A Landlord’sTale
Here is a true story about a series of events I went through some two to three decades ago in San Diego. It should make for good cheer in this Christmas season.
It happened in several phases, and I’ll start toward the end.
I walked into a “tenants attorney” office with a someone else’s tenant and paid a sleaze-ball attorney (SBA) several hundred dollars in cash to defend against an eviction.
How do I know he was a SBA? I had gone against him months ago in an eviction from one of my buildings, a 4-plex in Santee. The SBA was known for defending every kind of tenant with any means possible, no matter how egregious the tenants’ actions (OK, that’s our legal system–everyone needs needs legal representative), and no matter what dirty tactics he had to use in the process.
In my Santee case, the tenant–a family of four with two kids under ten years old–was a druggie doing great harm to the apartment, the other tenants, and probably his family. He said he would use SBA To stop or greatly delay the eviction so he seemingly had used him in the past. The last time I had tried to collect his overdue rent he was lying on a sofa in the living room with his family, high as a kite, with his legs shaking from his drug high. Of course, he scared my other three tenants. He said he was a carpenter and if he were to be evicted he would take a framing hammer to all the sheetrock in the apartment. I ended up with a “cash for keys” ($500) outcome plus ten days more possession.
Back to the middle of this tale. A year or so later, I was having a McDonalds lunch at their El Cajon Avenue and (about) about 27th Street location. I at a long table amongst several other customers, including a mixed-race female in her late twenties while I read the paper and ate. Finished up, drove to a Home Depot store to buy landlord’s supplies and at the check-out counter discovered I did not have my billfold in my pocket. Alarmed, I guessed the McDonald’s must be where I left it. With little hope of recovery, I drove back. As I parked there, the lady was in front of the McDonalds, waving my billfold in the air. Thanked her profusely and we went inside and talked for half an hour, each explaining our background, employment, etc.
She worked at cleaning up at a downtown restaurant, low paying, and lived in one of those ancient, now-gone single room occupancy (SRO) former hotels with the bathroom down the hall. She said she was now being unfairly evicted and though I don’t remember the details, I felt she was right.
Footnote: She didn’t have the accent of most US blacks, so I delved into her past. Turns out her dad was a Black man serving in the US military in Japan, and her mom was Japanese. Such mixed race children do not fare well in Japan, so her father, whom she adores, brought her back here and now lives far away.
She was distressed because she could not afford the initial fee attorneys charge to begin to fight an eviction.
You can guess what I had to do next. I drove her to the office of the SBA, where I paid the fee for her to fight the eviction. Of course she won, probably without going to trial, as this landlord had to know the reputation of said SBA.
We exchanged letters for a while, with her telling me of her progress, and calling me “her Angel” for helping her. My wife and I enjoyed the letters, and eventually I let the contacts lapse.
Conclusions: Don’t judge people by their appearance, race, or financial status.
Also, poor people can be astonishingly ethical and honest.
