North Beach residents, community members, and housing advocates rallied in front of the San Francisco Superior Court Monday in support of long-time North Beach resident and poet Diego Deleo. Deleo is fighting an Ellis Act eviction that would force him out of his home, a unit on Chestnut street, of more than 30 years.
He has been fighting the eviction for the past two years and after the last attempt at mediation failed on Monday, and will now be taking the matter to trial.
Deleo was served an Ellis Act eviction by landlord and North Beach businessman Martin Coyne shortly after the death of his wife Josephine. The upcoming trial has already taken a toll on Deleo: “I never though that at my age, at 81 years old, I’ll be going through this and what is the purpose of all of this? Money?” Deleo told 48Hills at a protest rally in Washington Square Park in July.
Deleo arrived in the United States as 17-year old immigrant from Bari, a port city on the Adriatic Sea, Italy. Deleo and wife Josephine worked as bricklayers and became a strong part of the city’s North Beach neighborhood known as “Little Italy.” Now it’s home to San Francisco’s largest number of Ellis evictions.
In his last job, Deleo worked with with the San Francisco Police Department as a “Senior Escort Crime Prevention Specialist” for 25-years until the program was defunded.
Now widowed and alone Deleo is struggling to sustain himself as friends fear the stress might kill him.
Theresa Flandrich, housing organizer for Senior and Disability action, knows the struggle all too well having been evicted from her home in North Beach in August last year: “All this morning we were going back and forth to talking to the mediator. Some absolutes are that Diego needs to stay in his home if the owner wants him to stay in a smaller unit he will take that but it can’t be more than 55% of his income because otherwise he can’t survive and the attorney said no, Mr. Coyne refuses that,” Flandrich said on Monday. The trial started today and will go on for the week.
“For Diego it is his home, it is his community, he would be lost… that is my greatest fear that should he be forced out of his community I don’t think he’ll survive. This is what I saw with my 88-year old neighbor. This is exactly what happened, her Ellis Eviction appeal failed and so March 1st we were notified that the Ellis Act is back in place and March 11th my 88-year old neighbor died,” Flandrich said as she fought back tears: “Her last coherent words were ‘where will I go?’ so I know first-hand the consequences of the emotional and physical drain of an Ellis Act Eviction, I saw the rapid spiralling so I don’t want this for Diego. I witnessed it once not again.”
Coyne’s lawyer, Justin A. Goodman, associate at Zacks, Freedman & Patterson, did not comment on the mediation citing confidentiality of pending litigation but said that his client had offered Deleo to move into a smaller unit with a lower rent: “Mr. Deleo had been paying $800/month since my client Martin bought the building, we then asked him to move to a smaller unit since my client wants to move into the bigger one with his family and asked he pay $600/month which he initially agreed to but later declined. It was then that we had no choice but to invoke the Ellis Act,” Goodman said while noting that Mr. Deleo has an affordable housing certificate: “He doesn’t have to leave the city, he can still find residence here if he wants to,” he said.
Deleo will be fighting his eviction in court but he’s frustrated at the fact that he has to fight to keep his home of more than 30 years: “Few days I’ve got left, do I have to go through this? that’s a crime in itself that’s elderly abuse. What is the judge going to say — will he sentence me to life in my own home?”
