There should be no more talk of a “San Francisco exodus,” as rents are spiking here more than anywhere in the nation, and apartments are leasing faster in SF than in any other city in the US.

San Francisco went through a phase for the past couple years where we were the only major US metropolitan area where rents stayed below pre-pandemic levels, while the other cities saw their rents breaking the pre-pandemic ceiling. But that trend started to reverse around late 2024 and early 2025, when data began showing that SF rents were rising at a faster rate than anywhere in the US.

Well sorry apartment-hunters, but that trend is now accelerating even more, even if rent levels haven't quite reached 2019 levels yet. The Chronicle reports that San Francisco apartments are leasing faster than in any other city, or at least faster than any other city that the online marketplace Apartment List assessed in their most recent study. And the Chronicle speculates, probably correctly, that San Francisco’s AI hiring spree is the cause of this apartment madness.

The Chronicle sifts through Apartment Lists’s data, and finds that the average number of days a San Francisco apartment sits on the market before finding a taker is currently 20 days (that number was an average of 46.7 days as recently as January 2024). That’s the shortest average “days on market” figure SF has seen since July 2019, when it was 18.2 days.

That data also shows that SF rents have jumped by 12% over the last year, higher than any other US metro that the analysis took into account. That conclusion is backed up by another study published last month by Zumper, which KTVU reports showed that SF rents had increased by 13% between July 2024 and July 2025. That report also includes micro neighborhood data, showing the largest annual rent increases were in Hayes Valley (13.5% increase), South of Market (11.4%), Civic Center (10.9%) and South Beach (9.3%).

And for good measure, Zillow is chiming in too with their own data saying that the average SF apartment rent has increased by $250 over the last year (and $150 in just the last month!). That platform pegs the current average San Francisco rent at $3,650 (across units of all sizes), while Zumper has it at $3,400.

Critics will say that this is because San Francisco hasn’t built much housing stock in recent years, and that’s true. But market conditions like high interest rates and construction costs have been keeping housing projects in limbo for years, and developers are often not building even when they’ve got permits to do so.

None of that is likely to change in the short term, so we probably have to get used to that fact that San Francisco is once again going to be one of the most exceptionally high-rent cities in the nation.

Related: Rents Rose Last Year In SF Faster Than Any Other US City [SFist]

Image: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 02: A "for rent" sign posted on the exterior of an apartment building on June 02, 2021 in San Francisco, California. After San Francisco rental prices plummeted during the pandemic shutdown, prices have surged back to pre-pandemic levels. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

People were projecting “Lower the rent! It’s too damn high” onto the State Capitol building Sunday night, and renters are rallying there again today, in support of a statewide rent control bill that would cut maximum rent increases from 10% to just 5%.

You may have seen a dust-up in the news a couple weeks ago, where it was discovered that some landlord-affiliated group was paying fake activists to protest against rent control in Concord, as that city mulls rent control laws like those we have in Oakland and San Francisco. But a similar battle is playing out statewide, as NBC Bay Area reports on a statewide rent control measure that’s brought renters out rallying in Sacramento both Sunday night and Monday.    

They were at it Sunday night, projecting “Lower the rent! It’s too damn high” onto the California State Capitol building, and more demonstrations are planned for Monday. The bill itself, sponsored by East San Jose state Assemblymember Ash Kalra, passed its first committee vote last week.

“With renters making up roughly half of the state’s population, California must take every step to help keep families from being displaced, keep workers near their jobs, and ensure no one is pushed into homelessness due to a substantial rent increase,” Kalra said when announcing his bill. “I am honored to author AB 1157, the Affordable Rent Act, and grateful to be joined by a large coalition in support and coauthors who recognize existing law is not enough — these are safeguards we must bolster.”

As CalMatters explains, Kalra’s bill would lower the annual allowable maximum rent increase from 10% to 5%. It would also extend rent control to single-family homes, and make permanent some rent control measures that are scheduled to sunset in 2030.

As we see above, SF’s own state Assemblymember Matt Haney voted for the rent control measure when it passed the Assembly's Housing Committee last week. But it’s a contentious bill, and the California Apartment Association is gearing up to fight this one hard, saying that it would end up taking housing off the market.

“Single-family homeowners, they come from the Bay Area,” California Apartment Association executive vice president of state government affairs Debra Carlton told that committee before their vote. “They will not be able to continue with these types of rent caps and have indicated they will not. Many of them also suffered from COVID, they did not get any rent for those three years.”

