Our Occupied House

Two years have passed since the following emails were written. In that time my father died. My husband developed inoperable Stage IV cancer. And still they remain.

Prequel

When we bought our house about 30 years ago, it had a $100,000 structural-repair estimate and holes in the ceilings. We spent the next several years building a downstairs apartment and working on the upstairs. No sooner had we finished than the recession eliminated my husband’s employment. I had a breakdown and quit working. To avoid foreclosure, we rented out the upstairs and moved into my parents’ old travel trailer parked on a friend’s property.

About six years ago we rented the upstairs to a pair of psychiatrists. She was embarking upon a four-year internship at UCSF; they planned to move after its completion. Over the next four years, the husband disappeared and a tech guy materialized. She graduated. There was no mention of moving.

We were told by a financial adviser that we could never afford to move back into our house. Selling it, we were told, was the only way that we could get out of the trailer and have financial security in our retirement (I was 67 at the time, and my husband was 65.)

We decided to sell the house.

And so it began.

Dear renters,

We’re writing to let you know that we have to sell our house this summer, to our regret. We’ve learned that our retirement and future housing depend on selling it.

We’d like to talk with you about how this will affect you and work out a mutually agreeable plan, but in San Francisco, as you might guess, it’s a legally complicated issue, so we asked a lawyer to help us go about it. She gave us papers documenting your rights that you must see and sign before we can talk. There’s one for each apartment — they’re attached to this email.

After you read the papers and have a chance to think about them, we’d like to meet with you all at the house to talk about specifics. We’ve always rented to people we respect and feel comfortable with, and we’re confident that things will work out to everyone’s satisfaction.

Please let us know when you are ready to meet up. We can come over pretty much any time that works for you. We’d be grateful if it could be pretty soon.

Thanks, the owners

We offered the statutory payment required for owner-move-in and other no-fault evictions, which is $6,980 per renter, for a total of close to $14,000, in exchange for their moving within two months. They hemmed and hawed, pointing out their upcoming seminars, symposia, and trip to Europe in two months. Certainly, they said, they had no intention of holding us hostage — an interesting voluntary denial.

Hi renters,

We hope all is going well. It sounds like your summer is going to be
eventful and adventurous.

Thanks for making time to be at that hideously awkward meeting — we are
treading on very unfamiliar ground and playing very unfamiliar roles in
this situation. Anyway, we were hoping that you have had time to think
and make some decisions, so that we can do so also.

Thanks very much, the owners

Hi owners,

I understand how you both can feel on unfamiliar ground. We are feeling the same way, and we’re also recognizing from our own position how this is not a fun process.

As we mentioned to you before, we were planning on leaving in about a year; organizing our finances and working with a realtor to find the right place.

And now, with your decision to sell the house we have been living in before our planned leave, there is a layer of complexity and difficulty that has been imposed on us.

When you also said that you both were interested in working out an arrangement that works for everyone, I understood that to mean that you intended to reduce the difficulty your new timeline brings to our situation.

Looking over the offer you extended (after also spending a lot of time understanding the current reality of moving within San Francisco), the amount printed ($13,960) does not come close to meeting our needs if we are to have a transition to a new living situation with any recognizable continuity in our lives.

We understand this offer as a strategy [which it was not — it was sincere], but accepting an offer like that would not only leave us displaced (yes, inherent in a move), but also financially burdened in the current housing market (which is not ours to bear, if we’re leaving at your request).

We have not retained any legal representation and would like to continue that way and work this out directly with you as easily as we can. In both educating ourselves in this situation and searching for a next home to rent, the unexpected and uncomfortable reality that has surfaced is that we will need significantly more money to be able to move on.

After reviewing both our needs and the average registered buyouts across San Francisco since the start of this year, a number we would easily accept would be $80,000.

I know that might be difficult to read as we know you both are provisioning for retirement. [They know we are retired and living in a trailer.] Our request for more money is neither vindictive nor something we are asking lightly. Again, we would prefer not to be in this situation at all.

If after examining your options, that amount works for you, we can firm up the move date and work out the payment details.

Also, let’s keep our discussion over email. When trying to understand what went wrong in the “hideously awkward meeting” you mentioned, we think that it was the result of not have the time and space to choose our words with the kind of care that writing affords.

