“So many of my friends told me I was crazy for moving to San Francisco — it’s unsafe, it’s filthy, it’s going down the tubes,” she said. “My experience has been the opposite. The beautiful neighborhoods, vibrancy and positivity — that message isn’t getting out there.”

Bobby Pierce and his wife, Leanne, are raising their toddler, August, in the Richmond District, a San Francisco neighborhood popular with families for its proximity to Golden Gate Park, Ocean Beach and eclectic shops. Mr. Pierce, who grew up in rural Ohio, said people there like to criticize San Francisco for its fentanyl deaths, homelessness and economic struggles, even though those problems exist everywhere, including Ohio.

“When I was growing up, the meme of San Francisco was that it was this ungodly gay place, and before that, it was hippies,” said Mr. Pierce, 36. “It’s never had a nationally savory reputation, I suppose, which is maybe what draws me to it.”

James Falino, 28, a consultant for environmental nonprofits, said he moved to San Francisco from New York five years ago for its relaxed vibe, proximity to nature and thriving L.G.B.T.Q. communities. But when he visited New York over the summer and the topic of San Francisco came up, he immediately felt defensive.

When people learned where he lives now, they responded with a facial expression that he described as “aghast.”

Then came a whispered, “Are you OK?”

“I am,” he assured them. Again and again.

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LOS ANGELES — David and Lisa Felker put their life savings into an eight-unit building in Los Angeles 15 years ago. The couple drove there on weekends and evenings to garden, make repairs, replace a broken garbage disposal or an air conditioner, and check on their tenants.

For the most part, they liked their tenants, who kept up with their rent as best they could. The Felkers planned to live off the income from the building when they retired two years ago — David from his job as a computer technician and Lisa as a pattern maker in the garment industry.

But L.A. implemented an emergency rent freeze on rent-controlled apartments at the start of the pandemic in 2020, as costs for insurance, earthquake retrofitting, water, inspections and trash collection rose. Soon, the Felkers said, they were hardly making a profit.

L.A. is the only major city that still has a freeze — lasting until Feb. 1. — on rent-stabilized units, which make up almost three-quarters of its apartments.

For many renters, the freeze has been a lifeline, allowing them to stay housed and keep up with vital expenses as inflation soared and many lost work hours and jobs.

But landlords like the Felkers say they were forgotten in the debate — forced to dip into savings and let tenants fall tens of thousands of dollars behind in rent, even selling nest eggs that were supposed to fund them through retirement.

In the summer of 2022, the Felkers sold their building to a large private firm.

With the profit, they invested in out-of-state properties, where David said they no longer endure the headaches of L.A.’s housing market.

Despite praise from tenant unions, some policy experts say that rent control reduces affordable housing by discouraging housing development and driving providers out of the business.

“We have an affordability crisis and a homelessness crisis that absolutely demands urgent action, but a rent freeze is not the best solution,” said Michael Lens, associate professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA.

Lens recognizes that the pandemic sent policymakers “reaching for the emergency button,” but the city should look at policies such as expanding housing subsidies rather than extending the rent freeze.

“In a city like L.A., that needs investment in housing, the last thing you want to do is drive away the people who are going to do the investment in housing,” said Jim Lapides, vice president of advocacy and strategic communications for the National Multifamily Housing Council. “And that’s what’s taking place right now.”

Evidence indicates that rent control increases the cost of non-rent-stabilized units, Lapides said. For example, in San Francisco, one study found that landlords reacted to rent control by reducing supply by 15%. This led to a 5.1% citywide rent increase.

But with California’s ongoing affordability crisis, tenant advocates say the rent freeze saved tenants who are still recovering from the economic consequences of the pandemic, including job losses, sick leaves and deaths of breadwinners in the family.

“It has taken this long to get people back on their feet, and some people never get back on their feet,” said Ryan Bell, Southern California regional coordinator for Tenants Together. “There’s a long tail to these types of crises.”

Homelessness increased by 10% in the city of Los Angeles last year. Shanti Singh, the communications and legislative director of Tenants Together, cautions city officials against lifting the rent freeze and potentially sending more renters into homelessness.

“Rent increases that were allowable with inflation were still really hurting people,” Singh said.

Landlords were allowed to apply for a rent increase if their income did not cover the property’s expenses. But Daniel Yukelson of the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles said in an email that the application requires “a mountain of financial information” and a number of bureaucratic hurdles.

Tough decisions

Small and medium-size “mom-and-pop” landlords say that the onslaught of renter protections in L.A. combined with soaring costs infringe on their ability to operate.

Thomas Daniels bought his first L.A. rental property in 2000.

Up until 2020, he hosted twice-yearly barbecues at his five buildings so that his tenants could get to know one another. Sometimes, renters met their next-door neighbors for the first time as they made their way down to the gatherings.

