Saturday, May 03, 2008

Following Up On Those Poor Innocent Landlords

As I was clicking through links today, I came across another article on Macys (the landlords from San Francisco, not the department store). In it, I noticed that the City and County of San Francisco had filed suit against the Macys.


Read this doc on Scribd: CCSF v Kip Macy


In case you did not want to read all 96 pages of it, apparently the Macys have allegedly been in violation of the law. According to this filing, the Macys have been using the Ellis Act the evict tenants from their building. However, under the Ellis Act, when the property owner removes the property from the rental market, they cannot re-let any of the units for at least five years. It seems that after evicting most of the tenants, they then entered into agreement (exhibit D, page 44) with another individual, by the name of Ricardo Cartagena. Under this agreement, Cartegena would obtain new tenants for the building and be allowed to become a part owner of the building.

Essentially, they were using Cartagena as a straw man so that they could re-rent the units. After new tenants were brought it, the Macy's are alleged to have then evicted Cartegena from the building.

Then there is the litany of building violations committed by the Macys.

Yes, I understand that a person is innocent until proven guilty. However, if the documents attached as exhibits the City's complaint are real, then Kip and Nicole Macy have some serious explaining to do. And somehow, I don't think it can be explained by saying that this is all a hullabulloo caused by a tenant who is "behaving in a manner approaching vexatious litigation".

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