La Golondrina, a long-standing Mexican restaurant on Olvera Street, is engaged in a dispute with the city concerning plumbing problems, deferred rent, and eviction threats resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Questions around the restaurant’s future reopening persist, raising concerns among the current owners and the long-standing community who regard it in high esteem, according to LAist.

COVID-19 forced La Golondrina, founded in 1930, to shut its doors in March 2020. The Gomez family, who has deep roots on Olvera Street, took over the restaurant in 2021. Despite significant hindrances to reopening, including a $242,000 overdue rent bill issued by the city commission, the family matriarch Bertha Gomez remains hopeful, as reported to ABC7. Failure to settle the payment within a 30-day schedule threatens their lease agreement.

The restaurant, housed in an old 166-year-old building, is also dealing with complex plumbing complications—an ongoing crisis between the Gomez family and the City of Los Angeles. The question of who is ultimately responsible for the repairs is currently making its way through the legal system, as per ABC7 news. The delay in reopening, due to these unresolved matters, is starting to affect nearby businesses on Olvera Street, which are heavily dependent on the foot traffic the iconic restaurant brings.

After the Board of Commissioners of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument’s 30-day eviction notice, David Gomez indicated an intention to legally sue against the city, while also expressing hope for a resolution that would finally permit the reopening of the restaurant. Adjacent business owners, such as Mike Mariscal, assert the closure is not only hurting their businesses but also “silencing the street.”

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For several years, the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation has, despite its name, presented as a pro-tenant group to the public, advocating against evictions. 

Yet a report from the Los Angeles Times reveals a different story surrounding the foundation, one filled not only with evictions, but putrid living conditions for its tenants. 

The backstory: The multi-billion dollar AIDS Healthcare Foundation operates over 730 treatment clinics across the globe. 

• It also jumped into the housing sector six years ago and has become one of the biggest landlords on Skid Row. 
• The foundation was founded by Michael Weinstein, who has used it to push his political agenda by funding recent ballot measures in California for rent control, a housing development freeze and mandating condoms in adult films, among others. 
• Weinstein’s political advocacy has made him a target, with the California Apartment Association funding a ballot initiative that would effectively bar Weinstein from funneling his organization’s money to ballot measures. 

The big picture: According to a recent report from the LA Times, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation owns properties in Los Angeles, managing nearly 1,500 units with another 467 under development. The foundation has also acquired buildings in Florida, Georgia, New York and Texas. 

• While the foundation publicly touts its own renovation work, it has a poor track record in three of its buildings on Skid Row – the Baltimore, King Edward and Madison. 
• The LA Times found squalid living conditions in the buildings, which include 32 complaints made in the King Edward since it was purchased in 2018. The city only had five complaints on file for the previous five years before the foundation bought the building. 
• Such complaints have come because of exposed electrical wiring, painted-over fire sprinklers, missing smoke detectors and inoperable doors and windows. 
• More serious issues include black mold, nests of cockroaches, maggots, plumbing breaks and a radiator explosion. 
• Complaints are made against the foundation’s buildings at a rate three times higher than buildings owned by other Skid Row nonprofits. 
• The foundation has also evicted tenants for owing a few hundred dollars and has sued nearly 70 tenants for back rent in small claims court.

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Photo by Dana Flynn/ Secret San Francisco

Beautiful historic homes and buildings populate San Francisco’s streets. From the rows of colorful Victorians to large government buildings, it’s easy to reminisce on San Francisco’s history.

Now, a piece of SF’s history is looking for its newest occupants. The Abner Phelps House, generally considered one of the oldest houses in SF, is available for rent. Before you get too eager, while the historic house is on the renter’s market, it is available as an office space rather than a residential one.

The three-story house has five parking spaces, a small front garden, and totals to 3,800 square feet. The historic building is located at 1111 Oak Street, in the Haight, just off the bustling Divisadero Street and within walking distance from the scenic Panhandle. This historic house turned office doesn’t come cheap; the rental rate is $15,998 per month or $191,976 for a year.

Photo by Sanfranman59 on Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 3.0.

A long history in San Francisco

The exact history of the home’s origins is unclear, with two competing theories. An account from 1934 states that the house was built by John Middleton & Sons in 1850.

Although there is a more romantic story surrounding the home’s origins, in 1961, Phelps’ great-granddaughter stated the house was initially bought in New Orleans, then shipped to San Francisco and pieced together. This was supposedly done to soothe Abner Phelps’ wife, who was homesick for Louisiana. While there is still speculation around the origins of the home, a 1907 article in The Call– a historic San Francisco newspaper– states the house was built in Louisiana and brought to San Francisco.

The home has always captivated the interest of San Francisco residents. The Call wrote a full-page feature on the house, reminiscing on the history of the building. The article states the house did not always occupy such a bustling location. Instead, it was nestled on a 160-acre homestead at the foot of Buena Vista Hill. It has moved twice during its time in San Francisco, first in the 1890s to Divisadero Street and finally to its current location on Oak Street.