Thank you for your patience in this process.

The renters

First draft of our response

Dear renters,

Oh my goodness! We had no idea that the thought of a move would distress you to the point that you’re in danger of losing your sense of recognizable continuity. A loss worth $80,000, definitely, and that’s without even figuring in the price of your integrity!

When we came up with our number, we were thinking in terms of first and last, security deposit, and a mover. We totally overlooked $65,000 for
“layers of complexity and difficulty.”

Of course, we should have realized how helpless you become in the absence of $80,000. So consider us at your service until such time as you buy a new house for a ton of money. We will just move into the downstairs and wait.

The owners

Response from lawyer: Hi: I’m writing you back right now. Just hang on!

Lawyer-approved:

Hi renters,

Thanks for writing back with your thoughts. And we know, it’s so hard to move in this climate, especially when you are trying to top up your down payment on your own San Francisco house. We totally understand — fixed costs for one more year, when you will be ready to move, would be much better for you.

Are you interested in exploring a “buyout” with a longer move-out period? For example, we may be willing to agree to refrain from selling or to assist with relocation costs in exchange for your written agreement to vacate within a year. Please let us know.

Thanks very much, the owners

Hi owners,

We appreciate your willingness to explore options and would be interested in hearing what you have in mind. Could you articulate some specific choices (including timing, relocation costs, etc) for us to go over? Then we can let you know which one(s) might work for us.

Thanks again for working through this process with us.

Hi renters,

We’re happy to work with you, and we appreciate your observation that you’d prefer not to be in this situation at all. We feel exactly the same. So the simplest thing to do, we’ve decided, is to eliminate the situation and no longer be in it.

We were happy to learn that you are working with a realtor and organizing your finances to buy your own place in the coming year. To give you the time you need, we will wait that year to sell our house, thereby eliminating the expense, disruption, and loss of continuity that a short-term rental might entail for you.

We’d like to trade postponing our sale for the year that you require, plus a $5,000 payment, for similar peace of mind in the form of a written agreement from you to vacate by June 2020.

If upon reflection you realize that you won’t need the whole year to find a new place, we’d be happy to trade $10,000 for your promise to vacate in six months. Or $7,500 for your promise to vacate in nine months.

Does that sound fair?

The owners

Hi owners,

We have been traveling and one of us has been ill so we have not been able to reply until now. Thank you for your patience.

We appreciate your flexibility and willingness to recognize our situation and work with us on a solution. The basic idea of what you are offering sounds good to us but would like to renegotiate some of the details. Specifically, we feel the amount you are offering does not reflect the rights (living in a rent controlled unit in San Francisco) we would be giving up and the risk we would be taking on by signing a commitment to vacate.

The plan to leave within a year is just that — a plan — subject to all the external complexities and whims of life (what happens if either of us lose our jobs? The housing market exponentially scales and our savings do not enable us to buy? etc.). Then suddenly we would be in a situation more dire than if we simply stayed put and you sold the house as occupied and were to negotiate/navigate an eviction with the new owners.

We also understand that you both would prefer to sell unoccupied and want the peace of mind that we will leave (be legally bound to do so) in a clearly defined time. So our proposal is that we would sign a legal commitment to vacate by June 1, 2020 for a payment up front of $30,000 (for signing away our rights to stay through a sale), and an additional payment of $13,960 upon our move out. In this proposal, we are saying that we might leave earlier than June 2020 (if we are fortunate to find a home or place that works for us between now and that date), but no later. In any case, whenever we would move out, the final payment of $13,960 would be made then, upon our departure. This total amounts to about half of what we were requesting before and seems fair considering the balance of your needs and ours.

Please let us know your thoughts on this.

Thanks, the renters

Unsent draft:

Hi renters

We regret that neither our offer to pay you statutory relocation nor our offer to delay our sale a year and pay your moving costs was to your liking. Because the reality is, we’re not going to sell our house with you in it; we’re not going to give you $45,000 while you occupy it for a year; and we are not going to give you $80,000 under any circumstance.

Instead my husband and I, along with our 30-year-old son, are moving in downstairs. I am depressed and without upper teeth. My husband is handicapped by chronic back pain, and he has COPD. My 92-year-old father lives alone in Sacramento and will probably need us to care for him soon. And as you know, we’ll be strapped because we can’t sell our house. Not the greatest of circumstances, but those are the “whims of life” to which we, but of course not you, are subject.