Aside from interacting with tenants, Daniels enjoyed taking buildings that were “not in great shape and turning them around, making it an attractive, nice place to live.”

Since February, Daniels has sold all five of his buildings.

With high inflation and soaring costs such as earthquake insurance, Daniels found he had to forgo roof, plumbing and electrical repairs. Eventually, he could not afford to stay in the market.

“The rent freeze was effective at keeping people in their homes and probably necessary to prevent homelessness,” Daniels said. “I think the problem is that property owners were ignored. [A lot] of rent-stabilized units are owned by mom-and-pop and mid-tier owners like myself, and we’re not making a lot of money.”

Each of his buildings has been taken over by a “wealthy corporation” or a “wealthy individual.”

“Right now, it’s the big fish eating the little fish,” Daniels said.

Steven Jones has held out, but not without tweaking how he operates. With losses from the rent freeze and down an additional $24,000 from one tenant behind in his rent, Jones has to pick and choose what updates he makes to his buildings.

He is also more stringent about whom he rents to, and only considers people with superb credit scores. In the past, he was more lenient. He has taken chances on people when his gut told him to, and they managed to keep up with their deals.

Jones doubts he would do that again, unless they put down a large deposit.

“The tenants that it seems to me are the most vulnerable are the ones with the lousy credit,” Jones said. “I can sympathize with that. But one of the side effects to all of this regulation is that any property owner is going to take a very hard look at the applications that come in, especially the credit history.”

Striking a balance

Nike Irvin is a self-proclaimed “very pro-tenant landlord.” The native Angeleno grew up in West Adams, and she and her mother acquired a seven-unit building there in the 1990s. Now, she owns buildings in Silver Lake and Los Feliz, and her mother, 91, owns a building in Jefferson Park. Both live in buildings they own.

“We are African American, we understand the economic challenges in our community and want to be good, fair property owners, which I think we are,” Irvin said.

But she is struggling. She has had to skip on some improvements and dig into her own pockets for others. It cost her $30,000 to eliminate mold. Her mother’s income from her unit funds her elderly care, but she can barely cover it with meager profits.

For work, Irvin runs a leadership development program for social entrepreneurs that facilitates civil discourse across political divides. She laments the growing divide between landlords and tenants.

“I believe I’m a better person because I’m a property owner,” Irvin said. “I live in my building and I see how hard my tenants work. I see how well they take care of the building. And it just gives me a greater insight and understanding and respect for humans. It makes me want to make sure they have a good place to come home to. … It’s a service to provide housing for people.”

Like others, she worries about mom-and-pop landlords leaving L.A. as larger landlords come in, many of whom live outside the state or far from the buildings they own.

Irvin still plans to remain in the market, and pass her property down to her nieces and nephews.

Singh, of Tenants Together, said that each time tenant advocates propose new protection, landlords sound the same alarm about the demise of mom-and-pops. She questions how widespread this problem actually is.

The city of Los Angeles defines small landlords as owners with four or fewer units. Landlord advocates tend to conceptualize mom-and-pops and noncorporate landlords.

Regardless of a landlord’s size, Bell, of Tenants Together, said the city should address corporate takeover as a separate legislative issue.

“These are folks who have multiple homes to their names, and the tenants are clinging tenuously to their only home,” he said. “So it just isn’t the same level of need.”

When landlords sell a property, they make millions of dollars, Bell said.

“They’re gonna be OK,” he continued. “If the city wants to preserve those mom-and-pop landlords, they need to take on that burden and not put it on the backs of working-class residents.”

The Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles sued the city in July over the rent freeze, citing financial strain on housing providers.

Landlords in the city have received more than $1.6 billion in rental assistance, and an additional $20 million is budgeted through United to House LA funding, said Sharon Sandow, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Housing Department.

“We understand that landlords have been impacted by the protections adopted to keep renters safe during the pandemic,” she said in an email. “LAHD is making every effort to help out landlords — while also focusing on keeping tenants housed.”

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Michael Volk was walking through his Oak Meadow neighborhood one day about four years ago when he saw a house in the middle of what he recalled as a “really cool” renovation.

“It looked like a California beach house,” recalled Volk, an attorney and single father. “So I sent a note to the house asking, ‘Hey, who did your remodel?’”

About a week later, he got a return note saying it was the work of designer Mary Beth Edgerton, who, along with her husband, was also the home’s owner.

With two young daughters, currently ages 6 and 9, Volk hired Edgerton to freshen and upgrade his own three-bedroom, two-bath home, with its outdated 1970s and ’80s design: small rooms, no kitchen pantry, a dilapidated backyard deck and — horrors! — salmon-colored walls.

“I wanted to make it a comfortable home for the girls to live,” he said. “We finished in April and they say it’s like living in a hotel now.”