Of course, California voters rejected the Prop 33 statewide rent control measure just this past November, which opponents of this measure will surely point out, as the bill heads to the Assembly's Judiciary Committee.

Related: Rents Rose Last Year In SF Faster Than Any Other US City [SFist]

Image: @HousingNowCA via Twitter

California rent control advocates could score one of their biggest wins ever this November 5 if they pass Prop 33, which would legalize rent control across the state, and effectively repeal the 1995 Costa-Hawkins Act.

There is a humongous, massively significant rent control measure on your November 5 California ballot called Prop 33 that could extend rent control protections to hundreds of thousands, if not millions more housing units across California.  

SFist is not going to change your mind on the merits of rent control. You've probably already made up your mind. You either think rent control is an important key to keeping housing affordable, or a complete scourge that inhibits new housing production.

But we should inform you what Prop 33 would do if passed, and why it's so important you vote your conscience (or the interests of your wallet) on it.

Prop 33 would allow local jurisdictions to limit how much a landlord can increase a tenant’s rent every year. Or rather, it would remove any local restrictions on rent control, effectively repealing the state’s Costa–Hawkins Rental Housing Act of 1995. That Costa-Hawkins Act carved out exceptions that prohibited cities from enacting rent control for single-family homes, condos, and any apartments built after 1995. (And in San Francisco, it's any apartments built after 1979).

If it passed, Prop 33 would not mandate rent control across California. It would just give city governments the option of implementing whatever forms of rent control they wish.

But this would absolutely change the rental landscape of San Francisco. The Examiner reported in July that more than 100,000 SF housing units are currently exempt from rent control, according to an analysis of city data from Supervisor Dean Preston’s office. Moreover, Supervisor Aaron Peskin is already pushing a measure to extend rent control to all San Francisco rental units, though that could only take effect if this Prop 33 measure passes.

California voters have already rejected repealing Costa-Hawkins twice in recent years, in 2018 and 2020. And Governor Gavin Newsom signed a sort-of rent control bill in 2019 that capped annual rent increases at 5% plus adjustments for inflation.

The anti-Prop 33 campaign has raised more than $105 million, according to a CalMatters analysis, with leading donors including the California Small Business Association, landlord lobbies, and the California Republican Party. The campaign for Prop 33 has raised nearly $42 million to support the measure, largely from LA’s ever-controversial AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the California Democratic Party, and a host of nurses’ groups, unions, and tenant organizations.

But despite the opponents’ sizable financial advantage, Prop 33 is currently somewhat ahead in the polls. According to a new USC/CSU-Long Beach poll published Monday in Politico, 37% support Prop 33, 33% oppose it, and just under 33% are still undecided.

So wait, maybe some people haven’t made up their mind on how they feel about rent control? If you’re one of those people, you can check out your voter guide’s arguments for and against Prop 33 before you make your decision.

Note: An earlier version of this post identified California YIMBY as a donor to the No on 33 campaign. California YIMBY opposes Prop 33, but is not a donor to the No on 33 campaign,

Related: Concord Is On Track to Get Rent Control, More Bay Area Cities May Follow [SFist]

Image: @housingrightsSF via Twitter

In March of 2015, Debra Follingstad's Facebook post went viral, a story that served as a "sign of the times" anecdote about the state of San Francisco eviction scares and housing horrors. In hindsight, the situation was actually sort of singular in its weirdness, and in the end, the tables have turned for the parties involved, as San Francisco magazine learns in an update to Follingstad's saga.

Follingstad, who works as an acupuncturist, had been in her Bernal Heights apartment for 10 years before it changed hands to Nadia Lama — whose father owned several buildings in the neighborhood, and willed this one to her after his death. In order to get Follingstad, who lived on the upper floor, and another tenant living in the downstairs area, out of the building, Lama allegedly first bullied the lower-floor tenant out. His unit wasn't legal, though he had been in it for a long time, and he had no recourse. Once he was gone, Lama converted his in-law apartment into "storage space," ripping out his bathroom. Then in March 2015, Nadia Lama upped the rent at the supposedly rent-controlled building from the $2,145 she had been paying to a whopping $8,900. As a single-family home, Lama claimed, as the building had been at least on paper all along (with the in-law unit not considered as such) rent-control didn't apply. For the $8,900 a month plus a deposit of more than $12,000, Lama offered to rent Follingstad the whole place. All told, the price was way more than she or likely anyone else was going to pay for the apartment, and it was all a ploy in the end so that Lama herself could move in.