Yours truly, the owners

Lawyer’s edit that we had to send:

Hi renters,

We regret that neither our offer to pay you statutory relocation nor our offer to delay our sale a year and pay your moving costs was to your liking.

My husband and I, along with our 30-year-old son, are moving in to the downstairs space. I have disabling depressive disorder. My husband is handicapped by chronic back pain, and he has COPD. My 92-year-old father lives alone in Sacramento and will probably need us to care for him soon. Not the greatest of circumstances, but those are the “whims of life” to which we are subject.

This situation has disillusioned us about renting out our house, and it would be nice to see the end of it. Ultimately, we will likely go out of the rental business completely. Please let us know if you change your mind.

Sincerely, the owners

Hi owners,

We also find this situation regretful. Originally, we had took you at your word when you said that you were interested in finding a way forward that worked for everyone involved. Then you came back to us with the “statutory” amount of $13,960 and a desire for us to leave in less than 60 days. I’m sure you know that the amount you offered is the absolute minimum that a tenant is paid when they are evicted by an owner move in. In other words, if we had decided that we were not going to leave and you were to sell the house occupied, that is the amount we would have received from the new owners (if they were to even evict us). Buyouts do not follow this or any predefined pricing guidelines. So although your offer felt out of alignment with what you had said, we were still willing to trust that you had an earnest desire to negotiate in a way that actually took the realities of our situation into consideration.

When we read your offer to both delay sale and pay for us to move on, we felt that worked for us. It is just the amount that did not reflect our actual risk and need. When we communicated something that would work for us instead, you did not reply with a counter offer but instead abandoned the negotiating table. That followed with a statement that you both will be moving in with your son and mentioned the possibility of moving in your father. Since we doubt that you intend to fit your entire family into the unit downstairs, we read this as a warning that you plan to evict us with either an owner or relative move-in.

We hope this is not the case as we understand that action to result in something that doesn’t sound beneficial to either you or us. No one likes to feel disillusioned by their living situation (neither tenant nor owner). And we understand your desire to get out of the rental business. If we were to be evicted by an owner or relative movie-in, you both would end up out of, not only the renting business, but the home selling business for at least three years, based on San Francisco law. That does not sound like a desirable circumstance based on the plans you have shared with us in the past.

We encourage both of you to return to the negotiating table and hope that we can all act rationally in finding a resolution while treating each other amicably through this process.

Thank you, the renters

First draft of our response

Dear renters,

Let me reassure you that you entirely misread our communication. We have no intention of doing an owner or relative move-in. We are moving in downstairs.

My father is 92 and is developing dementia. One of us may have to be in Sacramento full-time soon to care for him. We mentioned him not as a warning, but in the hope that you would take “the actual realities of our situation into consideration.”

Furthermore, our initial offer was not a ploy. The “statutory amount” is set by the city as a reasonable recompense for being asked to move. We thought it was appropriate, even generous, given our relative circumstances. How do you think we would even get the money to pay you off?

There is no process. We are moved in downstairs and will be there for the foreseeable future.

Sincerely, the owners

What we had to send instead because the lawyer said so.

Hi renters,

Thanks for your note.

As an initial matter, we want to be clear that we have no intention of doing an Owner Move-In or Relative Owner Move-In eviction at this time. We will likely decide to exit the rental business, as is our right by law, but we have not decided when we will do that. When we decide, we will give you proper legal notice and statutory relocation payments as required by law.

The current plan of us moving downstairs makes sense for us right now. We simply cannot afford a buyout in the range you have suggested. We understand that you are unsure of your timeline, and we respect that. Our prior offer of $13,960 remains open and available if it ever makes financial sense for you.

Best, the owners

Absolutely final note to renters

Dear renters,

We’ve come to some conclusions over the past few weeks, and we thought you might be interested in why.

First and foremost, please do not move out a scintilla of a fraction of an instant before you so desire, because we’ve decided that we can’t afford to give you any money at all.

I’ve had no upper teeth for a year, and I just got implants. We’re going to pay for them with part of the money we would have given you to move out before you so desired.

