Senior Tenant Continues 14-Year Battle to Save His Home

by Ben Malley, 2007-08-15

Regular readers of BeyondChron are familiar with Jose Morales, the 78-year-old housing activist who has lived in his rent-controlled Mission District apartment for over 42 years. He was named “Senior of the Year” by Senior Action Network for his activist work with seniors, the disabled and renters.

On Friday August 17, Morales’ case will be heard on summary judgment by the San Francisco Superior Court. If Morales wins, the case will go to a jury trial. If Morales loses, he said he won’t stop fighting. “We would be appealing if we lose on summary judgment,” he said. “I will appeal as far as we can go. I’m not going to quit.”

Since 1993, Morales has battled his landlord’s attempt at an owner move-in eviction, a demolition and most recently an Ellis Act eviction. In March he won his case in front of the California Court of Appeals to stop his landlord from demolishing the building. In April his landlord threatened a restraining order against Morales if he continued to pay rent.

For the Ellis eviction, Morales’ landlord mistakenly submitted the wrong address for the building in the paperwork relating to the eviction. He then attempted to change the address of the building to correspond with the address on the paperwork. “Even though that sounds like a minor technicality, it is enough to get this thing stopped,” said Ted Gullicksen, head of the San Francisco Tenants Union. “The courts need to at least follow that law, but we area asking them to throw this case out on moral grounds.”

Karen Garrison, Director of Senior Services at the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center, says Morales isn’t the only senior being forced out of his long-time home because of the Ellis Act. “I hear stories about seniors being evicted each week,” she said. “We have four or five cases in our program alone.”

Morales points to the new-looking building next to his apartment. “They evicted those tenants and built condominiums there,” he said. “They were able to do it because the tenants didn’t put up a fight. They weren’t a part of the Tenants Union.”

“Jose has no place to live, nowhere to go,” said Gullicksen. “Just like the hundreds of others who are victims of Ellis Act evictions in this city.” Morales recently suffered a fractured vertebrae making general movement difficult, and moving to a new apartment practically impossible.

The Ellis Act, created to allow landlords to leave the business and use their building for other purposes, is also used to allow landlords to convert rental units to condominiums. In the past two years there were more than 900 Ellis Act evictions in San Francisco. Sheila Kuehl’s California Senate Bill 464 to make Ellis Act evictions illegal for landlords who owned a property for less than five years failed to pass this year.

Send feedback to bmalley@sfsu.edu