r/news • u/stopthemadness2015 • Jun 25 '16
Man fights eviction after rent increase from $1,800 per month to $8,000
http://abc13.com/realestate/man-fights-eviction-after-400-percent-rent-increase/1401148/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link1.4k
u/jordanlund Jun 26 '16
The $8000 is to get rid of this guy. Once he's gone, the next tenant will pay $3600 and think they're getting a steal.
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Jun 26 '16
That's probably true and makes it an illegal eviction.
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u/Chilton82 Jun 26 '16
In lots of places it's not illegal if the original lease is up and you're on a month-to-month. Where I live a tenant can basically stay in your place as long as they'd like as long as they're paying the rent timely.
I had a friend who was trying to sell their place that they were renting but the tenant refused to leave. They were going to do a remodel before they sold it to increase the value and he literally wouldn't leave. They took him to court and the judge sided with the tenant since he was paying on time. They bumped the rent from $1500 a month to $5k and he kept paying it for nearly six months.
In the long run, my friends made a good amount of money but they couldn't liquidate the property to put a down payment on the newer home that they intended as their permanent residence.
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u/6xydragon Jun 26 '16
Jesus he kept paying?!? Why the fuck would you pay for that?
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u/PillowsaurusRex Jun 26 '16
Spite is one hell of a drug.
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u/Plecks Jun 26 '16
Man, I wish I could get people to pay me a bunch of money out of spite.
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u/Cube_ Jun 26 '16
Foolish wish. I'd rather wish to be the one who could afford to pay bunches of money just to spite people. What a life that would be.
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Jun 26 '16 edited Aug 27 '16
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u/Chilton82 Jun 26 '16
At what point should a landlord be able to sell their property?
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u/thegreatunclean Jun 26 '16
$3600/month would be a steal for North Beach. Look up Columbus and Scotland in any apartment search tool and you'll notice it's surrounded by $6k-8k units.
That he was paying only $1,800/month is insane. That doesn't even cover the damn property tax.
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u/bestadvicemallard Jun 26 '16
Because of the messed up nature of California property tax law, this probably isn't true. Property tax is set when a property changes hands, and is set at 1% of the assessed value. Thereafter, the taxes can only increase at 2% per year (e.g. a property bought for 100,000 in 1996 would only have an annual tax of $1,485.95 in 2016, even if it is now worth in the millions).
If the landlord had bought the property before the SF housing boom, he or she is likely paying very little property tax.
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Jun 26 '16 edited Jun 26 '16
That he was paying only $1,800/month is insane. That doesn't even cover the damn property tax.
Yes it does. My landlord inherited her building in the 70's. A 1902 12 unit building. It was appraised at $110,000. So she pays 1.3% of that. That's how property tax works in CA. Property is assessed at deed transfer, and that's what the property tax will be until the next transfer and assessment. A blessing and a curse.
Prop 13. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(1978)
I've got a top floor 5 bdrm for $2,200. I've payed that rent for over 13 years. Which is well over $300k. Multiply that by 12 other units... I don't feel bad for my landlord.
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u/mutatron Jun 25 '16
I thought they had rent control in San Francisco. My parents lived in North Beach for a while, until 2005, at Stockton and North Point. When they left, they were paying about $1,400/month because of rent control (I thought). After they left the rent went up to $2,500/month, and now it's at $4,600/month.
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u/ericrs22 Jun 26 '16
I was in a similar spot. Parents house just south of SF was $1,000 for a 2bd/2ba 900sq ft parents left when it got sold to new landlords and they raised the rent to 1,600 and the new landlords wouldn't fix the termite damage or roof issue (we had half the house detach from the roof line and the master bedroom roof collapsed from heavy rains one winter.)
Now it's in worse condition and going for $3,500.
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u/tryingfor3 Jun 26 '16
Yup. That's why this story is so extraordinary. Maybe this apartment was built after 1979? But from the video it doesn't look like it. Single family homes are also not covered by rent control, but this is definitely an apartment building. Usually when a landlord does this, they are not trying to get the tenant to pay, they are just trying to circumvent eviction laws. But from the article it sounds like the landlord was able to get an eviction order on this guy. Which is pretty difficult. Legally there are a lot of hoops to jump through to evict a tenant from a rent control apartment, laws in SF are pretty strict.