My psychiatrist (whom I see only twice a year because Medicare won’t pay) believes that ketamine treatments could be of help to me. You know how much that costs, given that you charge $450 an hour to provide it. We’re going to pay for it with part of the money we would have given you to move out before you so desired.

Our son needs to get a job in San Francisco. We’re going to support him in the downstairs with the rest of the money we would have given you to move out before you so desired.

None of our previous offers was a negotiation strategy: They were sincere, based upon an assessment of our relative circumstances. And please rest assured that our current position is not vindictive — we’re just adjusting to the surprising situation as it stands and trying not to go broke in the process. We have every intention of being as courteous to you and responsive to your requests as we have always been in the past.

Sincerely, the owners

Letter we wanted to send but couldn’t.

Hi renters,

We regret that neither our offer to pay you statutory relocation nor our offer to delay our sale a year and pay your moving costs is to your liking. We’re still reeling from your opportunistic bid for $80,000. (So is everyone we know.)

How do you justify this to yourselves? With ordinances intended to protect vulnerable people who are nothing like you from predatory people who are nothing like us? The measures were never meant to shield renters from “all the complexities and whims of life.” That’s what religion is for.

Perhaps you tell yourselves that the precedents absolve you: payments to and from people you don’t know, whose circumstances you know nothing about. It’s unlikely that a majority of those payments are being made to psychiatrists and tech guys by disabled seniors who are trying to regain possession of their own house. And what if they are? As my mother used to say, If everyone did it, would that make it right? The answer (this will come as a surprise) is no.

We support the statutory payment as recompense for imposing a layer of complexity, as you so nicely put it, on renters who must move, and we support significantly more in some cases. But not in your case: a pair of high-income professionals topping up their savings for an S.F. house by extorting $80,000 from trailer-bound owners who would be in a protected class themselves if such existed for owners.

You said that you didn’t want to hold us hostage in the trailer, but it seems that your decency evaporated at the thought of a bonanza. You point out that you aren’t being vindictive. Of course you aren’t. What reason could you possibly have to feel vindictive? We fulfilled your every request. You have fueled your electric car for years on us, and heated yourselves to a toasty 80 degrees winter and summer, again on us. Have you a single complaint about how we treated you? I believe that the word you wanted was not vindictive, but venal.

We always felt that in exchange for a reasonable monthly payment, we were providing an extraordinarily nice furnished house to live in for a month, free of concerns about upkeep, breakdowns, taxes, insurance, bills, etc. With HBO even.

You apparently believe, however, that your monthly rent payment confers a lifetime sinecure for which you feel comfortable demanding nearly $100,000. Just because a rental feels like home, we must point out, it is not in fact your property. You are still, despite your proprietary feelings, renting it on a monthly basis. It is actually our house that you want $80,000 to remove yourselves from.

So this is what we’re going to have to do. We’ll move into the downstairs in-law. And we’ll wait (cordially, of course). Because we’re not going to give you any money. At all.

$80,000 is dental implants that we urgently need and cannot afford. It’s two years of full-time wages when we were still in the workforce. It’s enough for our son to finish college. It’s eating out; it’s staying in a hotel; it’s living for two years in our own house. It’s freedom for my sister from having to work herself to the bone until she’s 70 to make her mortgage. It’s a lot of things. What it’s not is your down payment.

To belabor a point, we are both retired seniors. We have lived for 10 years in a travel trailer. I have depression and can hardly manage the bills. My 92-year-old father lives alone in Sacramento. My husband has debilitating back pain.

But heaven forbid that “a layer of complexity” or exposure to “the whims of life” be imposed upon you without years of free rent to salve your savings account. If only we could charge you for the layers of difficulty and “loss of recognizable continuity” that you are causing us. What might that be worth, if such things are worth so much?

When it came down to it, you were willing to take whatever you could get from people who never wronged you in any way. Understand how flexible your morality truly is. Your integrity is sand — you’re frauds. Attending retreats and playing remora at Burning Man won’t change that.

We despise you. Detest you. But politely, of course — we don’t want to be sued as well.

And we hope sincerely that your savings plan is successful.

