>Is it reasonable to expect her to leave her friends, contacts, etc that she's built up over decades because the city is changing?
YES! Absolutely reasonable. There is no right to live exactly where you want for the rest of your life (especially when where you want to live is an illegal residence). Nor should there be.
Well, there sort of is a right to live exactly where you want for the rest of your life. It's called buying the property. There are very few exceptions to this (something about property tax, and prop 13 mitigated that pretty well).
Note: comments to the effect that buying property is a big risky deal should pause and consider what that statement imputes about what the landlord offering the place for rent happens to bring to the table
Exactly. She has no more right to live in SF than I have to live in Malibu. If she is entitled to 500/mo rent in SF, why am I not entitled to some nice 500/mo rent on the beach?
Basically the moral center of our brain, by default, views her leaving as a choice, and you moving as a choice. Rather than her staying vs leaving as a choice. Looks dumb when you parse it right, feels right when you parse it wrong.
Lets say that I was once struck very hard in the head by a frisbee, and the moral center of my brain now causes me to believe myself entitled to live in Malibu.
Wanting something is not the same as deserving something.
My entire point is that I reject this ridiculous premise. People who currently live in SF don't have any more of a "right to SF" than anybody else. Thinking otherwise is just plain old xenophobia.
The only land that you ever have an indefinite right to is land that you have purchased. I don't get "special privileges" to Seattle or Philadelphia just because I have rented in those two cities for the past 15 years. You don't have some sort of "special right" to your city either, unless you have seen fit to purchase property there.
The ironic part here is that it was an illegal unit and the owner of that unit is making nearly a million dollars while the person who has paid rent for decades is homeless. Why isn't there a huge fine for renting an illegal apartment for years? Seems like a great gig to collect money from someone until you want to report yourself and get permission to evict them and flip the property.
The tenant is also aware of the legal status of the unit.
The rental laws seem to be very restrictive over there. Here in Australia you are often given a one year contract which can then go to month to month with a months eviction warning if not renewed into a longer contract. If it was me I would just be happy that I had a good thing going for as long as I did. Essentially the uncertainty is already priced in to the rental price, it is well below market value.
Actually there is. It's called Rent Control and it protects the elderly from stuff like this (because they need the protection). As far as I'm concerned, the landlord simply found a loophole.
Rent control does not give you the right to live in an area for a given amount of rent in any circumstance. The circumstances in which it does not provide assurances are not "loopholes".
Think of it this way: she was renting a room in the house, except as a courtesy to each owner she would to come in through the garage.
New owner decides he's tired and wants her out. If he suddenly claims the room to be an "inlaw apartment", then it would be illegal. Now he can start the process to evict.
Legal loophole.
[Update] The timing is suspicious too, since these units could be legal soon:
There was never any question if the unit was illegal. Everyone involved knew that it was (hence my absolutely minimal sympathy for everyone involved, except perhaps^W the cat.) The new owner did not declare the unit to be illegal, the city did.
> hence my absolutely minimal sympathy for everyone involved, except perhaps the cat.
My sympathy rests entirely with the cat. Pets live more or less at the whim of their owner, no matter how unfortunate, and have little choice in the matter (well, I suppose they could escape...). The poor thing likely has no idea what's going on, and it certainly does not look happy. Breaks my heart.
But then, I'm a softy with animals. Cats in particular.
The people? Meh. I'm inclined to agree with the posters here (yourself included) suggesting that she has a choice. I feel bad for her, don't get me wrong, but considering how many people are often forced by economic reasons to move from one area to another and do so without any public sympathy lends me to feel the same in this circumstance. What she's making on SSI a month isn't very much, but I'd imagine her medications are probably paid for in full or in part by her plan, and there are cheaper and safer areas to live in the country than SF. Many retirement communities out here in NM are populated with people who make about what she does a month, but the cost of living is lower.
As someone pointed out (maybe it was you, I'm not sure), if she were of working age, she'd probably have fewer safety nets to fall back on.
It certainly isn't a good situation for anyone involved (except maybe the lawyers), but imagine if this were a story about some programmer/retired programmer who was having to leave his home of 35 years for greener pastures. I'd imagine most of the comments would be along the lines of "suck it up and move."
Either way, the story is still gut wrenching because it's so uncomfortable.
I like how you can read an article that details all of the ways in which this woman was a terrible and destructive tenant and then say "Oh yeah, she was definitely evicted because the asshole landlord wanted to flip the property".
and they owned the place (and let her live there) for 10 years before they had had enough of her. 10 weeks is a pretty long flip.... 10 years is not a flip at all.
YES! Absolutely reasonable. There is no right to live exactly where you want for the rest of your life (especially when where you want to live is an illegal residence). Nor should there be.