Tenants of a 28-unit apartment complex in the Inner Sunset left their home in a flurry when a fire broke out in 2023 in a hardware store next door and spread to their 100-year-old building.
It has stood empty since then, despite efforts from tenants and city officials to move renovations along. Then, in June, the building was quietly sold to a new owner. The handful of tenants who retain the right to return to their old units were not notified about the sale until Mission Local reached out.
“I am totally in the dark,” said Chandanie Botejue, a retiree who lived at the apartment complex for 15 years. “Maybe they think we are so inconsequential. They can do this deal and we are kind of pesky and can be tossed aside.”
By law, property owners are legally bound to notify tenants in writing about the sale of the building and their rights. The new owner is required to do the same within 30 days of the sale.
Notice keeps tenants abreast of a building’s progress after a fire because once repairs are completed, landlords have 30 days to alert tenants that they can return, according to the rent board. The law is triggered by the landlord telling tenants that repairs are finished — when this communication doesn’t occur, nothing goes into effect.
Uli Zinnkann, an 18-year tenant at the building who raised her son there, organized other tenants in the building soon after the fire. Except for one email a few days after the 2023 fire, she has never heard from the owners.
The old landlord, Socrates Mamakos, died in 2025 and his son inherited the property and sold it for $6.65 million in June to a company named Cogs and Dogs Development LLC.
During two recent visits to the site, the graffiti-covered plywood gate was open and construction was underway. A construction worker said a crew of about eight people have been working on the building for four months. The plan is to finish by February 2027, he said.
The building has no active permits, according to the Department of Building Inspection. In 2024, the department referred the case to the city attorney’s office to move the repairs forward, without success. The department has not had any interaction with the new owner, its spokesperson Patrick Hannan said.
Mike Farrah, a legislative aide at Supervisor Myrna Melgar’s office who has worked with tenants on the case, said the office is now working to meet with the new owner and inform them to meet with existing tenants.
Handful of tenants retained the right to return
Some tenants moved on soon after the fire — leaving the neighborhood and finding somewhere else to live — but a handful never claimed their deposit from the landlord, holding on to the “right to return.”
That right does not go away with the change of ownership, according to Molly Goldberg, the spokesperson of the San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition. She said it was unclear if the owner knows about the tenants and their rights.
Hayle Meyerhoff, a lead organizer at the Housing Rights Committee, agreed. New owners, she said, “inherit the tenants, inherit the problems, inherit the leases.”
The building’s current owner, Cogs and Dogs Development LLC, based in Brisbane, has purchased seven properties across the city since last November, including another building on 12th Avenue in the Sunset.
There, the owner raised rent on all three commercial tenants at the building, nearly doubling the rate at the artists’ studio Tight Quarters.
“The buyer plans to fully rehabilitate all 28 units,” wrote Eymon Binesh, senior managing director at the real estate brokerage firm Marcus & Millichap, after the sale. “With strong rent growth and significant upside from the vacancies, we remain bullish on the San Francisco multifamily market.”
Kathrine Loh and Maarten Deschaumes, who are the registered managers of the company, declined to comment for this story.
Putting off repairs, Meyerhoff said, is often a strategy for displacing long-term rent-controlled tenants. She expects it to happen more with market rates for housing soaring.
Long repair timelines, Meyerhoff said, “requires tenants to be really engaged to force [the landlord] to continue doing repairs, which is ultimately a responsibility that shouldn’t fall on tenants.”
Zinnkann, who has an office on Irving Street and moved to another apartment nearby, organized tenant meetings at her office for a while. Tenants went to the tenants union and worked with an attorney briefly. But as the process dragged on, people moved on with their lives.
“We lost momentum. That’s really what it was. It was just so much work,” Zinnkann said. “People just couldn’t do that when you start a new life in a new apartment. It was just impossible.”
Botejue, who now pays nearly double her previous rent at an apartment on 18th Street in the Mission, has never felt at home there.
“I miss the old neighborhood enormously. It’s a long time to be in one place. Now, things may happen too late for me,” Botejue said. “It was such a trauma. I don’t think some of us will ever get over what happened.”
The building was old and barebones, but for many, it was home.
“The kitchen is so grungy. The floors are filthy and the walls need paint. The bathroom is so decrepit. It’s just bare minimum,” said Botejue, who retains the right to return. “But we would move back in a heartbeat.”
For some, it was too late. Thomas Koester, 77 at the time, had lived at the apartment with his two cats on a fixed income for over 30 years. He moved to an emergency shelter and then to an SRO hotel, Farrah said.
“He got really, really sick. He was the one who probably suffered the most,” Zinnkann said. “He was pushed around from one to another living situation.”
Koester died in October 2024, a year after the fire.
For the remaining tenants, they are still “hanging on for hope.”
“They can completely ignore us, because we are so small in numbers,” Botejue said. “On the other hand, because we are so small in numbers, maybe they’ll accommodate us.”