The owners

Addendum:

Since you’re using S.F. ordinances to rationalize holding our house for ransom, let us point out that those laws stem from a rather prejudiced view of owners as intrinsically predatory greed kings — one and all, goes the municipal thinking, they oppress and cheat the underclass stuffed into their ill-gotten slum empires — and renters as vulnerable parties in need of protection.

Back in the day, when poor tenants and landowning lords were bound by a complex web of mutual obligation, blanket assumptions of landlord power and tenant powerlessness were likely valid. But it’s not so cut and dried today.

Let us turn to our own situation for an example. The two of you, we find, are not marginalized tenant farmers clinging to an ancestral cottage. You’re a psychiatrist ($450/hour private practice, staff position at prestigious hospital, numerous side gigs) and a highly paid tech bro who expect the owners of a house you rented to fund your upkeep while you fatten your savings account. Nor do we fit the bill as predatory lords of the land: We’re elderly people who had to move out of their house into a trailer to afford the mortgage.

You know you don’t deserve our support — you’re far better off than we are.

And how do you justify your demand that we give you more money to vacate precisely because you paid us less money while you were renting? Suppose you booked underpriced rooms at the Hyatt until it went bankrupt. If comparable rooms at the Sheraton were $50 more, would you expect a $50 payoff from the defunct Hyatt every time you stayed at the Sheraton?

Yes, you would. But what you should have done was save up while the Hyatt was still in business — or choose rooms appropriate to your budget at Motel 6. Do you grasp the parallel to the current situation?

Perhaps you’ve looked up what we paid for our house, compared it to what we might gain in a sale, and concluded that your $80,000 shakedown is justified. It isn’t. You know nothing of our circumstances, our prospects and obligations. How can you calculate what we have sacrificed, what we need or deserve?

We devoted years to creating our house. Every single surface, every nook, every damn cranny: months and years — decades — of labor. It’s a work of art. What claim do you have to any part of that? None is the answer, in case you were thinking quite a bit.* You’ve done nothing but sit tight and call us when the Internet goes down.

And what claim do you have to the appreciation that took place over the 30 years that we were living in a construction site or a trailer? The answer is, again, none. And the reason (try to remember) is that you do not own our house. You rented it for six years. You’ve already gotten what you paid for.

Would you consider yourselves entitled to shares of Hyatt stock because you stayed overnight and broke the faucet? Is your rent-paying presence and our obligation to handle your repairs such a blessing to us that we owe you benefits of ownership in return?

We saddled ourselves with taxes, decades of remodeling, maintenance, insurance, and a mortgage specifically to increase our likelihood of long-term housing security; in other words, we bought our house so as to be un-kick-out-able (which didn’t work, but such are the whims of life).

Your monthly payment does not buy that benefit of ownership. What it buys in a reasonable world is 31 days and fair notice. The concept of renting is that one spends money to gain usage of something for a limited time. Again, by the end of the month, you’ve gotten everything that you paid for at the beginning of the month.

Actually, even more than you paid for. For your monthly payment, along with a month of accommodation featuring panoramic views and no utility bills, you got your own people! A nice couple at your beck and call to replace faucets, change lightbulbs, buy new appliances, fix the furnace, trouble-shoot the Internet — that kind of thing.

Those people, you may recall, were us — the very people forced out of our house by difficulties not of our making. (Difficulties that we naïvely neglected to bill someone else for — thereby proving ourselves the sort of chumps who “leave money on the table,” as one renter attorney described it.)

It wasn’t easy to wait on you. We were living in a travel trailer — it was hard. But we babied you because we believe that in addition to buying nice shelter at a fair price for a period of time, rent payments buy freedom from the hassle of keeping up that shelter.

Somehow, though, as time has passed, you’ve become convinced that continued babying is not only your right but also our responsibility. Like entitled poohbahs, you expect us to maintain you in the manner, and at the rent, to which you have become accustomed.

In deciding that a buyout of your purported right and our supposed responsibility is worth $80,000, perhaps you looked up what our house might sell for empty, compared that to what it might sell for with you in it, and on that basis decided how much your exit is worth.** Which is why the word venal comes to mind.

As to your plaints about losing “recognizable continuity” (whatever that is) and gaining “a layer of complexity”: Are not vicissitudes a part of life? Or perhaps it’s just our lives that have been regularly beset by vagaries. Given that moving distorts your sense of continuity $80,000 worth, your lives thus far must have been downright charmed.