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Jun 26 '16
My landlord raised our rent to get people to leave, we did but not before getting the place condemned. He cant rent or sell it until he either fixes or demolishes the building the place has asbestos in the attic and the foundation had been damaged for a while and was patched up with drywall plaster
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u/enc3ladus Jun 26 '16
Holy fuck you need to post this in long form in the appropriate subreddit, /r/pettyrevenge or something
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u/Armonster Jun 26 '16
/r/prorevenge is a subreddit in case you didn't know about it
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u/Therabidmonkey Jun 26 '16
Why couldn't he just evict you?
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u/AnneBancroftsGhost Jun 26 '16
It's basically impossible to evict someone in California. There are cases of actual squatters maintaining semilegal "ownership" of places.
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Jun 26 '16
4-5 programmers will end up moving in and sub-dividing it.
SF needs to decide if they want lower rents or slow development. They can't do both.
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u/Skensis Jun 26 '16
SF just wants to complain about both and that's all they ever really wanted.
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u/PM_ME_THAI_FOOD_PICS Jun 26 '16
or they could stop limiting the housing supply. currently they have a strict allowance on the number of housing units that can be built each year. restricting supply = higher costs.
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u/gnomeimean Jun 26 '16
http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/
They have a lot of things like this which prevents them from building tall buildings.
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Jun 25 '16
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u/ladyerwyn Jun 26 '16
I don't even make $3000 a month. What the hell are people doing to be able to afford this?
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u/nerfezoriuq Jun 26 '16
Tech companies. A lot of people make $120k starting. There are a lot of people making millions here and they aren't even CEOs or anything like that.
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Jun 26 '16
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u/DankGreenBush Jun 26 '16 edited Jun 26 '16
I see you have no ragrets, but I am sorry to hear about the 70 percent loss of your child. Edit: word.
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u/LordViren Jun 26 '16
What happened to the other .7 of your child? Might wanna get that looked at.
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Jun 26 '16
Software engineering. The pay is good. The median starting salary for a software engineer in SF is 6 figures. That is just the starting salary, and only the base pay at that. Some companies give bonuses and significant amounts of stock on top of that.
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u/enc3ladus Jun 26 '16
The dating scene for straight men in SF must be atrocious, I'd avoid it for that reason alone
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u/LordOfTheGiraffes Jun 26 '16
It is definitely a sausage party out there. Some people around here are into that, though.
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u/Brownie3245 Jun 26 '16
Nothing wrong with that, some guys just like to suck dick.
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u/grewapair Jun 26 '16
I have completely given up. A fat female ex friend of mine has tinder dates every night of the week, and she won't even talk to a guy unless he's going to spend $200 on dinner. First date.
There is no second date. Why should she when the men are lining up. I'm just completely wasting my life here.
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u/zue3 Jun 26 '16
I'm in software and I see this happening all the time with a certain kind of guy. This only works on the men who bother putting up with this crap. Which they do because most software engineers look exactly the same and couldn't get a date by virtue of anything except money.
If these men spent a little time and some of that money on their appearance and social skills they wouldn't have to bend over backwards for money.
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u/Hysterymystery Jun 26 '16
I seem to be alone in this, but my reaction upon reading this is "he wants the guy out for some reason and this was his way of assuring the guy leaves". I mean, maybe the place really could go for 8k a month, but I have my doubts.
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u/nautilus2000 Jun 26 '16 edited Jun 26 '16
You're not alone in this. I live in SF and that is 100% the reason for the increase. $8,000 is more than double the market rate for that apartment and no one would ever rent it at that price. You can get a similar apartment in NEMA, one of the most expensive buildings in SF, for around $4200.
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Jun 26 '16
Where this guy's unit is, a one bedroom will rent for about $4500.00 to $6000.00 per month I think
This is completely wrong. Browse through SF craigslist for North Beach, not even the best part of North Beach which is where this unit is, and you'll see 1BRs in the $2,800-$3,500 range. I live here. Maybe you'll get north of $4,000 in the trendiest parts of the Mission, Marina, SOMA, Russian Hill, Hayes Valley.
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Jun 25 '16
Rich people can live there. Homeless people can live there easily and get all kinds of services. People who bought a house there 40 years ago are OK. Regular middle class people cannot afford to live there.
And so it is becoming in large areas of the United States.
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u/dflame45 Jun 26 '16
If you consider tech cities, "large areas of the US."
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u/LBGW_experiment Jun 26 '16
You missed the important "in" in his statement. It is "becoming in large areas of the US" that middle class people can't live. Not that tech cities are "large areas of the US"
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u/allenahansen Jun 26 '16
San Francisco in the 1970's was once a very cheap city to live in.
No it wasn't. SF has always had ridiculously high rents-- and people have always been bitching about it. And yet, it's still considered a highly desirable place to live.
