How Renters Work The System To Live For Free In One of America's Most Expensive Cities

sfweekly.com

5 points·alaskamiller··3 comments

This is hardly news to anyone that has been a landlord in the last twenty years in any state. Residential Real Estate law is so screwed up and has encouraged this type of behavior for years.

And where is the Hacker News connection?

From the article: And San Francisco has its share of heartless landlords. One extreme example is the terror tactics allegedly employed by property owners Kip and Nicole Macy, who were charged with numerous felonies earlier this year for, among other things, cutting the support beams from one tenant's floor, burglarizing another's apartment, and cutting off utilities to another.

The key word here is "allegedly". As in "alleged by a tenant who doesn't pay his rent and is fighting eviction".

Cutting beams makes no sense! That would be a stupid and heartless landlord. The apartment is no longer rentable for the next tenant, and repairs are likely to cost a lot.

I've had friends here in Houston whose landlords have lollygagged with fixing the water heater and the air conditioner -- for about half a year. The landlord of the friend with the broken water heater tried not cashing her rent checks for several months in order to evict her ahead of the lease. My friend just explained that she had been sending checks, and she also had the cash on hand and just handed the amount due over to her landlord in front of the judge.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com