
======
torgoguys
I suspect I have the unpopular opinion, but I don't see this as an especially
big deal. Yes, I understand this is an especially sensitive issue for SFers.
And yes, it sucks for the guy. Renting has its perks, but this is part of the
risk of renting; you're living on someone else's property. Repeating that--
it's THEIRS, not yours. If you have no current contract (lease), why should
they be required to rent something to you under terms you like? Where else
does this occur? When some business raises rates, it is the exception, not the
rule, that you're "grandfathered" in to a previous rate.

I get that having to move and find a new place to live is a bigger deal than
if McDonald's raises the price of a cheeseburger by a dime, and that's why
there are some protections in place (requirements of notice, an eviction
process, etc.), but there is no indications that those aren't in play here.

~~~
cam_l
"Renting has its perks"

Do you mean renting or rent-seeking? I fail to see how renting has perks.

~~~
torgoguys
There are lots of them. The biggies:

Mobility (i.e., not being tied down to the property).

Either a) not tying up a lot of money on housing (assuming outright purchase
or large down payment) or b) cheaper monthly payment than a mortgage (small
down payment).

Outsourced maintenance (although there are good and bad landlords in this
regard).

If there weren't advantages, renting wouldn't be as common as it is.

~~~
asksol
I agree it has some advantages, but citing commonality seems weird when it's
increasingly unlikely for new to be homeowners to afford a home in cities like
London, SF, etc. I doubt most people waste thousands of dollars each month for
the ability to relocate quickly?

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raldi
This appears to be a case where the landlord wants the tenant out, perhaps to
live in the unit himself, or perhaps to sell it as a vacant unit, but for
various legal reasons it's impossible or unattractive to take the simple path
of saying, "I decline to rent to you anymore", and the landlord instead is
going with the effectively equivalent option of raising the rent to
approximately infinity.

I don't believe they expect the current or a future tenant to actually pay
$8000/month. It's conceivable that they might lower it to far below $8000 as
soon as the current tenant is gone, and then rent it out to someone else --
maybe the landlord just doesn't like this tenant.

Of course, none of this is allowed in a rent-controlled unit, and all pre-1979
apartments in San Francisco are rent-controlled, so my guess is that this
hundred-year-old multi-unit building is actually a set of condos, and the
owner of one had been renting it out to this tenant; in such a situation, rent
control is generally not in effect, for the same reasons it's not in effect
when one is renting out a single-family house.

~~~
rogerdpack
Hmm yes my first question was "does the rent contract stipulate he can raise
rents? or is it month to month so he can change it whenever he wants"?
(assuming its a male landlord, sorry ladies)

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pedalpete
In no way am I defending the landlord, and I know nothing about the rents in
that area of SF, but the news clip fails to state when the last increase was.
It also doesn't mention how large the apartment is, or what a comparable
rental in that area would be.

The renter says he's been living there a long time. If the rent hasn't
increased in 20 years, there may be an expectation of an increase at some
point. That doesn't mean it needs to be 400%, but if the renter has been
'saving' on rent while the rest of the market increases, this may have been
inevitable.

At the same time, I'm surprised that there are no limits to rent increase
amounts.

~~~
gscott
In California if you raise rent by more then 10% you have to give 60 days
notice. This article didn't mention if the landlords notice was properly done.

~~~
pedalpete
But even still, a 60 day notice on a 400% increase isn't much if you've been
living in the residence for 20 years.

I'd find it interesting to have a 60 day + 2 weeks per year of residence or
something like that. The longer you stay in a place, the harder it can be to
leave.

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zaidf
My landlord recently put up a rental for $9,500/mo. The backstory is
interesting: he told me someone had been staying at the place paying $700/mo.
He cut a deal with that tenant where the tenant moves to a much smaller unit
and instead of paying $700, only paying $300/mo. So overall, tenant gets to
pay less and the landlord has a chance to make additional 5-6K/mo.

~~~
rogerdpack
Wow, seems something's a bit "out of whack" or "outdated" when a landlord
wakes up and realizes "wait, I could charge 10x the rent!" :) I assume he
could't just evict the tenant because of some kind of tenancy laws or
something?

~~~
zaidf
Yup. Rent control laws in SF don't allow that. That's the flip side of rent
control: you have people paying _a lot_ less than market price. Or another way
to look at it, people moving into the city are subsidizing costs for existing
tenants resulting in higher market prices--which depending on your
perspective, could be seen as unfair to new tenants or fair for old tenants.

~~~
irq11
The costs of being a landlord don't change that much from year to year -
especially in SF where property taxes are capped by prop 13.

New tenants aren't "subsidizing" anything. Whats happening is that landlords
are making a killing on rapidly rising rents, with relatively fixed costs.

