No sanctuary in bitter S.F. real estate war
Can San Francisco be called a sanctuary city when not even its oldest residents feel safe living here? That’s the question we all need to be asking ourselves following the recent deaths of 100-year-old Iris Canada, who died Saturday night after suffering a stroke after her eviction, and 93-yearold Carl Jensen, who succumbed earlier this month while in the midst of Planning Commission deliberations over the fate of his Noe Valley residence. (I’ll have more on Jensen’s sad story in a future column.)
Planning Commissioner Dennis Richards is among those outraged by the blazing hot real estate market’s cold treatment of our most vulnerable citizens. “What the hell are we doing? We’re now terrorizing our senior citizens for profit. My mother is 93 — and I know how terrified she would be if she was in danger of losing her home.
“But this is San Francisco in 2017. There are fortunes to be made in real estate, and many people are being thrown out the door like garbage. We have a disposable tenant population.”
The final years of Canada’s life were spent fighting evic-
tion from the Western Addition apartment where she had lived for over half a century. She was finally locked out of her apartment by San Francisco sheriff ’s deputies in February, on the orders of a judge who ruled that she was not living permanently in the building “as the sole and only occupant.” The owners of the building are trying to convert the apartments to condominiums, and Canada’s refusal to sign condo conversion papers blocked their way.
Canada’s family insisted the apartment was still her primary residence, even as her health deteriorated in recent months.
Iris Merriouns, Canada’s grandniece and caretaker, said she kept the eviction from the centenarian as long as she could. But soon after Canada was locked out, Merriouns said, the elderly woman began asking, “When are we going back to the shack?” — as she called the Page Street apartment that was filled with a lifetime of her belongings and family memorabilia. Canada started having trouble sleeping and her heart began racing, and she was hospitalized at UCSF Medical Center, where Merriouns set up vigil in her room.
After watching TV together last Thursday night, Canada asked her grandniece if “my things are locked in the house.” She was a proud woman, and she was used to her daily routine of carefully putting on her makeup, wig and clothes — and suddenly this was disrupted. She didn’t like wearing the clothes her family loaned her, which were too big for her.
Merriouns tried to avoid telling her that the family was still involved in a legal dispute over her belongings, but the elderly woman said, “Baby, you can tell me the truth. Did you get any of my things out?”
“I couldn’t lie,” said Merriouns. “I said we were still trying.”
Canada leaned forward and rested her forehead on her balledup fist and her body began shaking a little, Merriouns said. “There’s nothing the good Lord won’t take care of,” she said and began praying.
Early the next morning, before she could return to her greataunt’s bedside, Merriouns received a call that the woman had suffered a stroke. Canada never regained consciousness.
Canada, a retired nurse who spent most of her life caring for others, never wanted to be a burden on anyone. “She prided herself on being independent,” said Merriouns. “The whole (eviction) ordeal came with a burden of shame for her.”
But it’s the city that should feel shame about the way Canada spent the final days of her life. “All the systems that were supposed to protect her failed — from Adult Protective Services to the D.A. to the supervisors to the sheriff to the mayor’s office,” said Merriouns.
Even now, Canada still has no resting place. Her body still lies in the UCSF morgue, according to Merriouns, because her family can’t get access to the burial insurance papers that were moved out of her apartment by the landlords and put in storage. Like everything else in this hopelessly entangled case, that’s disputed by the landlords.
Landlord Peter Owens insists that he has tried to do the right thing all along. He presents himself as a reasonable man frustrated by the unreasonableness of Canada’s family. All Canada had to do was sign the condo conversion papers — but he contended that Merriouns had her own designs on the apartment and she stood in the way.
“Iris Merriouns continually put her own interests ahead of her aunt’s,” he emailed me. “She always had the choice to stop the pain and suffering. We did not.”
Andrew Zacks, Owens’ attorney, was even more emphatic about assigning blame. “We’re deeply saddened by her death,” he told me. “What more can you say? She had a wonderful life and was an amazing woman. But my clients shouldn’t be demonized. Is she even in the ground yet? I mean have some dignity — her niece was all over the radio yesterday, capitalizing on her death. Her family has been using her for years.”
Merriouns, in turn, characterizes Owens and his attorney as conniving and duplicitous operators who deprived her great-aunt of peaceful sanctuary in her final years.
Now Owens, his wife and brother have reclaimed Canada’s apartment over her dead body, as I warned last month might be the outcome of this ugly battle between the landlords and Canada’s family.
Tragic stories are inevitable in a raging real estate war like the one that is laying waste to San Francisco. When a fundamental human need like housing is left to the ferocious forces of the private market, there will always be winners and losers. There can be no sanctuary in a war zone like this.