2. Elsa / The Rent Strike

ELSA HAD LIVED in the building for ten months with her friend Michelle and Michelle’s three-year-old daughter, Juliet. Their apartment was on the second floor with Southern windows, small for three people, but adequate.

So far this particular area, five blocks north of Haight Street, had not been redeveloped. The buildings were, for the most part, dilapidated, and many were not the attractive gingerbread Victorians that, ramshackle or not, were being bought up so voraciously by the middle class in the Haight Ashbury and the Fillmore. These buildings had unadorned stucco facades, and their inside woodwork was absent the intricate carvings common to a typical Victorian.

For several blocks in any direction this was strictly a residential area, with few stores; only the perpetual corner store with Arab proprietors, a large liquor supply, and outrageously priced, poor quality food. Every few blocks was a laundromat. Nearby to the west were the University of San Francisco and St. Mary’s Hospital; to the east, a shopping center, adult school, and business streets. But here, the streets were not continually busy with traffic. Only children gathered on corners. Burglaries proliferated and drug traffic was heavy, but done in houses, not on the street. There were no bars for business to be conducted from, no pool halls or pizza parlors. Not infrequently the cops raided a house and seized a quantity of heroin or cocaine, or guns, or stolen property; and life went on in the neighborhood. 

Before moving onto Grove Street Elsa had lived on the other side of the Panhandle (a block-wide extension of Golden Gate Park) but within the past few years rents had shot up, doubling or worse in some cases. Her flat had been sold three times within a year, the rent going from $225 to $375. Now she and Michelle paid $175 for their apartment in the badly maintained building and knew they were getting ripped off, but hadn’t been able to find anything better.

What had happened to the Haight Ashbury in the last few years was a precise picture of the urban removal that masqueraded as “redevelopment.” Even into the early 1970’s in the neighborhood, political activity was high. More stores began opening, and those that did not fit in with the needs of the community quickly went out of business. Grocers gave credit to familiar faces. On sunny days the street was always filled with people talking, drinking, smoking dope, exchanging news. It seemed as if everyone knew everyone else. When a cop stopped someone, a crowd assembled to watch. In bars an amazing variety of people gathered: old and young; black, Latino, white; straight and gay; female and male; worker, welfare mother, dope dealer, musician. There had been problems, but the unique blend of cultures and lifestyles made the Haight Ashbury a supportive, exciting, neighborly community in which to live.

But as the city of San Francisco opened its golden gate to the unceasing westward march of banks and multi-nationals, accommodations were needed for the nuts and bolts of these financial machines. The Haight Ashbury was immediately seen as prime. Property was fairly cheap, yet only minimal capital would convert these exhausted, peeling homes into grand Victorian palaces. This meant dislocating the current inhabitants with as little resistance as possible, and injecting enough capital into the area to upgrade the street, thus demonstrating to newcomers (or up-and-coming old timers) the vicinity’s desirability.

Several economic programs were created by that age-old coalition of banks and the city government that enabled an onslaught of new merchants to open their doors. Within two years, almost no vacant storefronts remained. Stores and restaurants that had survived the “worst” days were unable to meet newly doubled rents in these “better” times; or perhaps were not given the chance to by owners whose greed convinced them that tenants catering to a higher class of clientele would bring in higher rents and raise property values.

Thus arose specialty stores selling perfumes and soaps, exotic pets, jewelry, unique types of shoes. Coffeehouses serving only beverages and sweets. More health food stores. Expensive delicatessens. Discotheques for the young black executive or gay businessman. Police began enforcing loitering and “brown bag” laws and pressuring the political activists. People who had lived in the neighborhood for years moved to the Fillmore or Hunter’s Point or the Mission.

Elsa worked at one of the first of the new set of coffeehouses, the Outer Lands. Outer Lands was a few blocks off Haight Street, about three years old, and served soup, sandwiches and salad along with coffee and cakes. The owner, a young man named Kris, had bought the business a year and a half ago from the original owner. The coffeehouse had large windows, and sun streamed over the numerous plants and macramé hangings. The obligatory bulletin board was crowded with rooms for rent or wanted, poetry reading notices, and political announcements. Recently Kris had decided to hire musicians on Friday and Saturday nights; he instituted an open mike the rest of the week.

During Elsa’s shift, from nine until three on weekdays, a lot of college students came in for lunch. The other customers were for the most part chess enthusiasts and assorted burnt-out artists and poets who spent nearly half their ATD checks each month on Kris’s soup and espresso. A lot of people had nothing better to do than sit for hours each day looking out windows and nursing their coffee and cigarettes, maybe reading the Chronicle or sketching.