~~~
zaidf
Landlords making a killing and new tenants subsidizing aren't mutually
exclusive.

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ghshephard
We socialize certain types of goods in the United States - roads, police,
schools and mostly (though not always) the fire department. Other goods, like
healthcare, while not socialized in the United States, are regulated (in many
other countries of course, health care is in the same column as
police/roads/schools).

Singapore is an interesting example of a country where they've mostly
socialized housing to great success.

You can still buy property if you are very wealthy, but 80%+ of the population
lives in a government (heavily) subsidized "HDB" \- Housing Development Block
- basically massive apartment blocks, that the government builds by the 10s of
thousands. You then get a "99 year lease" to the property, though, by the time
the property starts to get around 40-50 years old (HDBs have only been around
that long) - the government will usually build much nicer, newer buildings,
and give the occupants of the old building first right of refusal of
(collectively) moving out of the old one and signing a new 99 year lease
(Known as Selective Enbloc Redevelopment Scheme) - it remains to be seen if
there will be any leases that ever expire.

As a result, property is affordable to all citizens, though if you are less
well off, there is a good chance you will be living with other family members
sharing rent - Singapore is a much more family oriented country, so this is
normal and accepted. Also, if you are price sensitive, you might chose to live
in a somewhat more distant property (known as New Estate, as compared to
Mature Estate that has lots of shops, transit, built up around it).

And, then if you strike it rich - and don't like the HDB lifestyle, you can go
buy a Condo (has lawn, pool, security, gym, usually nicer architecture) for 2x
what a similar HDB would have cost you.

Singapore is a fabulously expensive country for expats to live in - but
they've done a great job (amazing job) of keeping it _very_ affordable for
citizens. Transportation, Food, Housing, Healthcare Insurance - all of the
essentials have had a lot of work put into them to keep everything cheap,
cheap for the citizenry.

~~~
youngButEager
This "socialized apartments" would not work easily in the U.S.

In California, the highest tax bracket is 13.3% and it's 39.6% as the highest
Federal income tax bracket, for a total of:

13.3% + 39.6% = 52.9%

The top income tax bracket in California (combined) is nearly 53%.

Could California build socialized apartments to satisfy demand? I.e. are taxes
high enough to provide the funds to do so?

The highest tax bracket in Singapore is 20%. (See
[https://www.iras.gov.sg/irashome/Individuals/Locals/Working-...](https://www.iras.gov.sg/irashome/Individuals/Locals/Working-
Out-Your-Taxes/Income-Tax-Rates/))

Singapore is able to socialize apartments by taking only 20% of their
citizens' money. If you think about it, their 20% top bracket:

\- pays for all their roads, schools, bridges, etc. _AND_ \- pays for huge
apartment communities

There is absolutely no way our state will ever be efficient enough to
socialize housing. We're taxed at almost 3X what Singapore is and we cannot
even manage paying for all our roads, schools, bridges, etc.

~~~
ghshephard
Fair point about taxes - but, to be clear, I'm sure the HDBs are sold at a
profit compared to the cost of building them - but there is no land
speculation (they are 99 year leases), and housing speculation has a zillion
dials to reduce it from happening with HDBs (you have to live in them for a
while before you can sell them, you have to pay extra taxes if you are not a
citizen)

And all this came about because in the 1950s, the housing situation in
Singapore was abysmal, possibly one of the worst in the world. Government
decided to take a leadership role in ensuring that their citizens had housing.

------
sandworm101
When I was at school participating in a legal clinic I had lots of clients
facing eviction and we had plenty of tricks to use. Most popular was to demand
a jury trial, which could take a month or two to organize, during which time
the tenant wasn't paying rent and so could save enough to move.

The basic procedure:

[http://www.courts.ca.gov/27723.htm](http://www.courts.ca.gov/27723.htm)

~~~
sachingulaya
Kind of shocked to hear about this happening at a "legal clinic". I'm familiar
with the business structure behind these types of programs and they're
invariably seedy characters involved with a paralegal group and lots of cold
calling. Clogging up the courts so you can avoid paying rent... _shrug_

~~~
sandworm101
Who said anything about going to court? It's a simple delay tactic to give the
client time to save enough money for a deposit on a new place. By the time the
court date is even set, they have already moved. Know that the client by this
point is probably locked out of their apartment. Not all landlords act
legally. By initiating legal proceedings the client can get back in, getting a
place to sleep so that they can continue working.

