Notorious ‘drug house’ catches fire
A building in San Francisco’s Castro district that city officials had targeted as a “drug house” caught fire Friday morning.
Water rushed down the road from the house at 519 Sanchez St. as firefighters — standing on the blackened roof — doused the two-unit building. Several of the windows had been broken.
The fire was reported at 10:35 a.m. and brought under control by 11:45 a.m. with no injuries, said Nicol Juratovac, an assistant San Francisco fire chief. The cause is under investigation.
In November 2015, City Attorney Dennis Herrera sued the property owner, Joel Elliott, calling the house a neighborhood “nuisance” known for residents dealing methamphetamine and other illicit drugs. In a statement announcing the complaint, Herrera said Elliott also had “failed to comply with numerous orders to fix code violations at the property” that endangered the health and safety of neighbors while draining city services.”
“The city sued because the property was being used as a drug house,” said John Coté, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office.
A judge granted a permanent injunction against Elliot in September 2016, ordering him to obtain permits and correct all housing code violations, as well as pay the city and county nearly $1.7 million in fines and fees. Elliott would later file for bankruptcy, and the city is pursuing a judgment for repayment.
“We are providing the police and fire departments with information about this property and the people associated with it,” Coté said.
Elliot, whose appeal of the 2016 ruling was dismissed in December 2017, said Friday that the house was vacant and had been “improperly referred to as a drug den.” He said no one was in the building when the fire started.
“I don’t know who set the fire,” Elliott said. “I didn’t set the fire. But fires don’t start
themselves, and this was just too coincidental.”
Neighbor Chick Nace said the property has long been “a harbor for low-level criminal activity.”
“It wasn’t like a bar at 5:30, but I often saw odd people coming and going,” he said.
Kurt Berry, who also lives in the area, said he saw people recently living in the home.
“I do know there’s been guys coming through, squatting in the bottom part of the house,” he said.
Josh Bleecher Snyder, who has lived on Sanchez Street for seven years, said Elliott’s home has been a consistent source of complaints.
“Any time there was any kind of disturbance or issue, you knew it was Joel’s house,” he said. “If you called an emergency number and you said, ‘519 Sanchez,’ they knew what you were talking about.”
Snyder recalled seeing people coming and going in the middle of the night, as well as sleeping on the street outside the home. He said he reached out to the city for help but got little response.