The novel tactic, probably not applicable in many other situations, was a de facto eviction but Lama and her attorney didn't believe it required the work of an actual Ellis Act or owner move-in eviction and the ensuing buyout or mandated relocation fees. After Follingstad was displaced, she bounced around, staying with friends and looking for permanent housing, and a year after her ersatz eviction she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She moved in with her boyfriend while she went through radiation treatments. Meanwhile, for what she claimed was essentially a wrongful eviction, Follingstad sued Lama, and a week before a jury trial was set to begin, the landlord agreed to a $400,000 settlement.

That's a lot more than the $9,250 that an owner move-in eviction relocation payment would have cost Lama had she just done this properly two years ago. In fact, it's that missing relocation payment times forty. As Follingstad's lawyer Joseph Tobener explains, the damages a jury could have awarded might have been even higher, although he calls this sum "the highest amount we've ever settled a case [of this type]."

Per SF Mag:

Why such a big payout? Why 40 times the required relocation payment, and not, say, 10? It all goes back to the damages a jury could award, says Tobener. Tenants who unfairly lose rent-controlled tenancies get compensated for the rent savings they would have accrued over some number of years. Then there are damages awarded for emotional distress, if the tenant's side can show that the landlord had a reckless disregard for the tenant's rights. And this is the real doozy: Rent damages are automatically tripled under San Francisco's Rent Ordinance. Emotional distress damages, if they are awarded, get tripled too. "Part of the reason wrongful eviction cases tend to settle is that emotional distress damages are unpredictable," says Tobener.

"It's hopefully a warning to landlords who want to be greedy," Follingstad tells the magazine, who do note via Lama's attorney that the settlement is not an admission of liability or wrongdoing. SF Mag also points out that Follingstad won't see all $400,000, as Tobener will take at least a 30 percent cut, leaving her $280,000 to then be taxed, which she says she'll likely spend on medical bills.

Last, it remains to be seen what Lama will be able to pay. After all, KQED speculated back in 2015 that Nadia Lama may have opted for the rent increase instead of paying relocation fees as she was feuding with her two sisters, three brothers, and some children, over family assets accrued by her father, a native Palestinian who moved to Chile and then San Francisco, building a small real estate empire in the Bernal Heights neighborhood. Lama at the time was being evicted from a home up the street by her own siblings, and was still awaiting a payment from the sale of two other properties their father had owned.

Previously: [Update] Landlord Uses Loophole In Rent Control Law To Raise Woman's Rent To $8900
[Update] Lawyer Behind Egregious Bernal Heights Rent Increase Gives Snide Statement Denouncing Rent Control
Bernal Heights Woman Who Was Given 400 Percent Rent Hike Moves Out Today

These days it seems like each week brings with it another tragic story of someone being forced out of the apartment they call home, and today is no different. The Chronicle reports on the story of a man who, in May, lost his partner to suicide. They lived together in a studio apartment near Alamo Square, and, you guessed it, the deceased was the master tenant. And now, of course, the landlord is raising the rent.

Christopher Holden, 42, spoke with the paper and explained how just two weeks after his partner passed he was told the apartment rent would increase from $1,390 to $2,150. Holden, a social worker who works with elderly who risk homelessness, was previously paying half of the $1,390 rent. The means his rent was set to jump from $695 to $2,150 — and yes, the apartment is rent controlled.

"I don't want to speak about all landlords, but I've seen this type of situation again and again," executive director at the San Francisco Tenant's Union Deepa Varma told the paper. "On top of losing a loved one, dealing with a divorce or a death in the family, we see people faced with high rent increases and evictions that can lead to homelessness. You see it happen when someone passes away from cancer or people leave their partners, or situations where there's domestic violence come up."

Holden, speaking of his work with the elderly, seemed in disbelief that he had become the one on the edge of being forced out. "One time I saw a 90 year old woman get kicked out because of an Ellis Act situation," he told the Chron. "She had nowhere to go. She was crying."

It should be noted that the landlord's actions are completely legal, as Holden was not on the lease and the landlord had no obligation to add him.

This calls to mind the recent case of a 47-year-old video engineer hit with a rent increase on his North Beach three-bedroom apartment that would send his monthly rent from $1,800 to $8,000. In that incident, too, the master tenant moved out — leaving the remaining tenants at the whim of the landlord.

So all of you out there living as subtenants, this is friendly reminder that just because you're paying rent doesn't mean you have legal rights to stay on at the same rent if and when the master tenant leaves — regardless of the circumstances surrounding the departure.