The house is built in the Gothic Revival style, popular throughout Europe and the United States, although it stands out among a sea of Victorians in SF. The house was designated a San Francisco landmark in 1970.

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ANTIOCH, Calif. (AP) — Kim Carlson’s apartment has flooded with human feces multiple times, the plumbing never fixed in the low-income housing complex she calls home in the San Francisco Bay Area suburb of Antioch.

Her property manager is verbally abusive and calls her 9-year-old grandson, who has autism, a slur word, she said. Her heater was busted for a month this winter and the dishwasher has mold growing under it. But the final straw came in May: a $500 rent increase, bringing the rent on the two-bedroom to $1,854 a month.

Carlson and other tenants hit with similarly high increases converged on Antioch’s City Hall for marathon hearings, pleading for protection. In September, the City Council on a 3-2 vote approved a 3% cap on annual increases.

Carlson, who is disabled and under treatment for lymphoma cancer, starts to weep imagining what her life could be like.

“Just normality, just freedom, just being able to walk outside and breathe and not have to walk outside and wonder what is going to happen next,” said Carlson, 54, who lives with her daughter and two grandsons at the Delta Pines apartment complex. “You know, for the kids to feel safe. My babies don’t feel safe.”

Despite a landmark renter protection law approved by California legislators in 2019, tenants across the country’s most populous state are taking to ballot boxes and city councils to demand even more safeguards. They want to crack down on tenant harassment, shoddy living conditions and unresponsive landlords that are usually faceless corporations.

Elected officials, for their part, appear more willing than in years past to regulate what is a private contract between landlord and tenant. In addition to Antioch, city councils in Bell Gardens, Pomona, Oxnard and Oakland all lowered maximum rent increases this year as inflation hit a 40-year high. Other city councils put the issue on the Nov. 8 ballot.

Leah Simon-Weisberg, legal director for the advocacy group Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, says local officials can no longer pretend supply and demand works when so many families are facing homelessness. In June, 1.3 million California households reported being behind on rent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The situation in working-class Antioch — where more than half the population is Black or Latino — illustrates how tenuous even a win for tenants can be.

The two council members who voted in favor of rent stabilization are up for re-election Tuesday, with one of them, Tamisha Torres-Walker, facing a former council member she narrowly beat two years ago. The local newspaper endorsed Joy Motts and called Torres-Walker, who was homeless as a young adult, polarizing.

Mayor Lamar Thorpe, who provided the third vote, faces sexual harassment allegations by two women, which he denies. They are part of a progressive Black majority.

If either member loses her seat, the rent ordinance could be repealed.

The two council members who voted no are both in the real estate industry, and not up for re-election.

A once largely white suburb, Antioch has become more politically liberal as Black, Latino and low-income residents forced out of San Francisco and Oakland moved in. Advocates tried for years to mobilize tenants, but it took the shockingly high rent-hike notices and the expiration of a statewide eviction moratorium in June to get movement.

Outraged tenants jammed into council chambers describing refrigerators pieced from spare parts and washing machines that reeked of rotten eggs. They spoke of skipping meals, working multiple jobs and living in constant terror of becoming homeless, sleeping in their car and washing their children with bottled water.

“We saw a lot of fear, a lot of desperation,” said Rhea Laughlin, an organizer with First 5 Contra Costa, a county initiative that focuses on early childhood. But, she said, she also saw people summon the courage “to go before council, to rally, to march, to speak to the press and be exposed in a way that I think tenants were too afraid to do before, but now really felt they had little to lose.”

Teresa Farias, 36, said she was terrified to speak in public but she was even more afraid that she, her husband and their three children, ages 3 to 14, would have to leave their home. When the family received a $361 rent increase notice in May, she called the East County Regional Group, a parent advocacy organization supported by First 5. They told her to start knocking on doors and talk to her neighbors.

“I really don’t know where my strength came from, to be able to speak in public, to be able to speak in front of the City Council … to ask them to help us with this issue,” she said in Spanish outside her home at the Casa Blanca apartments.

California’s tenant protection law limits rent increases to a maximum 10% a year. But many types of housing are exempt, including low-income complexes funded by government tax credits and increasingly owned by corporations, limited liability companies or limited partnerships.

The tenants who flooded City Council meetings drew largely from four affordable-housing complexes, including sister properties Delta Pines and Casa Blanca, where an estimated 150 households received large rent increases in May. The properties are linked to Shaoul Levy, founder of real estate investment firm Levy Affiliated in Santa Monica.

The rent increases never took effect, rescinded by the landlord as the City Council moved toward approving rent stabilization. Levy did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Council member Michael Barbanica, who owns a real estate and property management company, called the rent hikes outrageous, but said the city could have worked with the district attorney’s office to prosecute price-gouging corporate landlords.

Instead, the rent cap penalizes all local landlords, some of whom are now planning to sell, he said.

“They’re not the ones doing 30-40-50% increases,” Barbanica said, “yet they were caught in the crossfire.”

