Since 1994, landlord attorney Edward Corvi has been systematically evicting tenants from his 8 unit apartment building on Corbett Ave. He's done three "owner move in" evictions there and another to remove one unit from housing use. None of the long-term tenants who were in the building when he bought it in 1994 are left, but he's not done yet. He wants to evict yet another tenant for OMI—he wants to move his son from one unit in the building into another unit in the building. Already he's used the scam of moving a son from one unit to another but why mess with what works?
     But Proposition G stopped him, as it was designed to stop such abuses. So Corvi is one of the landlord plaintiffs suing to overturn Proposition G because it's ended this lucrative eviction loophole for him.
      Corvi can no longer move his relatives into the building and from one unit to another, clearing out tenants, because Proposition G does not allow for relative evictions except when the landlord lives in the building. Ironically, Corvi used to live in the building—he did an OMI for himself and lived there one year, one day—which Corvi pointed out to the Rent Board was "in adherence" with the rent control law.
      Corvi is both a landlord and a landlord attorney. His income and his work centers around evicting people. Corvi, in fact, was the attorney for notorious landlord Susanna Shaw who many consider the mother of rent control for 2-4 unit, landlord occupied buildings. Shaw, too, had a history of multiple OMI evictions. Before landlord-occupied buildings were covered by rent control, Shaw was moving into her buildings briefly, removing them from rent control, and then moving on to another building to do the same—leading her to be tagged a "serial evictor" by the Noe Valley Voice. Corvi was her attorney at the time and unsuccessfully represented her before the Rent Board when the Board ruled Shaw's move ins in "bad faith" and ruled rent increases she had given tenants as illegal. Shortly thereafter, voters approved an initiative to place landlord-occupied buildings under rent control.
      While the Rent Board successfully stopped the Corvi/Shaw scam, it unfortunately has yet to stop Corvi himself from using OMI evictions to evict any tenant whose rent falls below market in his buildings.
      As an attorney specializing in evicting people from their homes, Corvi has been a master at manipulating the OMI eviction just cause—often following the letter of the law while clearly violating the intent and spirit of it. Proposition G was specifically designed for people like Corvi, landlords whose moral compasses seem to be a bit off. And Prop G stopped Corvi, so now he's suing.
     The other landlord plaintiffs are also an interesting batch—a ragtag group where the greedy meet the incompetent (which again raises the questions—does greed cause stupidity or is it the other way around?).
      Take plaintiff Michael Howard, for example. He owns a six unit apartment building and wants to move his mother in law into one of the units there. Howard complains that, since he does not live in the building, he cannot evict the tenants for his mother in law. What Howard fails to understand, though, is that he never could have evicted for his mother in law there or anywhere—mother in law never was one of the allowed relatives.
      Or take plaintiff Michael Olexo.  He bought a 4 unit building in 1998 and has been trying to evict a Latino family for almost six months now. He just can't seem to figure out how to write a legal eviction notice. Even after the Rent Board sent him a list of what was wrong with his eviction notice, he issued another incorrect one. And when the Rent Board sent him a notice that the eviction was wrongful because of the invalid notice and advised him to come in and get help to write a legal one, did he take up their offer? No. There was a typo on the address where the eviction was occurring and rather than taking them up on their offer to help, he denied he was doing an eviction at the (obviously incorrect) address.
      Nothing in Proposition G would stop Olexo from his eviction—he's his own worst enemy. So the landlords are using him to overturn the Bierman legislation requiring a conditional use permit to convert a rental unit to an ownership unit. Thing is, Olexo hasn't been denied such a permit and will probably get it.
      Or there's Kelli Cwynar. If she's evicting in good faith, she has a great lawsuit against her realtor. Cwynar says she and the other 50% owners want to live in a 3 unit building but she's being stopped because Proposition G allows only one OMI eviction per building.
      Apparently, the realtor who sold the building never warned Cwynar about Proposition G and apparently she never reads the papers or listens to the news, all of which said Prop G would win easily. The week before Prop G passed, she bought this building with the other owners and is now whining because only one of them can move in and she's suing to make sure everyone pays for her ignorance.
      Of course, there's always the issue that maybe she wasn't stupid but really has the intent of evicting tenants with affordable rents. While the sale of the building was closing, for example, one tenant moved out voluntarily. Cwynar or her co-owners could have moved into that vacant unit (and still have done an OMI in another unit). Instead, they rented out that vacant unit at a higher rent.
      Landlord plaintiff Richard Worner seems almost normal compared to the rest. Wormer owns 2 homes plus his rental property and is suing because he can't move his son into one of the rental buildings. Of course, it just so happens that the tenant he wants to evict has lived there for over 20 years. Prop G, of course, doesn't allow for evictions for relatives unless the landlord lives in the building and apparently Worner doesn't want his son to live with him.
      Getting back to the greedier side, another plaintiff. Yasin Salma, is your basic professional realtor/landlord. He owns many buildings in and around San Francisco and is the apparent owner of Y.A. Salma Associates Realtors.
      One of his buildings is a six unit building with one of the units occupied by a senior who's lived there for more than ten years. He wants one of his daughters to live in that unit but can't because of Prop G (he's stopped two ways–can't evict for relatives unless you live in the building and can't evict for long-term senior tenants at all).
      He claims he bought the building for his children to live in, but he bought it back in early 1998 and for almost all of 1998 he could have evicted for his children at any time—except for in the unit occupied by the senior. But he never did. Clearly his main intention os getting rid of the senior tenant and so he's joined the suit as a sole model for all of us—suing for the right to evict senior citizens from their homes.
      The lawsuit these six landlords have filed seeks to challenge the entirety of Proposition G as well as the entirety of the Rental Housing Conversion Act and their legal challenges are also global—a taking of private property. For example, there are no specific or extra legal arguments against any of the specific clauses of the law (e.g., against the senior protection provision or against the one OMI per building provision).
      The lawsuit is also very short on legal rationale or citations and reads more like an Apartment Owners magazine article than a lawsuit. The laws they attack have been drafted with some care and it's difficult for the landlords to articulate how the law is unfair in a way other than it doesn't let them evict whoever they want to evict whenever they want to evict them.
      Take the senior protection provision as an example. If there's a senior in the building, it means the landlord must move into one of the other units. It doesn't mean the landlord can't move into their property, it just means they have to act human. If by some chance, there's all seniors in the building then Prop G actually allows them to evict.
      Or multiple owners of one building wanting to move in. There's the twenty year old condo conversion process which allows this to happen. OMI evictions were done to get around the condo conversion law—Prop G doesn't stop people from buying apartment units and living in them, it merely requires them to follow the process designed for multiple owners living in a building.
      The difficulty the landlords have in articulating their grievances stems from their grievances being a loss of loopholes and scams, not a loss of legitimate uses.
      As the Tenant Times is printed, the landlords have filed their lawsuit with the court but have yet to serve it on the city, which is the defendant since Proposition G is now law. The City Attorney will lead the defense for Prop G and the Bierman conversion law but the Tenants Union is intervening as well. The landlords have not asked for any injunctive relief (i.e., that either law be suspended while the suit moves forward). No court date has been scheduled until August and generally nothing can move forward until the city is actually served with the suit.
      Unsurprisingly, the landlords are now said to be re-examining their stellar cast of plaintiffs (see above) and will be amending and refiling their complaint with new plaintiffs. But, with their pool of potential plaintiffs being landlords who want to evict senior, disabled, and terminally ill tenants, their quest for sympathetic plaintiffs seems doomed.