The only way out for most tenants in California who face dilemmas like that of a 97-year-old woman being evicted from her Burlingame home of 66 years is depressingly simple: Hit the bricks.
State law offers very little protection for renters who are served with eviction notices, regardless of ethnicity, longevity or income, experts say. That protection is left up to cities — and only 12 of the 482 municipalities in California offer rent control, San Francisco chief among them.
“Basically, rent control in California is a case of the haves versus the have-nots,” said Ken Carlson, a tenants’ rights lawyer who runs an online resource site for renters. “The trouble is that tenants don’t vote ... and politicians listen to people who vote.
“So what you’re left with is a sense of powerlessness,” Carlson said. “Tenants work for someone else, they rent from someone else — they don’t have control over vast parts of their lives.”
Such is the plight of 97-year-old Marie Hatch, who was served with a 60-day notice this month to vacate the Craftsman cottage she’s lived in since 1950. She says she may wind up homeless if evicted.
After The Chronicle broke the story, more than 300 emails and phone calls offering assistance poured into the paper Monday from around the nation. Scores of people also contacted a next-door neighbor who has been helping Hatch, Cheryl Graczewski — who is being evicted as well, because her rental house is owned by the same landlord.
Some people offered to pay Hatch’s rent at a higher rate, some volunteered legal help, and a few even said they would buy the house from her landlord so she could stay — a remedy the landlord’s attorney said he is exploring.
Enforcing verbal contract
Friends of Hatch’s started a GoFundMe account and by Monday evening it had raised more than $13,000.
One of the legal offers came from Joe Cotchett, a high-profile civil attorney who represented victims in the Bernard Madoff scandal and the San Bruno gas pipeline explosion. He took on the eviction case pro bono and said that unlike many tenants who live outside cities with strong eviction controls, Hatch has an argument.
Cotchett said he believes that Hatch’s landlord has to honor a verbal agreement that the landlord’s late wife, and her mother and grandmother before her, made over the past 60-plus years to let Hatch live in the cottage for life.
“That woman will not leave her house,” Cotchett said.
One of Cotchett’s partners, Nancy Fineman, visited Hatch on Monday and told her that she believes the situation qualifies under wrongful eviction law.
“We will get the oral contract enforced,” she said. “People think they can’t enforce an oral agreement, but they’re wrong.
“When you see this house and you meet Marie — you can see there is a lot of love in that house,” Fineman said. “Fulfilling the promise of being able to live there for life is not charity, it’s the honorable thing to do.”
Hatch’s landlord, David Kantz, said he has great sympathy for her, but that he has a duty on behalf of his sons to handle the property to the best of his ability before his late wife’s trust expires this summer. His attorney says that under the terms of his wife’s will, the house must be sold this year.
“I feel bad for the elderly lady, I feel bad for my sons, I feel bad for me,” Kantz said.
By many accounts, Hatch was promised lifetime tenancy in 1950 by the original landlord, Vivian Kruse. After she died, her daughter continued the promise until she died, and then the granddaughter. But the granddaughter was killed by a boyfriend in 2006 as she was getting divorced, and Kantz took over the property.
View of landlord’s attorney
On Monday evening, with Kantz facing hostility from many quarters, his lawyer released a statement attempting to expand perspective on the case.
“Ms. Hatch is a valued tenant, and accommodations must be made for her comfort and care,” wrote attorney Michael Liberty. “But the landlord cannot bear sole responsibility; the tenant’s family must cooperate in this matter rather than use the media regarding a purported ‘life tenancy.’”
Liberty wrote that the trust left behind by Kantz’s wife “requires a sale of the property in 2016,” and that “the landlord is making every effort for Ms. Hatch’s smooth transition into either an elderly facility or to moving in with family members.”
The attorney also said Kantz was looking for someone to buy the house who would let Hatch stay.
Hatch, meanwhile, said she has been agonizing with her 74-year-old son about what to do. She is fighting cancer and is agoraphobic, meaning she panics outside of her house. Her son — Gary Hatch, who also lives on the Peninsula, in a one-bedroom apartment with his wife — said he can’t afford to house his mother and that “she needs to be in her own place to survive.”
“I’m old, I can hardly walk, and I don’t have any money,” Marie Hatch said. “Where can I go? I’m going crazy just thinking about it.“
Kantz, a civil engineer, said that if he sells the house he could get more than $1 million. And Hatch is paying about $900 a month in rent for herself and her friend and roommate, Georgia Rothrock, 85.
A tenant advocate in San Francisco, which has the strongest rent control protections in California, said Hatch’s situation could not happen in the city. At the least, Hatch would probably be eligible for thousands of dollars in relocation costs, said Tommi Avicolli Mecca, a director at the Housing Rights Committee.
“But that’s San Francisco,” Mecca said. “Much of the rest of the entire country has no rent control. And cases like the 97-year-old woman in Burlingame — what a nightmare.”
“But that’s San Francisco,” Mecca said. “Much of the rest of the entire country has no rent control. And cases like the 97-year-old woman in Burlingame — what a nightmare.”
Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, held a town hall meeting Monday night on the situation for tenants in San Mateo County. Among those attending were representatives of landowners, who said they are getting a bad rap.
“The real problem here is that there is a housing affordability crisis across the state,” said Jay Cheng, deputy director of governmental affairs for the Association of Realtors in San Francisco. “It’s about people not having enough places to live, so we’re fighting over very small scraps of housing.
“A lot of landlords are more concerned about having a good neighbor, not necessarily making a lot of money,” he said. “It’s not just a case of landlords versus tenants.”
‘There’s got to be a way’
Next-door neighbor Graczewski, in the meantime, helped Hatch field queries and offers of help all day Monday. She and her family can afford to move, and she said she has some understanding for the landlord’s economic dilemma. But she is hoping for a better solution than Hatch packing her bags.
“There’s got to be a way out of this,” she said. “I just know there is.”