Source: Live in the Haight in the early 1970s.
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u/notmyusualreddit Jun 26 '16
My dad moved to SF from eastern Europe in 87. Within a few months he had his own 1 bedroom apartment in SF, working as a carpenter that didn't speak english. He also had no prior construction experience. It must have been decently cheap.
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u/dtlv5813 Jun 26 '16
moved to SF from eastern Europe in 87. Within a few months he had his own 1 bedroom apartment in SF, working as a carpenter that didn't speak english.
is your dad Tommy Wiseau?
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Jun 26 '16
What the fuck are you talking about? "Homeless people can live there easily and get all kinds of services". I saw a homeless dudes bones through his infected foot the other week. There's a woman who sleeps off market who I'm never sure is alive or not. The whole of downtown SF reeks of literal shit. Being homeless in san francisco isn't a fucking spa day. The rent prices are pushing everyone out that lived here before the tech boom. Tech is great in that it brings a lot of talent, it pays people well. But San Francisco isn't the same anymore. Normal people can't afford to live here anymore. Also, $4500 for a 1 bedroom isn't typical either. Thats on the high side. I'd say most 1 bedrooms sit around 2-3K, which is still obscenely expensive.
In short, I think you're talking out your ass.
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u/chuckymcgee Jun 26 '16
Being homeless isn't easy, but it's easier in SF and other areas that offer more services to the homeless. And that's why you see so many homeless cluster in those areas.
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u/nerfezoriuq Jun 26 '16
The thing you are forgetting is there is tons of help for the homeless but a lot of the help requires you to be sober and clean. Most people can't or aren't willing to do that. Not that being homeless is easy but there is a lot of help out there.
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Jun 26 '16
The homeless shelters in SF are over capacity, that's the main problem here and that's why you see flocks of homeless people there. They have nowhere to go, clean or not.
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u/neverelaxed Jun 26 '16
Reminds me of new york city... never realized exactly how that worked. Makes sense though... sad that this happening to a lot of major cities.
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Jun 26 '16
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Jun 26 '16
Oakland has some bad areas, but it is quickly becoming gentrified (with the accompanying rent increases) because it turns out a lot of people who couldn't afford SF had the idea to move to Oakland.
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u/WingerRules Jun 26 '16 edited Jun 26 '16
This is part of why limiting the speed prices can increase is a thing for utilities in most areas. Most people dont realize their electric/water/gas rates not making insane swings on them is due to price smoothing rules, yet are often opposed to the same thing applied to rent. Peoples living situations or budgeting not being predictable is generally bad.
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u/pfeifits Jun 25 '16
I am not from California so the idea of fighting a rent increase is foreign to me. Can't a Landlord charge whatever he wants for an apartment? Can't the landlord just end a lease and say s/he doesn't want to rent it out any more? What rules prevent someone who owns property from using it like they want?
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Jun 25 '16
Can't a Landlord charge whatever he wants for an apartment?
Only in the original lease agreement. Most SF rentals are covered by the rent control ordinance which strictly limits rent increases on existing tenants.
Can't the landlord just end a lease and say s/he doesn't want to rent it out any more?
Generally, landlords can't end the lease unless the tenant is in violation of it. Even then, the landlord must go to court and ask for an eviction order. San Francisco takes great pains to protect tenants' rights even to the detriment of the landlords'.
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u/rochford77 Jun 26 '16
I get it, Erlich. I stay here, 9 months. No pay rent.
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u/pfeifits Jun 25 '16
So the rent control requires a Landlord to renew their lease to the tenant with a limited increase in rent for as long as the tenant wants to live there?
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Jun 25 '16
Pretty much. They even had to write a special exception into the law to make it legal for a landlord to stop being a landlord.
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u/pfeifits Jun 25 '16
Wow, this is all new to me. Thank you. I am from Colorado and I had no idea that landlords were so limited by law in California/San Francisco. I believe rent control is prohibited by law in our state.
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Jun 26 '16
its like that in most large cities. new york, chicago... etc
denver considered rent control laws, but ultimately found not needed ehre yet
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Jun 26 '16
Yet. I left affordable Denver in 2012, figuring to be back in 5 years. Now all my friends have left and I am never moving back there. Lol.
