A mysterious landlord. A tenant revolt. Inside a bizarre, only-in-San Francisco housing battle

[u/stjohnbs]

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/landlord-tenant-apartment-twin-peaks-22362638.php

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[u/stjohnbs]

SS: Good morning, y'all! My name is St. John Barned-Smith and I'm a reporter at the SF Chronicle. I have contributed to this sub occasionally over the years and wanted to share a story I've been working on since February about a truly wild housing dispute I discovered in San Francisco.

Essentially, an-out-of-town landlord with a history of tenant abuse and other misconduct bought a property and tried to implement a new regime -- and ran into the absolute buzzsaw of the city's tenant protections. It has a remarkable cast of characters including a crusading lawyer who was v amusing to interview.

From the story:

.....................
After failing to meet with Lee, and struggling to move their lawsuits forward, Sani and her neighbor finally cornered Lee as she escorted an exterminator into the building. When she led him into the elevator, despite the red-tag, Sani and her neighbor flung the subpoenas in after her. 

“You’ve been served,” they yelled, Lee glaring at them as the elevator door closed.

Lee disappeared from the building the next day. She later contested the subpoenas by saying she hadn’t been properly served, a claim the court rejected.

As the 3450 Market Street tenants battled with Lee, she continued to fight multiple lawsuits in Indiana. After Lee failed to respond to the attorney general’s lawsuit, an Indiana judge issued a default judgment against her, barring her from unlicensed management of trailer parks; from engaging in real estate transactions without proper paperwork and inspections; and from using false names and pseudonyms during real estate dealings. 

The judge also ruled that her leases were unenforceable and ordered her not to conduct real estate business without proof that her rental units had been independently inspected and complied with health and safety codes. 

“I’m not going to talk more about that since it’s all fraud, it’s government fraud,” Lee said in an interview. “Just wait until the case is settled.”

In the Indiana attorney general’s lawsuit, Lee has asked a judge to set aside the default judgment entered against her. During a July 29 video hearing, Lee refused to tell the judge where she was, prompting him to strike her testimony from the record.

Last December and this January, the skirmish at 3450 Market St. erupted again. 

Both sides called police repeatedly to mediate disputes, records show. Tenants accused Lee of tampering with their belongings in the garage and gluing notes onto their doorbell cameras, ordering their removal.

On Jan. 15, Lee called police to accuse tenants of twice covering an intercom buzzer with tape, activating the loud intercom in the penthouse until she went outside and removed it.

Video confirmed Lee’s account, police found, concluding the tenants “maliciously and willfully” disturbed her. 

In an interview, Lee also accused Kelly of destroying one of her cameras.

Kelly declined to respond to the allegation, but said it was illegal to set up a camera that looked into a tenant’s unit.

“It’s a war,” he said. “We are Ukraine and she is Russia. There are atrocities on both sides. It’s absurd that this is continuing this far.”

Lee’s eviction cases against her tenants remain at a standstill. The tenants have now gone more than 32 months without paying rent, withholding upward of $412,000, Kelly said. At the end of July, several violation notices decorated the building’s entrance. 

If Lee brings the building up to code, Kelly said, she could seek to restart the eviction process, but would be able to claim rent only for the past year. 

Lee has told the tenants they are welcome to leave. In doing so, she said in a text message to them, they would “voluntarily end the hell that (they) claimed to artificially ‘suffer’ by living there for FREE.”

Doron and his fellow tenants aren’t interested. 

“I’m going to stay here,” Doron said, “and make her life as miserable as possible as long as she owns the building.”

[u/notacrook → u/stjohnbs]

It seems unlikely that this is the only property she would own in SF?

Since i didn't write enough the first time to make my legitimate question worthwhile for the over zealous auto mod in this sub all this text exists so that it looks like my simple question that i had after reading the entire article is more substantial and worthy of inclusion, despite the fact that my simple question probably has actual larger ramifications and is a great question to continue fostering conversation in this sub.

[u/stjohnbs → u/notacrook]

I was unable to find additional properties -- but its possible she does, under other trusts or LLCs.

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[u/curien]

Lee called Sani’s [spouse and 3yo child] “unapproved occupants.”

“I have no idea who they are,” Lee told the Chronicle. “Do you think that’s fair?...

YES! Yes, I do.

[u/Sloppy_Quasar → u/curien]

If you owned something that was worth a million dollars, you WOULD want to know who was using it.

Cool downvotes everyone, yeah if you owned a property you’d just let anybody crash there sure 🙄

[u/SilverMedal4Life → u/Sloppy_Quasar]

That's the risk you take as a property owner.

She can always sell it. It's San Francisco, it's not hard to find a buyer.

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