San Francisco's largely known as a transient city, one whose charms are only outweighed by the price it takes to indulge in them. So, while stories like these that tout the supposed “hardships” facing small property owners who who are going up against the city’s big, bad pro-tenant laws certainly aren’t surprising, they still make me cringe:
Koniuk, who himself lives in suburban Belmont, gave a half-interest in the building to his older son in 2007 so he could evict a tenant and move in himself. But under San Francisco's extraordinarily pro-tenant housing laws, landlords can do this only once per building.
So while Koniuk desperately wants to move his younger son into the building's other four-bedroom apartment, he cannot. He is exploring legal options. Robert Murphy, who has lived there for 30 years without a lease, remains, paying $525.82 a month.
First things first: I'm a San Francisco nationalist who never misses an opportunity to say so. It's a stubborn trait that I've realized is common among the displaced, the exiled, or folks who are otherwise desperately clinging onto some vanishing form of regional identity. In my case, it's got a lot to do with the fact that San Francisco is a city in which you can live for years without ever meeting someone who was born and raised there. And there's a reason for that. Lots of them.
But this article misses a key point. Namely, that there's a big difference between those who choose to experience a city versus those who are forced to endure one. The distinction rests largely on the privilege a tenant has to recreate their lives and dreams elsewhere. Both instances result in a kind of twisted love for a place-- for new experiences, for the freedom of the unknown. And, on the flip side, for that which was been survived, maintained, molded into a place that can loved and cherished in spite of its charms. Put simply: Rent control offers a level of freedom to folks who, by and large, don't have much.