{"id":13055,"date":"2019-10-12T10:20:54","date_gmt":"2019-10-12T17:20:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=13055"},"modified":"2019-10-12T10:20:56","modified_gmt":"2019-10-12T17:20:56","slug":"supervisor-candidate-accused-of-evicting-tenants-a-cardinal-san-franciscan-sin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2019\/10\/12\/supervisor-candidate-accused-of-evicting-tenants-a-cardinal-san-franciscan-sin\/","title":{"rendered":"Supervisor candidate accused of evicting tenants, a cardinal San Franciscan sin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/2zwmzkbocl625qdrf2qqqfok-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/18912336_web1_IMG_0018-608x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/author\/joseph-fitzgerald\/\">JOE FITZGERALD RODRIGUEZ<\/a><\/li><li>Oct. 10, 2019 7:00 p.m. (SFExaminer.com)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/2zwmzkbocl625qdrf2qqqfok-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/SFExaminer-OnGuard-final-V1.jpg\" alt=\"On Guard column header Joe\" class=\"wp-image-10278\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>She\u2019s talked tough on protecting tenants in The City\u2019s rental crisis, but now Supervisor Vallie Brown is taking heat for evicting tenants herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brown is running in this November\u2019s election to keep her appointed job representing Japantown, the Haight, Inner Sunset, and Western Addition, among other District 5 neighborhoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But those supporting her chief opponent, tenants advocate Dean Preston, alleged Thursday that no one in those neighborhoods, which are filled with vulnerable renters, should vote for someone who themselves evicted tenants \u2014 and they brought the documentation to show Brown once kicked folks to the curb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those court documents, first reported by our sister paper SF Weekly, show Brown conducted an owner-move-in eviction when she purchased a Fillmore Street building for $275,000 in 1994.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brown moved in, and apparently after fraught negotiations over how much rent the tenants could pay to help renovate the building with needed repairs, she and her co-owners gave \u2018em the boot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of those tenants, Thomas L. Cotton, was 56 and paid $206 per month for his apartment there for 20 years. While San Francisco\u2019s rental market in 1994 was far from the boiling, bubbling cauldron of awful it is today, he likely experienced a sticker shock after that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brown maintains, however, that Cotton neverlived there \u2014 he only ever used the space for storage, her campaign spokesperson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Still, three of the evicted tenants petitioned the rent board for wrongful eviction against Brown and lost, records show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After living at the Fillmore Street property for 20 years herself, Brown sold the property for $2.3 million following the death of her partner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>San Francisco tenants advocates, who are noted Preston supporters, held a press conference outside the building on 152 Fillmore to scorch the supervisor for her eviction history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gloria Berry, a San Francisco native and former supervisor candidate, said that three times in her life she has been evicted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cFillmore was a historically black neighborhood, which was beautiful and thriving when I grew up. It\u2019s personal, you know? It hurts,\u201d Berry said. \u201cThere were black seniors living here in this building that were evicted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Randy Shaw, director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic and editor of Beyond Chron, has long espoused on San Francisco housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He told me that just how much hardship Brown\u2019s tenants faced after an eviction in San Francisco circa 1994 depends on how low their rent was in the first place \u2014 though he did say 1994 was a \u201cslow\u201d period in San Francisco real estate. This wasn\u2019t the tech boom, yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s always the case in San Francisco if you\u2019ve been in a place for a long period of time anything on the market will be significantly more,\u201d Shaw said. \u201cIt makes an incredible difference.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We don\u2019t know much about how the tenants fared besides Cotton and his roommate, who moved to Florida. Another tenant eventually moved into public housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brown\u2019s campaign spokespeople said the occupants weren\u2019t paying rent at all. None of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I asked the long-time San Francisco observer how he thinks voters will react, Shaw said \u201cIt\u2019s really hard to know. I think when you do a fraudulent eviction, as Amos Brown did in his supervisors race and lost to Gerardo Sandoval because of that\u201d in the year 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this case, \u201cit will really depend on how Vallie explains what occurred,\u201d Shaw said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brown told SF Weekly that she and her co-owners needed to renovate the place, which was beset by mold, and negotiated with the tenants to adjust the rent to do so. Brown and her co-owners only moved to evict them only after negotiations came to a standstill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cTenants felt, for paying rent, the place was too much of a wreck,\u201d Brown told SF Weekly. \u201cWe wanted to keep people there and we didn\u2019t have help.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Preston\u2019s supporters think it should be a flashpoint for voters in the neighborhoods Brown or Preston would represent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt was just as wrong to evict tenants 25 years ago as it would be today,\u201d tenants advocate Jennifer Fieber said in a press release. \u201cThe last person we need in City Hall is someone who would personally evict, displace and profit off the misery of long-term tenants forced from their homes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Cody McFarland contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>On Guard prints the news and raises hell each week. Email Fitz at joe@sfexaminer.com, follow him on Twitter and Instagram @FitztheReporter, and Facebook at facebook.com\/FitztheReporter.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/2zwmzkbocl625qdrf2qqqfok-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/18912336_web1_IMG_0022.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/2zwmzkbocl625qdrf2qqqfok-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/18912336_web1_IMG_0022.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JOE FITZGERALD RODRIGUEZ Oct. 10, 2019 7:00 p.m. (SFExaminer.com) She\u2019s talked tough on protecting tenants in The City\u2019s rental crisis, but now Supervisor Vallie Brown is taking heat for evicting tenants herself. Brown is running in this November\u2019s election to keep her appointed job representing Japantown, the Haight, Inner Sunset,&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2019\/10\/12\/supervisor-candidate-accused-of-evicting-tenants-a-cardinal-san-franciscan-sin\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13055"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13055"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13056,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13055\/revisions\/13056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}