Kris paid only $2.50 or $3.00 an hour. The five employees were expected to do dishes, prepare food, run the cash register, take orders, and bus tables. He frowned on mistakes, but didn’t seem to care about timeliness. It was the kind of restaurant – possibly unique to San Francisco – run on the philosophy that slow service is hip, that the speedy efficiency of a normal dining establishment is insulting to the mellow atmosphere of the neighborhood coffeehouse. Kris himself had been known to gab to a customer already served for five minutes, while people queued behind impatiently waiting to have their coffee refilled.

Elsa’s top take-home pay was $65 a week, but combined with Michelle’s welfare check their household survived adequately. Both women had been poor long enough to know where to cut corners. Their only luxury was good marijuana, and they scrimped to afford that. Although on rent strike, everyone still paid rent into the tenants’ association bank account.

Their landlord was well known in the area. Or, more accurately, notorious. Several years ago he had bought an entire block in the Fillmore, had all the buildings torn down, and built a pre-fab tenement that he dared to call Martin Luther King Place. Not four years later the building stood empty and boarded up. It was said he didn’t mind the loss in revenue because of increasing property values in the neighborhood. In the Fillmore District, rapid face-lifting had made those who owned even empty lots realize three or five times the original price they paid for the property. Besides, Sanford Bergman was still collecting rent from the numerous other buildings he owned, all in poor neighborhoods of San Francisco.

He was a slumlord in the truest sense of the word. A white man born and raised in Pacific Heights, now living in isolated, extremely wealthy St. Francis Wood, he hired black people to manage the buildings in the black neighborhoods where he owned property. He was one of the largest rental property owners in the city, and had an office downtown from which the operation was directed. Bergman himself rarely used the office; it was utilized by the chain of lackeys who administered his holdings. Sanford Bergman understood that the ownership and rental of property must be run strictly as a business if profit were to be made, and was as hardnosed and businesslike as possible. Born of an old San Francisco family that had made its niche in the society pages through real estate speculation and manipulation, he had no qualms in carrying out his views of the landlord-tenant relationship.

He had never been charged with any wrongdoing or illegalities, but to the people of the Western Addition he was considered ruthless, vicious, and even criminal. His “rent collectors” had literally made their mark in a number of apartments.

Bergman bought the building on Grove Street several months after Elsa, Michelle and Juliet moved in. He got it relatively cheaply because of the condition it was in, but was not about to invest his capital in repairs.

Shortly after he bought the building, a fire started on the third floor due to faulty wiring. Fortunately everyone escaped with their lives, although it was two in the morning, but the tenants of that apartment lost most of their belongings. For a week or two after the fire, they all four crowded into the one remaining bedroom, awaiting the repairs promised by Bergman’s flak catcher, Mrs. Taylor, and restoration of gas and electricity. Finally they did the logical thing: moved into the vacant apartment across the hall. One roommate, unwilling to endure the condition of the building any longer, and afraid of her life turning inside out in the confrontation with Bergman, left.

In response to their move, Bergman promptly raised their rent, as well as that of all the other building tenants. He sent identical letters to each of the five occupied apartments, claiming his fire insurance would not adequately cover repairs and improvements.

That was the last straw for the tenants. Elsa spent several days visiting the others, whom she had only known on a social basis before. She, Michelle and a couple on the first floor, Jimmy and Alix, got together one evening about three days after the notices were received, to compare notes and discuss possible actions.

Jimmy was a slender, tall, quiet man who when he spoke had something relevant to say. He had done time in prison for a burglary conviction several years ago and was currently unemployed. He had applied to drive a Muni bus but there was a long waiting list. In the meantime he was able to find occasional odd jobs through friends. Alix worked as a waitress downtown, supporting them and her six-year-old daughter Jasmine.

Together the four of them decided to call a building meeting and attempt to initiate a rent strike. All felt that if the others weren’t agreeable, they would move out together somewhere else, but wouldn’t pay rent until they found a suitable place to move.

Other tenants included a couple, Paul and Karen, also on the first floor; three male University of California medical students, next to Elsa and Michelle on the second floor; and the remaining three tenants on the third floor. Only the med students did not work for their survival; they had loans and grants to go to school. But they too were on a very limited income.

No one in the building was willing to pay higher rent to Sanford Bergman, and during the week, they drew up a joint letter explaining why they were going on rent strike, developed a leaflet to give to their neighbors, and consolidated themselves internally. One med student left at this point. 

A lot of work had to be done. Some of it was simple – typing the letter, getting the leaflet copied. Some of it involved more thought and diligence – writing the letter, distributing the leaflet. Elsa found that she, Michelle and Jimmy were more liable to take on work than the others, and because of their part in pulling the rent strike together in the first place, were looked to by the other tenants to solve problems. All three realized that the rent strike was going to bring vast changes into the lives of the thirteen people in the building.

