Longest ongoing SF rent strike an outlier, advocates say
By Keith Menconi | Sep 19, 2024 / Updated Sep 21, 2024
The tenants association at 781 O’Farrell St., pictured on Aug. 15, 2024, said the problems began to emerge at the building after Veritas acquired the property in 2017. Courtesy of Housing Rights Coalition
An ongoing rent strike at a 30-unit Tenderloin apartment building is now an outlier in more ways than one. At the start of this month, the tenant action entered its second year, becoming San Francisco’s longest such protest in recent memory.
Tenants and their supporters say it’s also faced some of the fiercest opposition.
The group of 10 tenants living at 781 O’Farrell St. first began withholding their rent in September 2023. Their numbers have dwindled to five since then, after individual renters were issued eviction notices and settled their claims individually, according to organizers.
The five that remain on strike are now at an impasse with building owner Veritas Investments in their longstanding battle to address quality-of-life issues in the building, including a lack of language support for the many Cantonese and Spanish speakers who live there, as well as a number of overdue repairs and other issues.
Following the passage of a 2022 law granting extra protections for tenant unions in San Francisco, there’s been a surge in such organizing. But as renter strikes crop up in other buildings and win major concessions, residents at 781 O’Farrell say they’ve endured a grueling 12 months spent in constant fear that an eviction notice could be coming at any moment.
“Psychologically and mentally, it’s very harmful to us,” said a longtime tenant who wished to go only by her surname, Li, for fear of retribution. The Cantonese speaker was interviewed through an interpreter.
“You never know when there’ll be a piece of paper or an envelope you’ll see slipping under the door,” Li said.
But along with the frustration over the lack of progress has come a sense of empowerment for tenants. In addition, tenant organizers said, the strikers have notched some important wins in their showdown with Veritas, one of the largest corporate landlords in San Francisco and the owner of thousands of apartments across The City.
“They did not start doing some of the basic repairs or even start meeting with the tenants until after the tenants went on strike,” said Katelynn Cao, a tenant organizer with the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, which has been supporting the strikers. “So I think I see it as already a win for the tenants.”
Veritas responded to an inquiry from The Examiner with a written statement that did not address individual allegations from tenants. In the statement, a spokesperson for the company expressed openness to continued talks with the tenants, but also said that “[m]any of the allegations relating to 781 O’Farrell Street have been responded to, resolved, or are untrue.”
Striking renters and their advocates said the problems began to emerge at the building after Veritas acquired the property in 2017. Among their chief complaints is poor communication that they say disadvantaged the building’s many non-English speaking residents.
While prior owners have provided notices in Cantonese, Veritas has instituted an English-only policy in its communications with tenants, meaning that many residents have missed key updates, and as a result, they’ve sometimes faced unexpected additional charges when they’ve failed to comply with new requirements such as added fees or a new mailing address for rent payments, according to the organizers.
Residents also said they began to notice more delays with maintenance work and repairs that have resulted in backed-up sewage pipes, issues with the building’s fire alarms, and problems with rodents and pests. Li said mold has also been a major issue in her apartment.
“My children are young, and they breathe this in all the time, and because of this, they’ve gotten a lot of itches and rashes,” said Li, who has lived at the property for 15 years after immigrating from China. “This house is basically unlivable for people.”
Tenants first formed a union at 781 O’Farrell in 2022, but they said they made little headway because Veritas refused to recognize the group. Lawyers representing the tenants say that refusal violated the law passed that year protecting tenant organizing in The City.
“The landlord needs to come to the table and meet and confer in good faith,” said Shelby Nacino, housing rights program director at the Asian Law Caucus. “That’s required by the ordinance.”
Frustrated with the lack of engagement from Veritas, tenants say, they decided to go on strike in September 2023, demanding that management address their concerns and also provide compensation.
The escalation seemed to make a difference: Veritas soon thereafter began meeting with the union. In addition, Li said, “I got the repairs that I was asking for.”
But the company has not budged on its language policy, stating in a letter responding to tenants’ demands that it does not have the capacity to offer notices or call support in all of the languages spoken by tenants living across its many properties. The note further argues that offering support in some languages but not others would run afoul of the federal Fair Housing Act’s prohibitions against discrimination.
Nacino dismisses that interpretation of the federal housing law as “absurd.”
Meanwhile, while tenants say Veritas has offered some compensation for the delayed repairs in the form of a month or so of rent reductions, they are holding out for more. They say that some of the tenants who have already settled with Veritas in eviction lawsuits have received heftier compensation.
“So we thought that’s not right,” Li said.
Organizers contrast the seemingly calcified impasse that has formed at 781 O’Farrell with the relative success enjoyed by striking tenants at other properties.
Several of those were Veritas-owned until only recently, when the company began selling off buildings following its default on loans in 2022. After the properties changed hands, the new owners — including Prado Group, Ballast Investments and Brookfield Properties — responded more favorably to the strikers’ demands, including their requests for expanded language access, advocates said.
As for The City’s landlords, the San Francisco Apartment Association argues such tenant associations are largely the work of “third-party nonprofit” organizations, and that they tend to produce antagonism and avoidable conflict.
“[T]he reality is that the landlord tenant relationship is symbiotic,” said Charley Goss, speaking for the trade group. “It doesn’t need to be unnecessarily adversarial.”
After a full year of organizing, striking tenants at 781 O’Farrell have learned a thing or two about advocating for themselves — and, they say, that know-how has spread throughout the building.
“Some people wouldn’t know how to talk to the landlord to ask for help with certain things that need maintenance,” said Li. Now, however, she said, “we actually are able to tell them where to go or what to do.”
“So we definitely feel empowered because so many of us are standing up to them, and we are together,” she said.
“We call that unbreakable solidarity,” said Brad Hirn, who until recently served as a lead organizer for the Housing Rights Committee.
Hirn said since the tenant organizing law was passed in 2022, he has seen tenants across dozens of apartment buildings come forward asking for help in forming their own associations. Now, he said, he’s hoping the sense of empowerment fostered by the 781 O’Farrell strike will spread, inspiring other tenants in San Francisco to begin organizing as well.
“I think it’s rejuvenating or giving some new life to the tenant movement,” he said of the 2022 law.