Related: Protesters Disrupt SoMa Office Of Man Evicting School Teacher

With rent increases and evictions all too commonplace in the Bay Area, it's now the most extreme examples — last year's massive rent hike on a Bernal Heights apartment, to name just one — that capture our attention to represent the crisis at hand. Such is the case of Neil Hutchinson, a six-year resident of North Beach facing a rent increase from $1,800 to $8,000 on a three-bedroom apartment. First ABC 7 and then SFGate had the story of that 344 percent hike. Hutchinson's landlord's subsequently served him an eviction notice that the a 47-year-old video engineer is fighting before the rent board.

Hutchinson moved in to the rent-controlled unit with two existing roommates in 2010 and claims he signed a lease at the time. "I lived here a long time," he tells ABC7, "I pay my rent on time." Then, in July of last year, the master tenant on the lease moved out. Now the landlord maintains Hutchinson isn't on the lease. "They've accepted money from me," the tenant tells SFGate. "I filled out an application. They are saying the lease is not applicable to me. As far as I'm concerned the rent control should apply to me."

Hutchinson has appealed to the rent board, but he may be evicted before that body rules on the legality of the rent increase: He's supposed to be out of his apartment by July 21. Hutchinson adds that while he can't afford to stay in his current apartment, he also can't afford to leave San Francisco. "If I have to move to say Vallejo, it would be very economically hard to produce the same number of hours," he explains to SFGate. "My life is in San Francisco. I don't have a car. The commute would be brutal to my career."

The current median rent per month for all units of any size in North Beach is $6,850 according to a Trulia estimate. Hutchinson's place has a minor historic tie in, having been shot for scenes in Clint Eastwood's 1988 The Dead Pool. It's also, he says, in pretty deplorable condition.

The story of Hutchinson's eviction comes shortly after word in San Francisco magazine of a Mission dwelling kindergarten teacher who faces eviction for using appliances to cook for herself and her daughter. Her unit, which apparently lacks a proper stove, is technically illegal, but the Board of Supervisors has offered protections to tenants from eviction by landlords just because the units they inhabit may be illegal. This time, though, the new landlords are arguing that the teacher's behavior is a "nuisance," a novel legal approach.

Related: [Update] Landlord Uses Loophole In Rent Control Law To Raise Woman's Rent To $8900

Despite word just last month that rents for one-bedrooms were basically flat, a new report from rental site RentCafe suggests things are about to take a turn for the (even more) pricey. The Chronicle picked up on the report, and highlighted the depressing news that the site expects rents in San Francisco to increase by 10.5 percent before the year is out. And yes, that increase is more than any other city in the country.

San Francisco is not alone in seeing a significant jump, however, and according to the report Sacramento, Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles are all predicted to have increases above 7 percent.

If you want to live somewhere that isn't seeing such growth in prices, the site suggest you make your way east. "Chicago, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Richmond and Kansas City all saw lower-than-average rent growth," reads the report. "Houston also came in just under the average eight-year growth rate."

If you're a renter and you feel like staying here? Well, better hold on to that rent controlled apartment — and try not to get Ellis acted.

Related: Report: Ellis Act Filings Up 36% As Evictions Hit Six-Year High

The Bay Area costing what it does, and technology being a slightly more transplantable line of work than, say, farming or mining, a variety of pundits are once again wondering whether the Bay Area is due for some kind of mass tech worker exodus. It's maybe such an interesting idea because, as the Chronicle was saying last year, it would be sort of ironic that a factor to which the high expense of the Bay Area has been attributed — the influx of tech workers flush with cash — might disappear as quickly as it came because those tech workers can't, or don't want to, pay the price to live here.

A few sources for the exodus hypothesis: Tech job listing site Dice.com president Bob Melk tells Bloomberg that since the end March 2015 tech job listings in San Francisco have gone down six percent. Meanwhile, they’ve increased 38 percent in Seattle, 12 percent in Austin, and 6 percent in Phoenix.

Further, there's some info from Indeed.com, another jobs site, which Quartz had cited this spring: 35 percent of tech job searches from the Silicon Valley region were for jobs elsewhere — a 30 percent increase year-over-year.

“In the Bay Area, there’s been such enormous growth and opportunity that it’s created some challenges for happiness,” senior vice president at Indeed.com Paul D’Arcy told Quartz. “Job searchers are always balancing opportunity and happiness. As people think about what the right fit for them is, housing, traffic, and quality of life are really important factors.”