But, Carlson said, the city needs to pass even more tenant protections. The apartment complex is infested with roaches and her neighbors are too scared to speak up, she said.

Her apartment has flooded at least seven times in the eight years she’s lived there, she said, flipping through cellphone photos of her toilet and bathtub filled with dark yellow-brown water. In October 2020, she slipped from water pouring down from the upstairs apartment and dislocated her hip.

She has never been compensated, including all the gifts lost when the apartment flooded with water on Christmas Eve 2017. Two months later, in February 2018, feces and urine bubbled from the tub and toilets.

“We got two five-gallon buckets and a bag of plastic bags brought to us and we had to (urinate and defecate) in those buckets for five days because the toilets were blown off the floor,” Carlson said.

The toilets still gurgle, indicating blockage. That’s when she shuts off the water and waits for plumbers to clear the backup.

Tenant organizer Devin Williams grew up in Antioch after his parents moved out of San Francisco in 2003, part of a migration of Black residents leaving city centers for cheaper homes in safer suburbs. The 32-year-old is devastated that the same opportunity is not available to tenants like Carlson now.

“People have a responsibility to make sure people have habitable living conditions,” he said. “And their lives are just being exploited because people want to make money.”

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As an increasing number of landlords face foreclosure or sell off their properties at a steep discount, the U.S. Supreme Court has dashed their hopes of finding relief from rent regulation.

The court on Monday declined to hear landlord groups’ challenge to New York’s rent stabilization law. 

The Rent Stabilization Association, the Community Housing Improvement Program and a few individual landlords filed a petition in May, asking the court to consider arguments that the state’s rent stabilization represents an unlawful taking of property without just compensation. 

The decision thwarts the hopes of struggling landlords and means any relief is likely up to state lawmakers. That is an iffy proposition at best.

The legal petition claimed that landlords are forced to provide “public assistance” to tenants through low rents, lease renewals and succession rights. The city’s Rent Guidelines Board, which determines annual rent increases for stabilized apartments, considers tenants’ ability to pay rent, which has led to “a widening gap between owner costs and regulated rents,” the petition states. 

The groups claim that the rent law fails to actually address the state’s housing crisis while placing “the burden of rectifying a societal problem on a select minority of property owners.” New York City has about 900,000 rent-stabilized units and its suburbs have perhaps 100,000 more.

Extensive changes to the state’s rent law in 2019 further restricted how and when landlords can increase rent on stabilized apartments and when apartments can be taken back by the owner.

Landlords have blamed those changes for their inability to renovate apartments needing extensive repairs, resulting in tens of thousands of units being removed from the market and building revenue failing to keep up with expenses.

Defenders of the law say landlords purchased their buildings knowing they were subject to further regulation by lawmakers, and if the 2019 reform cost them money, that does not make it unconstitutional.

Foreclosure filings are on the rise as property owners struggle to pay off their debt, and high interest rates spell trouble for those with impending loan maturities. 

The Supreme Court challenge was a long shot, given the court’s history of declining rent control cases and the tiny fraction of cases that are heard by the high court each year.  

Even the court’s conservative majority was not enough to push the case forward. Four votes among the nine justices were needed to hear the case. 

“While we were hopeful a broad facial challenge would have delivered the most relief to the most owners as quickly as possible, we remain convinced that the law is irrational and vulnerable to more specific challenges,” Jay Martin, CHIP’s executive director, said in a statement. “One way or another this law must go down. Its current form is destroying New York’s housing.”

In a joint statement, CHIP and RSA called the decision “a signal to bring more targeted challenges to specific provisions of the law illustrating direct impacts on housing providers.”

The landlords’ arguments relied on a 2021 decision by the high court in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid. In that case, the court found a California law unconstitutional because it required employers to allow union organizers onto their property for up to three hours.

The groups filed their lawsuit in July 2019, intent on eventually bringing their claims before the Supreme Court. Lower courts rejected their arguments.

Two other similar petitions challenging the state’s rent law could still be picked up by the high court, though the odds are against them as well. The Legal Aid Society, which opposed the landlord groups’ petition, said it was hopeful that the other two cases will meet a similar fate.

“We welcome this decision, one rooted in the law and long-standing legal precedent, from the Supreme Court denying CHIP’s meritless and frivolous lawsuit challenging our city’s rent stabilization laws,” the group said in a statement.

Other states were watching this case closely, with some landlords hoping a Supreme Court ruling would require changes to rent control beyond New York. 

In an amicus curiae brief in support of the landlord groups, the California Business Roundtable cited California’s 2019 cap on rent increases, pointing to Los Angeles and San Francisco as “some of the most burdensome rent-control regimes in the country.”

“Some of California’s largest cities … contain many of the same troubling features that petitioners challenge here — e.g., substantial restraints on a property owner’s ability to remove tenants, to reclaim units for personal use, to withdraw units from the market, and to charge fair-market rates,” the brief states. 

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