The renovation was done in stages, beginning in 2019, with the most dramatic change being the removal of several walls to open up what had been a series of smaller rooms.

“The openness was all Michael,” said Edgerton. “That was the look that was in his heart, and Peter Stainken, the general contractor, and I just went for it.” 

For example, to the right of the front entryway there had been a solid wall with only a case opening into the dining room. Removing that wall, as well as another between the dining room and living area, gave the home a more modern, light-filled look. 

$1 MILLION LANDSCAPE: Design turns Canyon Lake yard into a Palm Springs-like oasis

After removing several walls to open up the space, several clever tricks were used to visually delineate the different rooms, such as installing a slatted wooden screen that partially blocks the view into the back of the house from the front door. 

Richard A. Marini/Staff

Still, they used several clever tricks to visually delineate the different rooms. Between the dining and living areas, for example, they installed a partial, slatted wooden screen that helps obscure the view into the back of the house from the front door. 

“When Peter designed the screen I was, like, we don’t need that,” Volk said. “And then he put it up and I saw how it makes sense. Now, when you open the front door, you don’t just see directly into the living room or the kitchen. It breaks things up a bit and gives you a little bit of privacy.”

The screen also had the utilitarian benefit of allowing them to bring power into the middle of the room by running the electric wiring through the screen.

Another way they broke up the space was by building a standalone, U-shaped coffee and wine bar between the kitchen and the dining room/music room. But the structure doesn’t reach all the way to the ceiling, so it still helps emphasize the room’s openness. 

Because several of the now-missing walls were load-bearing, they had to install a steel I-beam to provide support — and it was left exposed rather than being covered up.

Several of the walls that were removed during the renovation were load-bearing, so they installed an exposed steel I-beam to provide needed support — and it was left exposed rather than being covered up.

Richard A. Marini/Staff

“We had talked about giving the house a kind of semi-industrial look,” Volk said. “So keeping the beam visible was a part of that.”

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Michael Volk’s three-bedroom, two-bathroom home has been modernized.

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The outside of Michael Volk’s Oak Meadow home is shown prior to the recently completed renovation.

Mary Beth EdgertonShow MoreShow Less

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Michael Volk’s three-bedroom, two-bathroom home has been updated from the inside out.

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The living area of Michael Volk’s three-bedroom, two-bath home in the Oak Meadow neighborhood has a modern open-concept feel.

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At the kitchen’s center is a large island topped with quartz in a swirled, black-and-white pattern.

Sam Owens/Staff photographerShow MoreShow Less

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Removing several walls opened up the space between the living area and the kitchen.

Sam Owens/Staff photographerShow MoreShow Less

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Because several of the now-missing walls were load-bearing, they had to install a steel I-beam to provide support.

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Volk uses the large, six-burner stove to cook for his young daughters, often making pancakes for breakfast and pizza for dinner.

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The living area of Michael Volk’s three bedroom, two bathroom single family home in San Antonio has a modern, open-concept feel.

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Removing walls truly opened up the home, while the standalone coffee and wine bar, visible to the left, visually delineates the dining area from the music niche and the kitchen. 

Sam Owens/Staff photographerShow MoreShow Less

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Another way they broke up the space was by building a standalone, U-shaped coffee and wine bar between the kitchen and the dining room/music room. But the structure doesn’t reach all the way to the ceiling, so it still helps emphasize the room’s openness. 

Richard A. Marini/StaffShow MoreShow Less

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A built-in coffee bar offers extra storage space for drinks, appliances and bread-making supplies.

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The primary bedroom has a vaulted ceiling.

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By stealing space from the attic above, they were able to turn the primary bedroom’s flat ceiling  into a vaulted ceiling and give the room a more appealing, airy and open feel.

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The primary bathroom has a single, elongated trough sink and granite countertops.

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The girls’ bedrooms, located side by side, each have a wall covered in beautifully designed, floral-patterned wallpaper.

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Both the girls’ bedrooms have one wall covered in beautifully designed, floral-patterned wallpaper. 

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The girls’ bedrooms were designed to stand the test of time, so they can work both with toys and childlike things, while also feeling sophisticated.

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Although he’s a single dad, Volk is a fairly serious cook, so the kitchen is outfitted with that in mind, including a large, six-burner stove. 

“I do steaks on there, pancakes for breakfast,” he said. “And during COVID, like everyone else, I learned how to bake bread. I have a friend who got some sort of pizza certification from some bakery in San Francisco, and he taught me how to make pizza.”

At the kitchen’s center, the large island is topped with quartz in a swirled, black-and-white pattern Volk said reminds him of the cover design of the Radiohead album “A Moon Shaped Pool.” The granite waterfalls down the sides because, according to Edgerton, the kitchen called for it.

