You may recall the ongoing tale of 1049 Market Street where over 100 people were displaced or nearly displaced from over 75 "live-work" units that had become primary residences for students and other low-income tenants well over a decade ago. While that story is ongoing and 40 or so holdout tenants have remained in their units pending legal eviction (or a hefty buyout), another unique scenario is playing out 2107 Van Ness Avenue at Pacific, where another new owner is trying to get rid of longtime rent-controlled tenants by arguing that the building was never supposed to be residential.
As the Examiner reports, at least 10 tenants in the mixed-use building, which also contains doctors' offices and a TV repair shop, have been served eviction notices from the new building owner, Yue Yue LLC, managaed by one Edmund Jin, which say that they are illegally using the space for a residence.
However city records, the couples' lease, and the Tenderloin Housing Clinic show that the building has always had apartments in it going back as far as the 1940s.
Elderly couple Michael and Galina Fridman, who fled the Soviet Union over 40 years ago and have lived in San Francisco much of their lives, have lived in their 485-square-foot unit there for nine years, paying $1400 a month.
The Department of Building Inspection is expected to intervene in this case, and it's likely that the new landlord who was probably gambling the way the landlord at 1049 Market did in buying the building that he'd be able to flip the whole thing as office space despite having rent-controlled tenants will face pushback by the city for what he's trying to do. But the pushback starts first in the press.
Sadly, the former owner of the building was a charitable trust with a mission to rent to artists (Michael Fridman is a sculptor), and it was sold in January for $8.4 million after hitting the market last year for $5.3 million.