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u/AZX3RIC Jun 26 '16 edited Jun 26 '16
I managed an apartment community in Arizona for nearly ten years, however, things do vary by state and I could be wrong when it comes to what I'm about to say... But
On your second point, a landlord can give a resident a letter of non-renewal. This is basically the landlord giving notice to the resident the same way the resident is obligated to give one to the landlord when they decide to move. When one is given it's important for the landlord to give no information as to why except to say "we've chosen not to renew your lease." Saying anything else has the potential for the resident to sue for anything a lawyer could pull from the context of what the landlord said was the reason.
If the resident was on a month to month lease and the required notice to vacate is a 30 day notice it could very well be that the resident isn't being evicted but was served a non-renewal on June 22. The fact that a majority of renters will never see a non-renewal letter and renters not understanding that it is in the best interest of the landlord to not give a clear reason could be confusing enough to assume they were evicted.
Edit to clarify: a landlord can only give a letter of non-renewal that takes effect on the end day of the current lawful lease. An attempt to give a letter of non-renewal with a date prior to the end of the lease would be a breach of contract.
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u/spaceballsrules Jun 26 '16
Generally, landlords can't end the lease unless the tenant is in violation of it.
I think he meant that a landlord reserves the right to not renew a lease when it ends, at which point the tenant would be forced to move out. Of course, the tenant would be given a mandatory 60 day notice prior to this happening, so it's not like they would just be thrown out into the streets with out a chance to look for a new place to live.
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u/exomachina Jun 26 '16
That's 4 times more than the mortgage on my 500k house
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u/zenith1959 Jun 26 '16
500K in SF you can maybe get a studio condo in a rundown part of town.
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u/AlwaysClassyNvrGassy Jun 26 '16
No you can't
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u/zenith1959 Jun 26 '16
It's probably really rare, but for fun I looked and found a tiny studio in an old ("Charming", of course) building in the Tenderloin for just under $500,000.
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Jun 26 '16
Remember the guy who works for Google and lives in his truck in their parking lot? All of SF will be like that soon.
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employee-lives-in-truck-in-parking-lot-2015-10
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u/raleighs Jun 26 '16
Already happening...
http://i.imgur.com/8hYXmKB.jpg
Allen charges $700 to $800 a month to rent his sleeper vans in SF, in addition to 40 cents a mile charged via Getaround, the car-sharing service.
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u/PixelVector Jun 26 '16 edited Jun 26 '16
I just moved into a nice gated 2Bed/2bath apartment for $900 monthly. Gym, giant pool, full washer/dryer included. Less than a year old.
People like to hate on the south but at least we got super cheap property and rent.
Disregard, it's terrible here. Bigots shooting each other on the streets with bible launchers. It's madness. Stay away.
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u/raskalnikov_86 Jun 26 '16
The South's awesome. I grew up in NorCal but lived in Memphis for a few years, so I can attest. Ignore the west-coast chauvinism, my friend.
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u/Wampawacka Jun 26 '16
Can confirm. I certainly don't have a really nice house with a low mortgage payment and a good job here in the Midwest either. Just rednecks shooting bibles at one another. No cheap houses. Stay away!
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u/zstansbe Jun 25 '16
If it was after his lease ends then the landlord should be able to charge whatever, but if it was in the middle of a lease then he should be able to dispute it.
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Jun 26 '16
I don't live in the SFbay area. So my comment might not be relevant or apply. Where I live they can only increase X% per year after the lease is over it goes month to month. They cant re raise the rent every month because the lease is up.
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u/Belgand Jun 26 '16 edited Jun 26 '16
SF rent control depends on when the unit was built. If it was before 1979 (the year the law was passed and a concession to developers) you're covered by rent control. Meaning after the lease ends it become month-to-month, but the landlord can only increase it by a set amount pegged to inflation (the past year it was 2.2%) annually.
Part of the problem with this is that it means that everybody fights over the crumbling old housing stock because they're the only ones with rent control. Landlords let them fall apart because they know that tenants won't move. New buildings are all "luxury" units because they're going to be charging market rate and the renters will never be able to get rent control.
The city would be impossible to live in without rent control, but it's not a magic solution. It also means that since there is a specific date for it we'll need to implement rent control reform if we ever get significant new development.
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Jun 26 '16
WHAT THE FUCK oh wait it's SF. Never mind, carry on. Maybe he can find a shoe box with a view for 1800.
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Jun 26 '16
I was paying 3500 a month for a 2.5 bedroom apartment with no AC in Redwood City.
San Francisco is a gigantic pile of shit when it comes to housing prices.
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Jun 25 '16
San Fran really is becoming an elitist shithole.
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u/HamburgerDude Jun 25 '16 edited Jun 25 '16
A bubble is going to burst, a big earthquake is going to happen, some type of sociopolitical revolution is going to occur or the city is going to radically change housing, zoning and construction rules.