If you’ve come to expect a warm bath as your right, it’s not surprising that you believe yourselves owed a payout when a middling complexity ruffles your lake of entitlement. But really, grow up. You’re educated adults — it’s time that you rowed your own boat.

And as to who’s layering more complexity onto whom, you two are way out in front. We are retired prisoners in a travel trailer. One of us has major depressive disorder and the other high blood pressure. As you crank up the stress on us, where is your professed passion for harm reduction? (By the way, $80,000 is a “number we would easily accept,” as you so smoothly put it, to compensate us for the major pain in the neck that you two have turned out to be.)

You’re posturing frauds, both of you. Your morality is as flexible as a willow whip.

Sincerely, the owners

Two years pass.

In April 2021, the renters inform us that they may be moving out due to a “housing opportunity”!

5/20/2021: Hi owners:

We just wanted to give you both a heads up that we might be moving out on July 1st. There is a housing opportunity coming together for us and if everything works out, we will be sure to give you the proper 30-day notice. This email is not that formal notice; we just wanted to let you know that you will hear from us soon. Thank you, the renters

7/1/2021: Just want to give you the update: Our other housing opportunity fell through. So we will not be moving out for the foreseeable future. Thanks for understanding. The renters

So that was that.

Husband’s stage 4 cancer is “aggressive” and not responding to treatment. We are house-poor and paying bills with borrowed money. I wrote to the renters to explain our situation on 8/16/2021.

Dear renters,

Two years ago, we asked you to move so that we could sell our house and enjoy retirement.

Since then, my father died. Husband was diagnosed with inoperable Stage 4 salivary gland cancer and underwent six weeks of intensive chemo- and radiation therapy. The cancer has spread to his liver and his scapula and a vertebra. He is about to begin six more weeks of chemotherapy.

Renter, with your medical background you know the implications.

We would like to experience what time we have left unburdened by financial stress and the complexities and expense of managing our house.

Given this situation, we are reiterating our standing offer. We will give you $14,000 to be out by February 2022, six months from now. Sooner would be better — that is the latest. We don’t know how much time we have.

It is reassuring to know that you are now in a position to take advantage of “housing opportunities.”

Two years ago you wrote: [Our request] seems fair considering the balance of your needs and ours.

Please reconsider the balance of your needs and ours and let us know if our house will be returned to us before Andre dies.

Yours truly, the owners

There is no response. I write again eight days later.

8/24/2021: Dear renters,

We need to plan for what time is left. Andre is very sick from the second chemo. Please be kind enough to let us know what our options are with regard to the future.

Yours truly, the owners

There is no response. I write again on 8/27, eleven days after the first email:

Dear renters,

Quotes from psychiatrist renter’s Instagram:

“When I’m feeling lost or don’t know what is the ‘right’ next step to take, I try to remember to look to the ways I can be of service to those around me.”

“For lasting change to take root, we must continue in our efforts to show up to each other with honesty and curiosity and compassion.”

You are branding yourself as an empathetic mentor and intuitive therapist. The silent treatment, obviously, does not accord with your purported persona of compassion and honesty, etc.

We would like to enjoy what life we have left together. Please respond.

Yours truly, the owners

Approximately an hour later, we get a response.

We have been traveling for the last week and will respond to your email next week, after we return.

Also, I’ve noticed that your message below (from 8/24) was never received by either of us. I’m not sure that it sent.

We wrote back soon thereafter.

Dear renters,

Oddly, the 8/24 message is in my sent folder. And since I first wrote on 8/16, 11 days ago, I imagine that you received that email before you began traveling. It was our impression that you were home until a few days ago.

But thank you for letting us know that you will respond at your convenience to the news that Husband is probably dying of cancer.

Yours truly, the owners

On 8/30, the renters wrote:

We are so sorry to hear that Husband is sick. He is so kind, helpful, and always brings good feeling with his presence. We both imagine this must be such a difficult time for the family. The next few weeks are dense with work for both of us, but we will also include time to look into our options with respect to the timeline you are requesting. We’ll let you know what we can find by the end of September. The renters

The end of September arrives:

Hi owners,

We wanted to reach out to you today to give you an update on our search for a new home.

