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Re:Evicted in San Francisco by nilkn on Tuesday March 11, 2014 @05:31PM (#7382286)
It's not that I don't feel sympathy for her, but yes, cities change and it's something you simply have to be aware of if you're living in one. If you're planning on being a life-long renter, you're really taking a risk that this will happen to you, too, if the prices ever experience a big boom as they have in San Francisco. If she had bought property back when it was cheap, she might be a millionaire today. If over the course of her life she could never afford to buy anything in the city, though, then evidently it wasn't ever really "cheap" relative to her income (or else she just wan't frugal enough).

Besides, I moved away from my family, friends, and contacts that I'd built up over the first 18 years of my life in order to attend college. People uproot themselves frequently because they realize that not doing so is just too impractical.

Re:Evicted in San Francisco by radley on Tuesday March 11, 2014 @05:37PM (#7382334)
San Francisco has Rent Control ordinances, so as long as the unit was legal, she could have stayed there for the rest of her life (which she probably expected).

http://www.sftu.org/rentcontrol.html

Re:Evicted in San Francisco by nilkn on Tuesday March 11, 2014 @05:37PM (#7382339)
> so as long as the unit was legal

It wasn't, according to this article. She took a risk.

Re:Evicted in San Francisco by radley on Tuesday March 11, 2014 @05:51PM (#7382424)
What if she was just "renting a room" and the new owner simply labelled it an "inlaw" as a legal loophole?

[Update] I didn't see the pic. Yeah, it's clearly in a different building, so an in-law.

Re:Evicted in San Francisco by CocaKoala on Tuesday March 11, 2014 @06:07PM (#7382525)
Saying that if you change the details of a story, then the details are different doesn't actually mean anything and doesn't have any bearing on the story as it happened.
Re:Evicted in San Francisco by head_stomp on Tuesday March 11, 2014 @06:08PM (#7382540)
That's incorrect according to your own link:

Illegal Units are covered by rent control. Illegal units, such as in-law apartments, are covered by rent control.

Tenants can only be evicted for one of 15 "just causes." Most of these deal with allegations the tenant can dispute (e.g., tenant is violating the lease) but some are "no-fault" like owner move in or Ellis.

Re:Evicted in San Francisco by refurb on Tuesday March 11, 2014 @08:49PM (#7383259)
Not the rest of her life if the owners decided to remove the unit from the rental market.
Re:Evicted in San Francisco by null_ptr on Thursday March 13, 2014 @07:40AM (#7391161)
Comparing yourself leaving for college at 18 to a 75 year old woman being evicted is plain distasteful.