Condo switch at site of noted elder eviction is up for vote
Iris Canada — who became the poster elder for landlord disputes when she was evicted from her Lower Haight apartment a few years ago — died in May at age 100. But the fight over the future of her former home continues.
On Thursday the Planning Commission is expected to rule on whether Peter Owens, the owner of 670 Page St., will be permitted to convert the three-unit building into condominiums.
Owens became the target of tenant activists in 2016 after moving to evict Canada, who had lived in the building since the 1950s. Owens bought the building in 2002 with the goal of converting it to tenancy-incommon units and eventually to condos. Though the other tenants moved out, Canada fought eviction and eventually won a “life estate” agreement, where the owner agreed to allow her to remain in the unit until she died.
But in 2016 Owens evicted Canada, arguing that the tenant had actually been living elsewhere with family for six years, rather than in the Page Street flat.
It doesn’t look too promising for Owens. Planning staff is recommending that the commission reject the conversion request. At a January hearing, Commissioner Dennis Richards stated that he found the whole case distasteful.
“What’s going on in this city kind of makes me sick,” Richards said. “It’s so selfish and so moneyoriented.”
Owens has called the eviction story “a giant lie” pumped up by tenant advocates who exploited the plight of the centenarian to mobilize city residents against evictions in general. — J.K. Dineen Registration required? A former legislative aide for San Francisco Supervisor London Breed is facing a city ethics complaint for failing to register as her campaign consultant, after receiving $2,583 from Breed’s Democratic County Central Committee campaign account as payment for consulting services.
Conor Johnston left Breed’s office last year to become a consultant for the cannabis industry, specializing in government relations. He also describes himself as a “periodic adviser” to Breed.
Filings from Breed’s 2016 DCCC campaign account show five payments to Johnston last year, amounting to $1,000 for campaign consulting and $1,583 for content creation and editing, services usually provided by campaign consultants.
San Francisco’s ethics rules require anyone who is paid $1,000 or more for campaign consulting in a calendar year to register with the city.
Johnston pushed back Wednesday, characterizing the complaint as “a bogus political ploy” from backers of Mark Leno, one of Breed’s leading opponents in the mayoral race.
The Ethics Commission is barred from commenting on the complaint, which was filed Tuesday by Castro district resident Aaron Stella, who described himself as a fan of Leno.
Should the commission pursue the case, it could fine Johnston $5,000 or three times the amount of money he failed to report — whichever is greater.
— Rachel Swan Making space: The city’s much-hyped effort to create housing by allowing property owners to convert basements, storage spaces and laundry rooms into legal apartments is being strangled by red tape, and Supervisor London Breed says that is unacceptable.
There are 419 accessory dwelling unit — ADU — projects in the planning pipeline. Many are proposing multiple units, which means that the number of individual units pending approval is actually 1,100 ADUs.
That’s a lot of housing — the equivalent of about three Rincon Hill apartment towers. But only about a quarter of those projects have been issued permits so far, and only 23 have been completed.
“What’s the holdup? We made ADUs legal, so why is it taking so long to implement?” said Breed, who is running for mayor and positioning herself as the most pro-housing candidate in the race. “It’s been two years. There is too much bureaucracy.”
To get to the bottom of the delays, Breed is proposing an ADU task force that would include officials from the Planning Department, Department of Building Inspection and Fire Department. The working group would go through the cases in the backlog and figure out which applications can be sped up.
“ADUs are a creative way to produce more housing in a market that desperately needs it,” she added. “We need to get these units to the market sooner rather than later.”
— J.K. Dineen