In Memory of Affordable Housing

A Special Tribute to the Greed and Loathing of San Francisco Land-Owners

 

By The Serfs on Their Turf

Things are tough all over, partly in thanks to the greed and cynicism that grips San Francisco landlords. Having learned that the impending threat of earthquakes doesn't put a dent in their property value, S.F. landlords are jacking up prices on their cookie cutter hovels to unprecedented levels. In the midst of inner city government housing being torn down to make way for condos, the passage of landlord move-in evictions, and the ignition of divide-and-conquer competition among renters (undermining us all), many tenants are being forced out of the city in search of cheaper pastures.

The competition for housing in "Frisco" (the city's resurrected tourist-trade moniker) is fierce. Anyone who's looked for housing lately in San Francisco knows that a typical vacant apartment viewing begins with about 40 or 50 people, arriving a half hour before the official viewing time, all competitively cramming inside for a look at some overpriced hole-in-the-wall. Most of us would be hard-pressed to compete with these prospective tenants as frequent flyer miles, free consulting work, and offers of extra rent are dangled before a landlord as bargaining chips for a home.

One recent 'for rent' ad in the Sunday classifieds invited interested tenants to attend an 'auction' for a one-bedroom apartment. The highest bidder would walk away with an overpriced 12-month lease. What a bargain!

Landlords also usually run 'credit checks' on you. By submitting to a credit check, a person provides just about every intimate detail of their life and monetary worth to a landlord, a perfect stranger. Landlords submit the information you provide to a credit bureau which issues a profile of your credit history, previous places of employment, and reports on instances of any past evictions. Under the current law, a person is not privy to the information provided on his or her own credit report.

At these mass apartment viewings, it's not to see landlords collecting a $25 credit check fee from scores of interested applicants. Charging for credit checks is illegal - everyone knows this, but no one is willing to oppose this nefarious practice. The greedier landlords deposit these scores of checks and there's no way to verify that anyone checked your credit in the first place. Not bad for an hour's work.

What happens if you don't 'have' credit because you were never stupid enough to get a credit card, sign a lease to a corrupt landlord, or sign away your life to student loans? Not 'having credit' in this country is akin to not having an identity since no one will rent you a home, a car - or even a video without some proof that you've bought into the American Dream hook, line, and sinker.

Well, that's the state of living in San Francisco these days: a city where people are forced to live on top of each other in apartments that have no heat or other basic amenities such as hot water or tubs; a town where what few squatters are left get forced out of their homes; a place with an ever-growing homeless population.

"What San Francisco needs is another big earthquake," quip people when confronted with the dire housing situation and high cost of living. It's sad that our hopes of salvation are rooted in catastrophic natural disasters which, in the end, would have little effect in curbing the greed and loathing that grips the landed gentry in good ole Frisco.