Then there are the satellite office locations to consider: Twitter has offices in Seattle, Los Angeles, and Boulder. Airbnb has an office in Portland. "A lot of companies are opening shops outside of the Bay Area because of the candidate shortage for the skill set that they need,” Megan Slabinski, who works at tech-staffing firm Robert Half Technology. “Looking at Seattle and Portland, you’ve got large tech hubs of candidates. There’s a great pool of talent.”So, do tech workers really need to work in the Bay Area, and if not, will they wake up to that fact and choose not to?

Gabriel Metcalf, president of the urban policy group SPUR, told the Chronicle.“A lot of the people that we think of as working in tech don’t have so much money that they can just live wherever they want to live, without worrying about cost,” Metcalf said. "Fundamentally, they’re subject to the same trade-off that other middle-class families are in this city: San Francisco is a wonderful place to have a family — if you can afford it.” Of course, “By far, the greatest problem for families in this city is cost of living. Full stop,” Metcalf said. “If it weren’t so expensive, we would have more families being able to make the choice to stay here.”

“We see relocations out of San Francisco increasingly,” said Hired Inc. CEO Mehul Patel. "If you actually factor in cost of living, there are much better places to live.” Hired, a job connection website, is nonetheless headquartered in San Francisco.

But in a piece titled "Why Tech Won't Leave The Bay Area," the Atlantic's CityLab rebutted some of these claims last year. Bottom line, they say: "It’s easier to recruit new employees if they work and socialize in one small geographic area." Call it the network effect, IRL. The question is what makes the Bay Area "Silicon Valley" — what puts it at the navel of the technology world. It's not in the water, it's not in the air, it's in the culture, it's in the human resources, and those are harder to pin down.

If tech workers start pooh-poohing the Bay Area like this jackoff in large numbers, then yeah they'll leave, and they've got more options to do so than ever. But, of course, many more tech workers might move in to take their place. And then you consider that last year, the SF metro area grew by 60,000 souls, not all of whom, I'm assuming here, work at Google? Anyway, it might not really matter as much — the Bay Area is likely to remain a big draw to many. After all, How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree?

Related: Breaking: Many Tech Workers Are Being Priced Out Of Bay Area

Evictions are up for the sixth year in a row according to a recently released report from the San Francisco Rent Board. At 2,134, the total number filed between March 1, 2015 and February 29, 2016 represents yet another year in which more and more people were forced from their homes at a time when the price of renting a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco is the highest in the country.

As the Examiner discusses, evictions have continued to rise since 2010 — a year which actually saw a 13-year low in evictions, coming in at 1,269. With a recent report estimating that the San Francisco metro area grew by 60,000 people last year, it stands to reason that those successfully evicted will have no easy task in locating a new place to live.

The report breaks down the different causes, with 417 owner or relative move-ins (up 22 percent from last year), and 154 Ellis evictions (up 36 percent from last year). Of the 506 reports of alleged wrongful eviction filed with the rent board in the in the same time period, 58 involved the eviction of children.

When looking over the report, it appears at first glance that the biggest jump — at a 697 percent increase over the preceding year — falls in the category of capital improvements. However, a footnote clarifies that 242 of the 295 capital improvement evictions were only for one day to allow for asbestos abatement in one apartment building. As such, while those are technically evictions, they are not included in the 2,134 total.

While city officials have proposed various plans to deal with city's housing crisis, the continued year after year increase in evictions suggests that this is a problem with no easy fix. (And efforts to make Ellis Act evictions much more difficult for landlords have so far failed in the state legislature.) So, you know, if you're lucky enough to have one, good luck holding on to your rent-controlled apartment.

Related: Should Living In An Apartment For 34 Years Give You The Right To Stay There?
Yes, There Is A 3-Bedroom In San Francisco Listing for $30k A Month

What a fun map!

Last June, real estate website startup Zumper put median one-bedroom rents in San Francisco at $3,500, which was up from $3,200 in 2014. Now they're at $3,590, Zumper says, a small, 2.6 percent increase all these months later. For two bedrooms, a median rental price is currently $4,870, up 3.8 percent — and keep in mind that this pertains only to rental listings on their site, which tend to be higher end and in larger buildings.

"Though up," the site observes, "prices remain below the peak seen at the end of summer 2015."

The rental market is definitely softening as we head into spring, and after many hundreds of newly built units came onto the market in the last six months. As the Business Times reported earlier this week, leasing agents at some of those new buildings are already showing their hand a bit as the market shifts and offering incentives to new renters like one month free, and free parking.