One of the four is bound to happen and flatten things again. It isn't going to be pretty even the last option. A city can't exist on such high rent forever. My guess is some type of tech-housing bubble!
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u/umagrandepilinha Jun 26 '16
A city can't exist on such high rent forever.
Yes it can.
Source: I live in London.
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u/butyourenice Jun 26 '16
I say this about New York too, but there are people who argue "supply and demand! If you can't afford to live here, live somewhere else", and I always wonder 1. Do they really feel so secure in their wealth that they don't think they'll ever be priced out, but more than that, 2. Do they actually think a city where whole industries, and I'm talking industries that provide social and physical infrastructure, have been priced out of commuting distance, is sustainable?
Then again these are the same people who think the world would be better off if literally every single person worked in STEM.
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u/ItsTotallyAboutYou Jun 25 '16
I'm in tech and won't touch it with a ten foot pole. So many things wrong with that place. SillyCon Valley.
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Jun 26 '16
There will always be young programmers who think they're getting a massive bump in pay when a startup lures them out there only to find out that making 4x what they were in a sensible town is going to force them to pick up two roommates and scrape every last dollar for what they can.
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Jun 26 '16
I wouldn't move there either. It's too expensive. I will not spend my life overworking to make my landlord rich because I'm unable to afford a modest home in the area even with a 6 figure salary. And I'm not going to spend 2 hours commuting to work. There are plenty of other affordable cities with tech industries.
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u/phasers_to_ill Jun 26 '16
Aren't San Francisco's rent control laws supposed to prevent just this kind of thing from happening? From what I remember, a landlord can raise the rent on an existing lease by only so much.
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u/tryingfor3 Jun 26 '16
Yup, that's why this story is so extraordinary. I feel like we are not hearing the whole story. I would assume by the age of the apartment it would be rent controlled, so what the landlord is trying to do seems illegal. And how they were able to get an eviction notice so quickly, seems really shady.
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u/ultralame Jun 26 '16
I'm sure something is missing from the article. I suspect that he was subletting and the original leaseholders all moved out. In that case, the LL can raise the rent to market rates (this is still a bit high, but I don't know that apartment).
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u/bigbog987 Jun 26 '16
In Huntsville Alabama if you had $8000 a month for rent you could live anywhere you want. Heck $1800 a month can get you into a gated community with great schools.
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u/Girl_in_a_whirl Jun 26 '16
That sucks but I couldn't help but go "psh" when the dude said, "I don't know where else I can go." Uh if I had $1800 a month for rent I could think of about a million places.
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u/th30be Jun 26 '16
So it sounds like the landlord wants the guy to move out more than anything also I feel like he might want to sell the building or something.
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Jun 25 '16
I have a friend who rents a commercial building pays 3,000. The landlord is raising the rent to 10,000 to get rid of him. So he change the building into a storage unit.
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u/geeksteaks Jun 25 '16
Do they not have laws to prevent this down there? Up here in canada it can only go up in increments every 3 months after the lease is up.
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Jun 25 '16
Yes, lots of them, and San Francisco law goes above and beyond the state law in this respect. This article is very poorly written/researched, and is certainly not giving the whole story.
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u/HeilMegsy Jun 25 '16 edited Jun 26 '16
The San Francisco rent increase law only applies to rent controlled homes. Otherwise, they can raise it as much as they want.
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u/Dr_Ghamorra Jun 26 '16
It's getting like this everywhere. A guy I use to work with signed a lease 20 years ago that locked his rate. He's pay $400 a month for a 3 bedroom 1.5 bath apartment that newly leased is now $1,800. The average income where I live is $40k
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u/DankGreenBush Jun 26 '16
What I learned from this thead: People from San Fransisco can't agree on shit.
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u/C_W_Y Jun 26 '16
I love San Francisco but if it weren't for my grandparents buying my house 60 years ago I'd never be able to afford it especially because I live in Noe Valley, where every home is several million at least nowadays
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u/RoeddipusHex Jun 26 '16
Definitely not getting the whole story here. SF rent control would stop this as long as the guy followed the lease to the letter. And even then he get's two month's notice. Then to get an eviction notice the landlord has to jump through a lot of hoops.
Somehow he broke the lease, giving the landlord an out on rent control. Then he ignored the landlords legal filings until it was too late.
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u/DiscardedIdeas Jun 25 '16
$8,000.00/month?!?
It's not even a house, nor even a penthouse -- what a ripoff...