Sanford Bergman responded to the rent strike within ten days.

Around midnight, Elsa and Michelle heard Sue, above them on the third floor, yelling: “You get out of here!” After Elsa slipped her .22 caliber revolver into her waist and, the two women went up to investigate. Approaching the last turn in the stairs, they saw four men in the doorway of the apartment armed with baseball bats and iron pipes. One man was asserting: “You got no right to be in this apartment. You’re gonna have to leave, and we don’t want you moving back across the hall, either.”

Michelle ran downstairs to get more people. Elsa stayed hidden, her hand resting on the handgun, her heart racing heavily in her chest. Within minutes, the discussion became quite heated. One man impatiently recommended they cut the gab and proceed with the eviction. At that moment, Michelle, Jimmy, Paul, and the two med students arrived. Elsa noted Paul’s buck knife, Jimmy’s bike chain, and Michelle’s car antenna. She stepped forward. “Is there a problem, Sue?”

“Yeah, there’s a problem,” retorted one of the men. “It’s people interfering with something that’s none of their business.”

“It is our business,” Michelle said, her black eyes sparking angrily. “We stand up for each other here. You got something to say to Sue, you say it to all of us.”

The four men weighed the situation. Though they could conceivably force their way into the apartment and rough Sue up, they would certainly be injured themselves in the process. They had not been warned of any special problems and had not expected this greeting. In most places, the other tenants stayed inside for fear of getting the same treatment. They’d only been told to put a scare into these people, and had no idea what the legal situation was.

Jimmy spoke softly. “You know that an eviction has to go through court. Mr. Bergman ought to file eviction papers if he wants anyone out of here. He has to obey the law just like everyone else. We don’t want to call the cops, but legally you are trespassers and you’re harassing this sister.”

“We’re authorized by the owner of this building to be in here,” one of the goons said.

“Did he authorize you to make physical threats?” Elsa said.

The four men did leave, grudgingly, angry over failure and loss of face. On the way out, one of them smashed his bat against Paul and Karen’s door, snarling, “We’ll be back, motherfuckers.” 

After that incident, Bergman sent eviction notices, the first step to initiating unlawful detainer suits against the tenants of each apartment. He screwed himself by sending a notice to Sue, Lucky and Kenny at the third floor front apartment, thus invalidating his own contention that they had been illegally occupying it since the fire in the rear apartment.

The Grove Street Tenants’ Association took several steps. They consulted a lawyer for advice as to legal proceedings, developed security precautions, and extended their leafleting and door-to-door work.

Various security measures were instigated. They changed both front and back door locks and repaired windows. Through the door-to-door work they began to establish an emergency telephone hotline. If anything happened, one or two neighbors would be called and they in turn would call other neighbors and the lawyer, to summon whatever help was needed. They figured it would mainly be coming to the building and watching what happened, and being prepared to testify in court. Several neighbors were designated to bring cameras. Others were willing to have the children brought over in case of emergency.

As far as weapons, several of the people in the building had guns, but they were not to be used except to save a life. Each household had weapons handy that could conceivably serve other purposes – hammers, iron pipes, clubs – and everyone agreed that their best defense was large numbers of people, alertness, and calmness in the face of adversity.

But the most difficult and vital part of insuring physical safety was recognizing the need for it. Weapons and locks were only superficial measures. Several meetings resulted in intense debates. One specifically boiled down to the issue of selling dope from the building. Paul sold weed and did not want to give up this income or the accompanying lifestyle. “I don’t see why I should,” he argued. “I don’t deal with anyone I don’t know, and all my friends are cool.”

“Man, you can never be that sure of your friends, I don’t care how much you think you can trust them or how tight you are with them,” Michelle said. “No one thinks you’d sell to a narc off the street, but you can never tell about people, even people you know.”

“What are you saying? That I’m dumb enough to get set up? I been doing this for a long time, and did a lot worse than grass, and never got busted.”

“Then the odds are getting worse every day,” Michelle said. 

“Shit, man, I used to say the same thing,” Jimmy remarked, “right up until the day I got popped. Man, I sure used to trust my partners.”

“But that’s not the point, Jimmy,” Elsa said. “It’s not a question of good judgment or knowing who you deal with. The point is, the cops know who’s doing what in the neighborhood and they let some people stay in business. And when they wanna bust someone, they know where to go.”

“Look, this is bullshit,” protested Paul. “What do you think I am? I only turn a half-pound a week, if I’m lucky. It’s on the side, that’s all. I work for the construction company; the dope’s just extra bread. I’m no big time man.”