“We needed that because, when you’re doing a neutral color scheme like we did here, it’s all about texture and pattern,” she explained. “So we needed this energy running down the sides. Plus, with little kids, granite is more durable than, say, just painting the sides.”

The semi-industrial vibe Volk spoke of can also be seen in the pair of tubular kitchen exhaust fans above the stove.

“They look like the bottoms of a pair of rocket ships,” he said. 

HELOTES KITCHEN REDO: $74K adds dual islands, drawer microwave, keeps the parties going

Outside the primary suite, located to one side of the house, there’s a small foyer space that has a built-in shelving unit filled with books and knickknacks and adds a bracing splash of color to the otherwise mostly neutral house. 

“It breaks up the space nicely,” Volk said. “I didn’t really have a bookshelf, and I like that it’s not just another piece of furniture. I’m still organizing it.”

Previously, the bedroom had its original, flat ceiling. But during the renovation, they were able to steal space from the attic above and now, like in the living room, the bedroom ceiling is also vaulted, giving the room a more appealing, airy and open feel.

In the bathroom, they installed a single, elongated trough sink instead of the more traditional his-and-hers sinks. They finished the space with marble countertops above and walnut cabinets beneath.

“Wood is more masculine and timeless and it make the room feel more organic as opposed to just adding more painted surfaces,” Edgerton explained.

The girls’ bathroom is stylishly designed so they won’t outgrow it, and it can serve as a powder room for guests.

Sam Owens/Staff photographer

In the girls’ part of the house, they redid the bathroom, replacing the too-small tub with a walk-in shower and clunky, outdated cabinets with more modern fixtures. The result is a stylish bathroom that will grow with the girls and not put off guests, since the house doesn’t have a traditional powder room. 

The same can be said for their bedrooms, which sit side by side. One wall in each bedroom is covered in beautifully designed, floral-patterned wallpaper. 

“I love doing kids’ rooms,” Edgerton said. “But I don’t do kids rooms that look like a kid’s room. They need to stand the test of time. They need to be able to work with toys and childlike things, but they have to feel more sophisticated.”

For Volk, the renovated home has made his life easier.

“It flows better,” he said. “Even something as simple as dirty clothes on the floor, it feels easier to clean up. Just the daily minutia of everyday life is just a little bit improved.”

The post Single dad modernizes drained, Seventies residence for his 2 younger daughters appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

HOLLYWOOD – Lawrence and Issa, Isaa and Nathan, who is the audience that appeared on the HBO comedy “Unsure? I can tell you who I’m defending for, and in the latest episode, Tired, Okay ?! We have seen Issa’s relationship problems unfold. Issa decided to confront his ex and his child’s mother in what may be the most uncomfortable interactions ever. Issa was the bigger person and it broke the ice in amazing ways.

In a hilarious twist, Issa tossed the baby away, kicked Condola in a trash can, and uttered a few harsh words. Of course, as the audience knows, she was daydreaming. Issa was surprised to learn that Lawrence had returned to Los Angeles from San Francisco. It was evident that Issa was wondering how things were going in her relationship with Nathan, who was causing some friction in his workplace because he was worried about things that weren’t his business.

Issa stayed around the hospital showing Molly who had some business to do with her company, but her thoughts were wrong. I enjoy laughing a little more in this episode than in the previous episodes of this season. The block has been busy with marketing, but it seems things got mad with Crenshawn for not speaking positively about Issa. Molly got to know her colleagues a little better through drinks, which led to her waking up dazed without realizing that she had slept with her boss, who she was NOT a fan of.

She thought she might have slept with him, but she didn’t and found that after those drinks she had let go. Hmm, Molly, maybe you want to slow down with these drinks. If I have to admit, Crenshawn is a bit of an ass and he hurts their company a lot, which is a big problem when I speak from the perspective when this happened in real life.

Suge and Nathan had a little friction and he decided to call his colleague and his insanity. Awkward, brutal, these were just a few of the words that came to mind after hearing this conversation. Molly was giving a presentation but unfortunately lost focus because her phone kept vibrating, but her colleague saved her cock. Molly finally told Torian what was happening to her mother and did not let the cat out of the bag.

Both seemed to be going through crazy personal situations but managed to keep things together. Another fantasy between Issa and Condola that was just as hilarious as we went over to Molly and found out her mother was awakening from her coma. Torian and Molly shared a moment, very interesting people, just as Nathan alerted Issa that he might jump out of the hair salon where he is currently working. He dropped another bomb and admitted he could leave Los Angeles.

Issa dropped the “L” word and wanted to hear what Nathan was thinking, which made him hit a little. They had an argument and Nathan put everything on the table and it was obvious that Issa was not in the mood to hear about it. Yes, talk about a bad dinner folks. Things will NOT end well, I can confirm that much. This has been one of the better episodes since the season started, in fact, so it feels like the series is headed in the right direction as we near the series finale.

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