Thursday, July 10, 2014

Real Estate Developers Want To Evict 98-Year-Old Woman To Turn Her Apartment Into Condos

Real Estate Developers Want To Evict 98-Year-Old Woman To Turn Her Apartment Into Condos

"The company is using a 1986 state law called the Ellis Act to boot Phillips from her apartment in a building at 55 Dolores Street. That property was bought in late 2012 for about $2.5 million, according to Trulia.com, marking a nearly $1.2 million profit for the previous owners who had bought it in early 2011. In April, 2013, the new owners served Phillips with an eviction notice...The man behind the company has used the Ellis Act 43 times in the past 10 years, according to the group. Ellis Act evictions fell in the wake of the financial crisis, but have been on the rise again as the economy has recovered and San Francisco property values have spiked over the past two years.  The law was intended to protect landlords who wanted to get out of the business from being forced to continue renting properties they would prefer to sell. But the majority of Ellis Act evictions in recent years have been initiatedby speculators rather than landlords, according to Steve Collier of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. “What we’ve seen is groups of investors are banding together to buy property, usually it’s when a landlord dies and it’s sold as an estate sale, or when someone just wants to sell to retire and then the speculator buys the property [and] evicts the tenants by using the Ellis Act,” he told the local NBC News affiliate in October."
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That's just what San Francisco needs:  more overpriced condos.

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