"While every neighborhood in San Francisco is expensive relative to other metros in the U.S., the highest priced areas in the city all share particular attributes," Zumper's head of strategic marketing, Devin O'Brien, told the Business Times.

Parsing those, O'Brien adds that "Much of the new construction in South Beach, Mission Bay and the Financial District boast views and in-house amenities leading to higher prices." South Beach topped the list as the most expensive median one-bedroom neighborhood of them all, per Zumper.

And for the national perspective: We've done it again, San Franciscans! Zumper puts us down as the most expensive market in the country for one bedroom apartments. Hot on our heels, Oakland was number four.

Sometimes, there's nothing to say about rental prices in San Francisco that hasn't already been said about our hills. They're fucking steep.

All SFist Coverage of the rental market.

Three of the largest landlords in the US, Equity Residential, AvalonBay Communities Inc., and Camden Property Trust, have discussed the possibility of formally allowing their tenants to market rooms through Airbnb — if they can take a cut. The Wall Street Journal has the story, and after all, plenty of their apartment dwellers are already Airbnb-ing with no plans to stop.

"Right now, [major landlords] don’t have any control over this situation,” vice president of industry technology initiatives at the National Multifamily Housing Council Rick Haughey tells Bloomberg. “They don’t have control over how often people are renting their units out, and they don’t have any control as to who’s coming in. They don’t know.”

Equity Residential CEO David Santee agrees, and having seen the light, tells the Journal he's looking for "a way to figure out how can everybody coexist, bring transparency and figure out a way that everybody can win.” Says Santee, "You just can’t turn your head or keep your head in the sand over what’s going on.”

“A lot of our hosts are renters,” said friend Christopher Nulty, who is somehow still Airbnb's spokesperson after his handling of Airbnb's disastrous, passive aggressive ad campaign this fall. “Any solution we would be able to identify would be a win-win-win for everyone involved.”

Related: City Cracks Down On Airbnb/VRBO Law Violators, Issues $400,000 In Penalties

Photo via Instagram.

After nearly a century years in business, it seems time is finally up for Roosevelt Tamale Parlor. An announcement posted to the exterior of the restaurant claimed that the one-two punch of a shrinking pool of minimum wage workers living in San Francisco and "unsustainable wage expectations" from the workers that do remain means the restaurant is no longer profitable. Roosevelt Tamale Parlor, located on 24th Street between York and Bryant Streets, is set to close this Sunday, December 6.

Owner Aaron Presbrey and chef Barry Moore also cited “personal health issues" as a factor contributing to the closure, notes Mission Local.

Presbrey and Moore took over the Parlor in 2012 after the previous owner, Isaac Mejia, died in a tragic car accident.

In conversation with our very own Jay Barmann (writing for Grub Street), Presbrey explained at the time how he hoped to remain true to the traditions of the place while simultaneously updating the menu.

"We're preserving the rich history that is The Roosevelt Tamale Parlor and enhancing it with some new and interesting things," before adding that "[the] same kitchen staff is back there."

Presbrey was quick to get ahead of any potential rumors regarding the building's owner, writing that "[the] decision was in NO way influenced by our landlord who has been nothing but reasonable and fair with us."

Related: The Roosevelt Tamale Parlor building is for sale.

A photo posted by ~ Rico Highroller (@ricohighroller) on Nov 20, 2015 at 5:36pm PST

We all hold certain San Francisco truths to be self-evident: Rent in SF is expensive, and street parking is hard to come by. So it's difficult to figure out what was going through the above note writer's head when he or she left this missive on an Inner Sunset resident's car Friday night.

According to Instagram user ricohighroller, she sometimes parks her compact car in the small parking space mentioned in the note. The letter writer apparently has a larger car he or she would like to park in the space/spilling into the adjacent driveway, instead.

How demanding must your job/how high would your rent have to be before you'd demand that your neighbor leave a street parking space open for you? Do people who drive smaller cars have a social responsibility to make room for those driving big ones? What's all that "karma" and "universe" stuff about? The mind boggles.

The note, in full:

Hello there, I actually live in the building you are parked in front of. I have a very demanding job with a crazy schedule + my rent is not cheap. You (being so small) have a million more opportunities to park than I do. I would appreciate it if you left this tiny gift of a parking space that the universe has given me as I have permission to block the driveway. Around the corner there are 6 places you can fit none of which I can. If you can find it in your heart to leave this for me Karma + I will appreciate it more than you know.

Thanks!
Hardworkingbarelysurvivingparkingishorriblehereneighbor