December 4, 2025
Tenants at a 16-unit apartment building in the Mission are celebrating a big win after the San Francisco Community Land Trust has purchased their building to convert it into permanently affordable housing. For years, residents of the building have been organizing together to demand basic repairs, eventually leading to a rent strike against two successive corporate landlords. Today, they celebrate the removal of two corporate landlords, the promise of long-term stability and affordability, and even rent reductions for some tenants in the building.
“We all risked so much and we didn’t know what would happen, but in the end, we got what we wanted after six years of fighting. This is a victory for us.” Luis Zeron, 14th street tenant association member
The tenant association is made up of long-term residents, many who have been in the building for decades, families, artists, trades people, service workers, and immigrants. They formed during a period when their building was owned and managed by Veritas Investments. Veritas became San Francisco’s largest residential landlord after buying up the infamous CitiApartments portfolio as they went bankrupt following sustained citywide organizing by tenants resisting their aggressive and predatory business model. Veritas did not last long as the dominant player in the city’s residential real estate market, defaulting on loans across their portfolio in the wake of even more tenant organizing.
The building on 14th street was among 20 properties bought up by Prado Group when Veritas defaulted on their loans. Tenants remained united and sought to negotiate with their new landlord over repair issues and rent levels. Ultimately, Prado agreed to sell the building to the San Francisco Community Land Trust, who will ensure that the property remains out of the profit-driven speculative market forever. Today, tenants are celebrating this powerful message to predatory investors: attacking tenants is a bad business model in a city where we know how to organize!
Check out today’s article in the San Francisco Chronicle:
S.F. tenants get early Christmas present: Permanently affordable housing
Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle
For years, Sandra Martinez and Luis Zeron have woken up every day with the feeling of impending doom. Would the next knock on the front door be an eviction from their Mission District apartment?
The San Francisco couple worried about getting kicked out after they couldn’t pay rent because they lost their jobs during the pandemic. Then they decided in 2022 to stop paying rent after they said they spent years complaining to the landlord about substandard conditions to no avail.
After they moved into the one-bedroom where they live with their two children at 320 14th St. in 2018, they said they soon found black mold, excess moisture and cockroaches. They contacted Veritas Investments — which owned the building — to fix the issues. But they said that the company, then the largest landlord in San Francisco, ignored them, so the family took the matter into their own hands and started knocking on neighbors’ doors.
“We found out we all had the same problems,” Martinez said. “So we united.”
Over two years, Martinez and Zeron led efforts to pressure Veritas to make repairs on their dilapidated 100-year-old, 14-unit building across from the old Armory. The group formed a tenants’ union and eventually called a rent strike.
Veritas did not immediately return a request for comment.
But this week the group is celebrating: The building will be made permanently affordable after a nonprofit housing organization, the San Francisco Community Land Trust, bought the property. The land trust owns 16 buildings in the city.
The purchase ensures that residents can remain in their homes for as long as they choose and opens up the opportunity for residents to eventually buy their apartments if they choose to.
Sitting beside their kitchen and a set of bunk beds set up in their living room, Zeron and Martinez told the Chronicle they were still in shock. The Land Trust told them their rent will likely go down by about 15% — hugely helpful since they rely on two low-wage jobs to get by: Zeron works at a bakery and Martinez works at McDonald’s.
“We all risked so much and we didn’t know what would happen, but in the end, we got what we wanted after six years of fighting,” Zeron said. “This is a victory for us.”
Success didn’t come easy.
Zeron, Martinez and other tenants who spoke to the Chronicle said they lived in fear for years that they would be evicted.
“We were so desperate,” Martinez said. “I started looking to get a new apartment but couldn’t find anything. I knew we had to win this.”
The building was part of a larger Veritas portfolio that went into default. Eventually, the mortgage was bought by developer Prado Group in November 2023.
The land trust said the Prado Group worked with the residents and the city to address the property’s deferred maintenance and ultimately to sell the building. Kyle Smeallie, policy director for the land trust, said the tenants’ victory is a “testament to the power of tenant organizing” to stop displacement and bring homes into community ownership.
Brad Hirn, a member of the Housing Rights Committee who helped the tenants organize, said the land trust purchase is a victory for the largely Spanish-speaking working-class artists, musicians, service workers and tradespeople who call the place home.
The purchase is a relief for Matthew Souzis, an 18-year resident who lives in a former storefront in the building. Souzis’ apartment is extraordinary: he has stacks and stacks of books lining the walls, found objects covering every inch from floor to ceiling and East-Asian art scattered throughout. Just the thought of moving any of it was enough to send Souzis into a panic during the rent strike.
He told the Chronicle the outcome was unbelievable. He once thought pushing for a community land trust to purchase the property was a fool’s errand.