Since our last communication, we have been scouring the online listings and visiting a number of properties. I’m sure you can imagine, it has been quite the whirlwind. Home hunting has proven to carry quite the learning curve. Two weeks ago, we came very close to getting one property, then at the last moment, it fell through.

We are working with both a real estate agent as well as a family friend who is helping make us more competitive in our offers. With these two indispensable centers of support, we will continue our hunt.

We are doing everything we can so that we can accept your offer and meet your requested timeline of our being out before February 2022. We understand how precious this timeline is to you both.

Thank you for your patience and we will continue to keep you updated as new developments continue to emerge.

the renters

January 6, 2022. No communication from the renters regarding a 30-day notice to leave before February. I write again:

Dear renters,

Since August we have been hoping to hear that you had arranged housing for yourselves, either a purchase or another rental, and would be out of our house by February 2022.

We have waited the two years you wanted, plus six more months. We are retired and house-poor. We have been supporting the house on borrowed money and Social Security. Linda is 70 years old. The chemo did not work. We don’t know if Husband is going to die.

We cannot wait any longer. Everything we worked for all our lives is tied up in the house. We need to sell the house now, and we cannot sell the house with you in it.

What do you require from us to leave by the end of March?

We are short of time, as you know. Thank you in advance for understanding.

Yours truly,

the owners

January 8, 2022: no response from renters

Keywords:

self-interest; moral compromise; taking advantage; unintended consequence; our first house cost $84,000; sweat equity; infestation; grasshopper and ant; shyster; grifter; schemer; we’re living in a trailer for god’s sake; feet of clay; self-blindness; fake; phony; whited sepulcher; more than a hint of narcissism.

Footnotes:

Rent Ordinance Mission

The Rent Ordinance explains its mission as follows: “(1) There is a shortage of decent, safe, and sanitary housing in the City and County of San Francisco, resulting in a critically low vacancy factor. (2) Tenants displaced as a result of their inability to pay increased rents must relocate, but as a result of such housing shortage are unable to find decent, safe and sanitary housing at affordable rent levels. Aware of the difficulty in finding decent housing, some tenants attempt to pay requested rent increases, but as a consequence must expend less on other necessities of life. This situation has had a detrimental effect on substantial numbers of renters in the City, especially creating hardships on senior citizens, persons on fixed incomes and low and moderate income households.”

Where, dear renters, do you find yourselves in the above description? Does your situation apply to the mission of the Rent Ordinance?

No, it doesn’t. Your opportunism is breathtaking. For someone posing as a high-end life coach, you do not have a grip on what it takes: empathy, for one thing; integrity, for another. You are a hollow straw.

*“How to Calculate a Buyout Demand”

“Add about 18 months’ worth of the difference in old rent vs new rent to your budget. Next, rack your brain and think of any costs you can associate with moving. I mean everything, including cost to board your pets while you move. Add in your original deposit plus interest for the years it’s been held….Add in movers, moving supplies, cost of new things you’ll need in the new place, lawyers fees and do not forget TAXES . . . add in any damn thing you can think of. Then add a contingency fee of 10%. Then add a 20% negotiation pad to your bottom line number. In the end, your number should be high, way higher than what you’d ever expect to get. This is part of the ‘dance.’ But then again, you don’t want that number to be so ridiculously high that negotiations fold. Keep it on the high end of real…. Just say something along the lines of “The number that makes me comfortable to leave my home of X number of years is X.” Do not give a lot of exposition to justify yourself. Sometimes, these numbers sound like big numbers to us renters, but to a landlord who stands to make a LOT, a ridiculous lot of money by kicking you out, these numbers are not high to them. Your landlord may cry that they ‘don’t have the money’ but these numbers don’t really mean a lot to them.” Anna Metcalf

**How to figure out how much to hold up for

“So, on average, if you have a rent-controlled apartment and the landlord wants to buy you out, here’s the formula to calculate the maximum a landlord would be willing to pay you: Take the square footage of your apartment and multiply it by $122, which is the premium the landlord would earn selling the apartment if it was vacant. The amount a landlord should be willing to pay will be higher than this amount if your rent is substantially below the market rate, and lower if it’s only a little below the market rate.” Rohin Dhar