By Tim Redmond
NOVEMBER 14, 2014 — The memorial for Ted Gullicksen, longtime director of the Tenants Union and hero to generations or renters, is Sunday (Nov. 16) at 2pm at Mission High School.
Arrive early, the doors will open at 1:30.
For more info and to make a donation to the Tenants Union, go here. To help cover the costs of veterinary care for his beloved Falcor, go here.
See you Sunday.
I am sure greg won’t ever respond but in case the meeting goes down I would like to be there. Just in case some hippie tough guy try’s to jump on you back.
I think Buddhists would say that the three great “sins” (if you would) are Greed, Hate, and Delusion. The worst of these is Hate, as it has the most severe consequences and is hardest to extinguish.
Sam –
I wish I could say that I found Ted personally likeable. On the contrary, I found him dismissive and … maniacal!, if you will (cue the SFTU mascot). Admittedly I did’ not know him well or much at all. However, I do like to get to talk with our ‘leaders’; its usually a far different perspective than their public persona. BTAIM, he didn’t seem selfish, and he certainly had energy. The bolt-cutters are a ‘nice’ touch. “One must destroy to create art”.
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As for his roomie – he may just have been trying to help someone out, though legally it does sound like a Master/sub relationship (and thus subject to rent hike- not eviction [though that may be irrelevant’]). (don’t you just luv those laws!)
Its curious that the press hardly ever mention what the rent was. Records show the Last sale price: $570,000 (06/28/2013); 2+ units, even in the BV, is cheap). But of course, that price is certainly higher than the rental income would indicate (even if the rents were market rate). Boger owns two other properties just across the street.
As long as I’ve been familiar with SF real estate values (early 80s), prices have been based on their speculative value – not their ‘business’ value. With the current price of a SFH at north of $1M, such property taxes alone would evict Ted & Beth, not to mention water, REcology, and, er, mortgage.
Ted left at a good time. But, of course, 20 yrs too late, BMWOT.
I can see how the timing of the message from the LL comes across as a a tad tactless. I probably would have waited a month or so. Then again, I cannot be sure how I would feel if I had a high-profile tenant leader as a tenant. I suspect there was no love lost on either side. If you had the landlord from hell and he died, would you allow yourself some schadenfreude or inappropriate glee?
The room-mate probably does not have much in the way of rights. The key questions to ask are:
1) Did Gullicksen’s lease allow him to sublet without the landlord’s prior written approval? Most do not.
2) Was such written approval granted? Or can the sub-tenant otherwise prove that the LL at least knew she was living there?
3) Was a 6.14 notice issued?
In most such cases an eviction is not issued and may not even be valid. But the landlord can raise the rent to market and if the remaining tenants(s) cannot afford it, the effect is the same.
In fact, the remaining sub-tenant probably cannot legally find a room-mate and so probably won’t be able to pay even the current rent, which presumably doubles for her.
Finally, if the unit is illegal because of the permit issue, then the LL could have gone to the DBI at any point and got a demolition permit, which is a just cause for eviction.
I’d expect the LL to prevail here, but she would do well to stop the chats and threats, and let her lawyer handle the paperwork. I’d expect a small payoff in lieu of an eviction, and everyone moves on.
Much better article about Ted, and his own living situation, in the SF Examiner. Puts the Weakly to shame.
http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/ted-gullicksen-remembered-as-passionate-defender-of-sf-renters-rights/Content?oid=2910573
“which, unlike nonprofits such as the Housing Rights Committee and the Chinatown Community Development Center, never took funding from the government or entities with vested interests and could freely endorse candidates.”
Ah, that explains why the SFTU is so independent and such a force for tenants.
“Of all the devotion Gullicksen put into the renters’ fight, he put little into fixing his own troubled situation as a tenant. For nearly 20 years, Gullicksen lived on the bottom floor of a three-story apartment at 1500 Innes Ave., which had been converted into a living quarters without the proper permits, said his roommate, Beth Powder, who moved in during February and fears she may now be evicted from the dwelling.”
“Gullicksen’s landlords would fix issues as they arose until a new landlord, Paige Boger, took over last year, Powder said.”
Apparently she’s quite the slumlord, as well as a trust fund baby. Do a google search, and you find that Boger embodies the typical San Francisco landlord -her family owns a bunch of properties in a trust, they don’t seem to do much in the way of upkeep, putting their money into the acquisition of more cheap properties, and Paige doesn’t seem to do much in the way of actual “work,” other than managing her little real estate fiefdom.
“He made what would’ve been equivalent to minimum wage, and he did it because he knew that nobody else would fight and put the kind of energy as he did,”
Yep, Ted walked the walk, not just talked the talk.
From the article in the Weakly (yuck, I feel dirty for even going there), along with the comments, it’s unclear what the relationship actually was, and how much in the way of legal rights the tenant and the landlady have.
Regardless, the landlady sounds like quite a bitch.
