SF Tenants testify against their landlord, CitiApartments at City Hall

SF Tenants to Testify against CitiApartments at Board of Supervisors’ Land Use Committee

On Monday, May 12, 2008 at 1 PM, tenants from across San Francisco will testify at the Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee against CitiApartments, one of the biggest landlords in the San Francisco. CitiApartments owns more than 200 residential buildings in San Francisco with more than 10,000 tenants. CitiApartments is notorious for buying large amounts of rent controlled buildings, and pushing tenants out in order to increase rents to market rate. CitiApartments has a history of strong arming tenants to vacate, fabricating evictions, unlawfully entering tenants’ apartments, making tenants uncomfortable with unnecessary repairs, carrying out illegal conversions, and forcibly buying tenants out.

For the last three years CitiSTOP, a group of CitiApartment tenants and housing organizations, have demanded that CitiApartments be a responsible landlord. Currently, the City Attorney’s Office has a pending lawsuit against CitiApartments because of their bad business tactics and treatment of tenants that is scheduled to go to court in 2009.

Supervisor Daly is sponsoring the hearing for CitiApartment tenants and their allies to voice their concerns, and tell their personal stories of how CitiApartments has affected them. It is time to let elected officials, the media, and CitiApartment know that tenants demand to be treated with respect, and will not be pushed out of San Francisco by large landlords like CitiApartments.

This hearing was requested by: Supervisor Chris Daly, CitiSTOP, The Queer Youth Organizing Project of Pride at Work, St. Peter’s Housing Committee, and the SF Tenant’s Union