As for seedy, this isn't ambulance chasing. This is law students helping the
poorest of the poor. Nobody ever cold calls anyone (Where did you see that?).
There is no profit to be had. Most legal clinics are funded by law schools and
similar institutions. And I say "funded" as in they give them a place to meet
clients. Our clinic moved around, seeing people in church basements and
community centres after hours. The licensed lawyers we worked with all acted
pro bono. This is poor people being treated very badly and needing the help of
lawyers they cannot afford.

~~~
sachingulaya
The business pitch is usually "delay evictions now". The cold caller will get
a list of properties that have recently gone into foreclosure. They call and
offer to delay your eviction by 3-5 months as long as you pay them $400/month.
Then they have paralegals file paperwork with the courts to contest the
eviction. Basically they're using due process to delay being evicted and
instead of paying their landlord they're paying the cold caller. I first saw
this scam being run by a group of former drug dealers.

I would complain to the state bar about your legal clinic behaving
unethically. The whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

~~~
sandworm101
That's not a legal clinic. That's a law firm or, i suspect, a referral service
(a clearing house) that farms cases out to cutthroats. Legal clinics don't
take fees. Clients don't pay and cash settlements almost never happen. Clinics
are generally staffed by law students. Complain away. Every local bar promotes
clinics as a means of serving indigent communities. None would consider the
assertion of a client's right to a jury trial as any sort of wrongdoing.

[http://hls.harvard.edu/dept/clinical/clinics/housing-law-
cli...](http://hls.harvard.edu/dept/clinical/clinics/housing-law-clinic-lsc/)

"The bulk of the clinic’s work consists of litigation in the Boston Housing
Court, defending evictions and prosecuting affirmative cases to improve
housing conditions and to prevent utilities from being shut off."

And in california:

[http://www.calbar.ca.gov/AboutUs/CenteronAccesstoJustice.asp...](http://www.calbar.ca.gov/AboutUs/CenteronAccesstoJustice.aspx)

[http://one-justice.org/](http://one-justice.org/)

------
toodlebunions
Can San Francisco just hurry up and build some more high rises already?

~~~
raldi
We don't need highrises. We could cut the cost of housing in half by
increasing the supply by 30% (i.e., around 110,000 units), and we could do
that by converting 6% of the city's single-family houses into six-story
apartment buildings. The other 94% of the houses could stay the same, and no
other plot of land would need to change. No buildings taller than six stories
would be necessary.

Sources: [http://experimental-
geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employmen...](http://experimental-
geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employment-construction-and-cost-of-san.html)
[http://spothopping.com/sfhpn.html](http://spothopping.com/sfhpn.html)

~~~
bduerst
The real trick is convincing the families in those 6% single-family homes to
move.

You'd have an easier time rezoning old industrial areas into residential, like
they did with Mission Bay.

~~~
raldi
_> The real trick is convincing the families in those 6% single-family homes
to move._

No way; that would be a piece of cake. The only reason it's not happening now
is that zoning law forbids it. If that were changed, homeowners would be
falling over themselves to sell their land to apartment developers; it would
be a giant windfall for them. In fact, you'd have to charge a steep
development fee to reduce that windfall to something modest in order to ensure
that only 6% volunteer to do it.

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evmar
Reddit has good discussion of this story:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/4pt2hu/san_fr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/4pt2hu/san_francisco_man_fights_eviction_after_rent/)

To summarize: it sucks for anyone to lose their home, but in this particular
case the details are a bit confusing (what about rent control? doesn't
eviction take a while? etc.).

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jkot
Could I ask why HN crowd supports rent control? It seems we are going against
our own interests. 90% of flats are not on market, that makes remaining 10%
very expensive.

~~~
raldi
This is a bit like asking, "So, what does everyone here think about gun
control and abortion rights?"

~~~
jkot
My impression is that most people on HN moved to SF recently and do not
qualify for rent control. And it is not the same as your examples, I dont see
a campaign that EVERYONE should get rent controlled apartment.

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cbanek
I honestly wonder if anyone will pay that? If the landlord ends up having to
rent it for something less, isn't this basically just using the rent to force
out the tenant?

Or on the other hand, maybe the landlord has someone lined up already to pay
$8000 a month. Either way, this is pretty insane. That kind of insanity is
what just made me leave California entirely.

~~~
thephyber
I was also curious about exactly this.

This unit also was listed for $8k/month and is about a block away:
[http://www.apartments.com/1818-mason-st-san-francisco-
ca/3pq...](http://www.apartments.com/1818-mason-st-san-francisco-ca/3pqsgff/)

~~~
raldi
That's a just-remodeled 3-bedroom fully-furnished unit with high-end
appliances and all utilities included -- even TV and broadband. It's hardly
comparable.

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mschuster91
In Germany, private rent contracts (i.e. the renter is not a business) can be
raised max. 20% over three years, and the new rent may not be over the average
rent in the area ("Mietspiegel").

400% rent hikes is insane.

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luojiebin
it's interesting