Elsa shook her head. “Paul, you’re still missing my point. It’s not how big or little you are. It’s what’s most convenient for the cops.” She leaned toward him. “If they bust you it won’t be because they’re under an illusion they’re getting a big connection. It’ll be busting all of us, not just you. You’ll just be their excuse.”

“Elsa’s right,” agreed Lucky. “If you don’t really need the bread there’s no point jeopardizing the building. We aren’t on rent strike just for the hell of it.”

“Really,” drawled Alix. “So why draw the heat? We’re gonna have enough of it as it is.”

Paul shrugged and gestured, conceding defeat. “I’m not gonna make a case out of it. But everyone here gets high and that’s illegal too. Where do you draw the line?”

Alix exhaled in exasperation. “Oh, Paul, you know the difference. Don’t be–“

Elsa cut in, “No, Paul has a good point, Alix. We all have the responsibility not to bring heat on each other.”

Eventually they agreed not to keep or bring any drugs into the building beyond an ounce of marijuana per apartment.

They hired a lawyer, Marty Singleton, to defend the unlawful detainer (eviction) suit Sanford Bergman would probably file, now that three days had passed and the tenants had not paid rent or vacated; and to prepare a counter-claim against him. The suit for damages would charge Bergman for failure to live up to his own rental agreement, in terms of repairs and habitability; negligence by allowing the hazardous wiring to go unrepaired, in violation of the city code and endangering the health and safety of the tenants; mental anguish on the part of Sue, Lucky and Kenny for Bergman’s attempted forced, illegal eviction; and for recovery of property lost from fire and smoke damage. 

Marty Singleton was hesitant to include the forced eviction in the damage suit when he learned that the other tenants had driven the goons out of the building. He felt that perhaps that had not been quite legal either and that it would harm their chances of winning the suit. At the firm insistence of Elsa and Jimmy, this cause of action was included. But there remained a residue of sore feelings between the tenants and their attorney after Elsa outlined the terms of the relationship, to preclude any future doubts: the tenants would make the political decisions and Marty was to carry them out and give legal advice.

This suit required much legal research and investigation, thus facing the tenants with financial difficulties. Marty Singleton was willing to work for cost only pending the outcome of the suit, and to take a loss if they lost the suit; however, costs could run into a large sum. Since Marty had other cases that could not be neglected, an assistant would have to do the research for the suit, and be paid for it. The tenants were willing to help when and wherever they could, but none of them was very familiar with law, particularly civil law.

Their door-to-door work proved invaluable in solving this problem. Michelle and Karen were working one afternoon on Clayton Street and knocked on the door of a woman who was a law student at Hastings and who had a healthy amount of community consciousness. Cynthia volunteered to become Marty Singleton’s legal assistant in this matter, and to teach the tenants how to become adept at research and investigation themselves.

It was around this time that the police began coming to the building.

The first time was supposedly for loud music being played by one of the tenants. Alix made the first mistake in security by buzzing the main door open without even seeing who was there. Fortunately Elsa was sitting in her front window, saw the squad car arrive, and went downstairs. The two cops left without arguing. The incident triggered Elsa’s realization that the level of awareness in the building was very low, dangerous in fact. Alix was one of the most street-wise people in the place, yet she had let the police into the building. What if those two patrolmen had been gung-ho types? What if they had been drunk? Suppose whoever had set up the situation had not simply made a phone call, but had actually planned tactics with the cops – would they have left so agreeably? Or was she being paranoid in thinking that a landlord could tell the police department what to do?

Six days later the police showed up answering a “domestic dispute” call. Elsa no longer believed herself paranoid, but some of the others were still reluctant to admit they were being harassed by the police at Bergman’s instigation, or even just because they were on rent strike and the cops resented it.

But after the third visit – this time three squad cars to halt a “burglary in progress” – everyone concurred with Elsa. The rent strike was no longer an aside in the lives of these thirteen people, but dominated their thoughts and actions every day, all day. It was not a question of how and when the tenants wished to act, for Sanford Bergman was determining for them the necessity to devote themselves more wholeheartedly and carefully to defending themselves.

Then Elsa was stopped in the street by two cops who had already seen her twice at the building. She knew they had pulled her over because they recognized her, compounded by their male chauvinism. She had not believed herself naïve yet hadn’t been prepared for such rapid and direct reaction by the police for her part in the rent strike. Elsa had to laugh at herself for her arrogance of a week ago, when she had thought that most of the other people in the building were in over their heads and had no inkling of how intense the pressure would get, and that she was not so innocent. The truth was, the cops recognized the potential of the rent strike more than probably everyone involved in it.