“She came into my apartment and said ‘let’s pull this Band-Aid off shall we?'” Powder told us, “‘I want you out.'”
Apparently she’s also trying to evict the tenants in the other unit, who’ve been there 3-4 years.
This comment says it best:
“Whether she’s legally entitled to do what she’s doing doesn’t make it right. A human being would at least give the woman a measly month or two to recover and get back on her feet. 4 days? Wow, well-played, monster woman.. ”
I hope the lawyers’ fees drive her to bankruptcy.
Paradoxically, it turns out that Gullicksen’s roommate may now be evicted as a result of his death:
http://www.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2014/10/21/shortly-after-sf-renter-hero-ted-gullicksen-dies-his-roommate-faces-eviction
This can only be because she was not on Gillicksen’s lease i.e. she was 6.14 sub-tenant. 6.14 sub-tenants have to move out when the last person on the original lease moves out.
This means that in fact Gullicksen was the master tenant and landlord to his roommate. And the SF tenents Union have a strict rule that they will not advise master tenants:
“Master tenants, in relation to their subtenants are landlords, so we cannot help master tenants acting as landlords.”
http://www.sftu.org/membership.html
So the irony is that if a master tenant like Gullicksen had gone to the SFTU to seek advice, he or she would have been turned away.
Look Jack, Ted was also a political figure, a major contributor to San Francisco’s twisted Rent Control Industrial Complex(tm). So expect some blow back.
Can’t take the heat? Get out of the kitchen. I’m sure Ted can handle it. Shit, I even went easy on him post mortem too.
No meathead, I would not go to anybody’s memorial service to antagonize it. But yes, a political blog like this is completely different, and I will express myself.
As for being chicken, if you want to settle this thing like men, I can meet you any time at 24th st bart, and we can have a personal chat.
I can see how you might find some offense in SFrentier’s remarks even though I also have some sympathy for how he feels, as I know many of my fellow landlords feel the same way about Ted. But I would dispute that my first comments were anything other than delicate and nuanced in the circumstances.
I see and hear a lot of anger here about Ed Lee and other representatives of the moderate majority, and the implication seems to be that Lee’s leadership justifies anger and hate speech by the left. So does it really surprise you that the more moderate factions of our city might feel similarly angry about pillars of progressivism like Ted or Chris Daly?
If a Fox news commentator died I would expect to see comments not unlike SFrentiers here. So I think you have to understand how polarizing figureheads can be the magnet for resentment, whether on the left or the right. Intolerance is not a monopoly of the right.
I found Ted to be reasonable in person, even though his politics were harmful not only to landlords but also ultimately to the tenants he claimed to help. But I would not categorize him as in any way an evil man. He meant well and his main crime was simply failing to see how rent control ultimately hurts tenants by deterring landlords.
And I would invite some of you to understand that we who risk our capital to provide housing services are similarly not evil, nor those who seek to lesson the burden of rent control on (particularly) smaller property owners.
Which is all another way of saying that Tim Redmond’s much admired and respected plea for civility here goes beyond merely this forum, but should extend into all aspects of political debate. Propagating hate and anger is unhelpful if you truly seek persuasion, progress and justice.
There is no reason to hate a person just because he holds different political ideas from you. Nor to censor him, nor berate him, nor insult him.
Have some effing respect? I cannot believe how self absorbed you constant trolls are. No one who was close to Ted gives two beans what your opinions or impressions are. Yet you can’t resist. Please seek some help for your addiction–you might find you have a happier life if you stay off the comment section and join the real world of civility and human relations.
“If I did choose to attend, I’d certainly sport a “No on Prop G” t-shirts, a most fitting eulogy.”
I dare you to actually do that. I’m betting you’re too chickenshit. All talk on an anonymous internet forum, but like all hateful bullies, a coward at heart.
See? Sam seems like a real earnest fellow…don’t understand why y’all hatin on him so much.
He certainly is more sympathetic than me on this subject. I saw gullicksen once, the day after the expedited condo conversion legislation passed. He was in the front yard of STFU (sic) on Capp with that damn dog of his, and I happened to have walked by. I wanted to tell him thank you…for increasing the values of my rental condos, and making tic’s more desirable now too. But at the end of the day I didn’t want to tip my hand on that perspective, so I just glared and walked by. He wouldn’t have gotten it anyway.
If I did choose to attend, I’d certainly sport a “No on Prop G” t-shirts, a most fitting eulogy.
This may surprise some of you but I will be there, just like I was there for the memorial for Miguel Wooding a little over three years ago.
I had a couple of chats with Ted and, although we obviously disagreed on almost everything, I found him on a personal level to be genial and affable. Far from the more typical raging, intolerant leftie that we are all sadly familiar with in SF.
I’d say the same for Miguel and of course for Tim. They all give the lie to the notion that just because you feel passionately about your beliefs and values, you have to be a rude, insensitive ass about it.
See you there.