Can a Family With Autistic Child Be Kicked Out of Their Apartments?
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SAN FRANCISCO — For 13 years, the homey, plant-filled apartment on the edge of the city has been a rent-controlled oasis for Serena Chietti and her autistic son, Marco Mondini.
The walls and bookshelves are filled with photos of Marco as a babe and as a smiling, strawberry-blonde eye-schooler. From the living room windows, yous tin encounter all the way to the ocean. "You can see whales sometimes," Chietti said,gazing out at the water.
Chietti may before long accept to say goodbye to that view and the home where her son, at present 14, grew up. Similar many other long-time Bay Area renters who pay below-market rates for desirable backdrop, she's facing a looming eviction.
Chietti's landlord says she's been a problem tenant for years and has sparked multiple complaints from neighbors. But Chietti's lawyer suspects her eviction is at to the lowest degree partly motivated by money. If she moves out, her landlord tin raise the rent on the two-bedroom, Outer Richmond apartment from the $1,834 Chietti pays now to the market rate of more than $iii,000 a calendar month.
The Bay Area'due south ruby-red-hot rental market place, tenant advocates say, has created an incentive for landlords to remove long-term tenants from rent-controlled units and replace them with renters who will pay more. Against this backdrop, thousands of local tenants are hit with eviction lawsuits each year.
"It'southward bad," said San Francisco-based attorney Jason Wolford, who represents Chietti. "It seems like anyone who doesn't make a tech worker'southward bacon is getting encouraged, for lack of a improve term, to leave — either with buyout propositions or eviction threats or bodily evictions. It seems rare for a person who's been in a hire-controlled unit for more than 10 years to actually be unscathed."
Between 2014 and 2016, San Francisco County landlords filed ix,826 unlawful detainer lawsuits — the legal forerunner to an eviction. (Landlords first serve a tenant with an eviction find, and if the tenant refuses to move out, the landlord follows upwardly in court with an unlawful detainer complaint. The instance and so may go to trial, and if the landlord wins, law enforcement could be called to remove the tenant). In Santa Clara County during that time, there were x,546 filings, and in Alameda Canton there were 16,401, according to a May report by tenants rights group Tenants Together. The report, which does not reveal how many of those filings resulted in tenants moving out, is the offset to accurately track California unlawful detainer filings canton-past-county.
In several Bay Area cities, including San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland, rent-control rules protect certain long-term tenants from big rent hikes. But those rules reset in one case the tenant moves out, and landlords tin can accuse the adjacent tenant the market-charge per unit rent. In those cities and a handful of others, landlords generally can't evict a tenant unless they have "only cause" — such as a tenant creating a nuisance or failing to pay rent — or the owner is taking the unit off the rental market. In Nov, California voters will decide whether cities should be allowed to impose even stricter renter protections.
Despite existing protections, lawyers who correspond tenants say their clients are getting evicted over infractions that, in a calmer housing market, likely would be forgiven. In cities without "just cause" ordinances, renters are getting evicted for no reason, the lawyers say. In San Mateo Canton, for example 395 "no-cause" eviction cases were reported betwixt July one, 2014, and June 30, 2015 — the near recent numbers bachelor — compared to 437 cases stemming from a failure to pay rent, according to a report by the Legal Assist Guild of San Mateo Canton, Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto and the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project.
Santa Clara-based attorney Todd Rothbard, who represents landlords in rental disputes, said almost eviction cases are filed as a final resort.
"They're non going willy-nilly trying to evict decent tenants," Rothbard said, noting that landlords' income depends on regular hire payments. "They do desire to evict the bad actors that make life miserable for the adept tenants."
Thanks to San Francisco'due south rent control ordinance, Chietti'south rent has gone up just about $200 in 13 years. If her rent hadn't been kept artificially low, Chietti, who said she makes about $2,700 a month working as a managing director at a Salvation Ground forces shop and as a bookkeeper for her parents' vino-importing business and receives financial help from her ex-husband, would have been priced out long ago.
If Chietti loses her instance, which is scheduled to go to trial June 25, she said she'll probably have to move into her parents' house in the Marina.
"It's terrible because living under these weather is non comfy either," she said. "But where are we going to go? This has been our home. And to detect anything like this is impossible."
Chietti's landlord, Ralph Dayan, says Chietti and her son are a nuisance to the edifice, detailing the claims against her in a March unlawful detainer lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court. He says the mother and son's continual "stomping" on the floor prompted their downstairs neighbors to move out. Dayan claims Chietti has caused disturbances in the edifice while intoxicated — a complaint 2 neighbors also raised in interviews with this news organization. And Dayan complained nearly Marco'due south throwing glass bottles from the window of their flat.
"This is a state of affairs where they got a lot of complaints, and the landlord decided to put his foot downwardly," said Dayan'south lawyer, Burlingame-based Edward Singer. He denied that Dayan, who he said does non "evict people lightly," is trying to kick Chietti out so he tin can raise the rent.
Chietti is attention Alcoholics Bearding meetings at present, she said, and the ii neighbors who complained about her coming abode intoxicated told this news system there have been no contempo problems. Chietti as well admitted that Marco went through a phase where he liked throwing glass bottles of condiments out of the window to hear them break. Merely she said they dealt with that result in therapy, and the behavior stopped.
Marco is protected past state and federal laws shielding people with disabilities from housing discrimination, said Wolford, Chietti'southward attorney. The landlord must attempt to make "reasonable accommodations" for Marco, which he has not done, Wolford said.
Chietti said other claims in the lawsuit are exaggerated or made-up — such as an allegation that she banged on her upstairs neighbors' door at 4 a.m. earlier this year. Ivy Creed, the neighbor who lives in that apartment, confirmed that never happened.
If she loses her fight, Chietti is near worried about Marco, who divides his time between Chietti, her ex-hubby and her parents. Marco, who loves fishing and tin place every Beatles song within the beginning few notes, doesn't handle modify well — which is common for children with autism. He wears the same outfit every twenty-four hour period, a Beatles shirt, black pants and black Skechers.
No affair how much Chietti tries to reassure Marco that he'll ever have a identify to live, he'south started to shoulder some of her worries.
"He's thinking it'southward going to happen," Chietti said, "and he's going to come here and all his stuff's going to be gone."
Source: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/06/19/where-are-we-going-to-go-single-mom-autistic-son-face-eviction/
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