Mission resident, 87, faces eviction over rent debt

On Tuesday at the San Francisco Superior Court, Judge Curtis E.A. Karnow looked down from his bench toward defending counsel and sighed.

“This is one of the most difficult cases I’ve had in over a decade,” he said.

Before him was Alicia Flores, an 87-year-old resident of the Mission. She had come to court that morning, with the assistance of a walker, because she was served an eviction notice for not paying enough rent for her $1,800-a-month, four-bedroom apartment at 23rd and Mission streets. Flores did not respond to the October, 2022, notice in time, and was therefore served a default notice to leave the property. If Tuesday morning’s appeal failed, a sheriff would evict her the following day.

The case against Flores was brought by the company that owns the apartment, J&N International Enterprises, the directors of which are Janet and Kenneth Siu. In their eviction proceedings, the Sius said that the amount they’re owed was $1,900.86.

This is where things get complicated.

Claire LaVaute, a lawyer with the Eviction Defense Collaborative and Flores’ representative, said that Flores would be willing to pay the full amount in the eviction notice. Often, such an offer might lead to a settlement between the two sides to avoid an eviction.

“She has the money,” said LaVaute. “The payments aren’t always timely. But she has been there decades, and the money is always paid.”

But according to Tiffany Norman, an attorney representing the owners, the $1,900 in the eviction notice is the tip of an iceberg of back rent owed by Flores. Norman said that underpayment of rent was a “chronic” problem, and that the actual amount of debt was almost $23,000. The owners were only claiming a fraction of that, she said, because shifting Covid-19 rent protections over the past few years made it hard to know exactly how much could be recovered.

“It may seem odd to evict for only part of outstanding rent, and that would never have happened prior to the pandemic,” Norman wrote in an email. “However, after the pandemic began, the State kept changing the rules for non-payment of rent situations, and different rules apply for different time periods.”

Ledgers kept by the apartment’s property management company, Jodi Rentals, appear to confirm that underpayment has been a problem for years. Although rental payments were made from 2020 to 2022, it seems they were often below the amount charged and were sometimes not on time. And Flores has been in court for underpaid rent before, in a 2017 case that was resolved with a settlement.

“Neither my client nor my firm takes evicting an elderly tenant lightly,” said Norman. “If there were alternatives, of course we would look at them.”

“We are disputing the amount alleged owed,” LaVaute wrote in an email.

Flores has lived in her apartment since the 1970s, when she moved to San Francisco from El Salvador. She is a monolingual Spanish speaker who rarely leaves her home, due to problems with her movement and vision.

Flores’ son, Rene Ortez, is also named as a defendant in the eviction proceedings, although he says that he does not live on the property. He typically pays rent on Flores’ behalf by depositing money orders behind the counter of a butcher’s store located underneath her apartment. In a longstanding arrangement they set up with an earlier management company, a representative of the property managers then comes to pick up the order.

Ortez said he first learned there were problems when he tried to drop off the December rent. Not only would they not accept it, but they gave him back the uncashed money order he had dropped off in November. Ortez then reached out to Jodi Rentals, before contacting the Eviction Defense Collaborative for help on Jan. 6.

“They want her out of the apartment, because then they can rent it for two or three times more than what it is now,” said Ortez. Flores’ apartment is subject to rent control.

According to LaVaute, Flores typically pays her rent using money from various sub-tenants in her apartment, described as primos or cousins. Some of these sub-tenants were affected by the pandemic, said LaVaute, which made cash flow a problem. Neither the landlord nor the tenants appear to have availed themselves of pandemic rental assistance.

In any event, Tuesday’s court hearing was not about the merits of the eviction as a whole. Instead, it was to determine if Flores should be automatically evicted by the sheriff on Wednesday because she had failed to respond to the five-day eviction notice served in October, 2022. It was an oversight that would typically allow an eviction to proceed.

LaVaute argued that Flores’s cataracts prevented her from being able to read the notice. “My client is essentially blind,” LaVaute told the court on Tuesday. Ultimately, Judge Karnow agreed to squash the default ruling, meaning Flores still has the eviction hanging over her, but will now have her case heard in court.

“As people get older, they need more help,” said Karnow. “But I am putting the defendant on notice.” Karnow said that Flores would be responsible for paying at least part of the Sius’ legal fees because, he argued, missing the deadline to respond made her responsible.

It is now unclear precisely how the case will proceed. LaVaute filed a demand on Tuesday for a jury trial and a settlement conference, and Flores’ case is likely to be heard in court in the next one to three months. For the time being, though, she is in legal limbo.

“I have been really depressed and nervous,” said Flores in Spanish.

“I just want the situation closed.”