By J.K Dineen - San Francisco Chronicle 10/14/2021
“For three decades Fernando Marti has been among the progressive political activists demonstrating outside the homes of families facing evictions.
The sometimes raucous anti-eviction protests — often featuring Aztec dancers and burning white sage to chase away bad juju — are a staple of the city’s leftist political community. They’re a way to shame landlords, expand movements, and build momentum for new laws and policies that protect tenants.
They were protesting at the displacement of artists during the live-work loft craze in the dot-com boom of the 1990s, and the rash of tenancy-in-common conversions of the early 2000s. There were protests against a 2013 eviction of the family of 80-year-old Poon Heung Lee at Jackson and Larkin streets, and a few years later to save the home of 100-year-old Iris Canada at Page and Steiner streets.
“There is the question of saving someone’s home and then there are the policies and laws needed to address the problem,” said Marti. “(The rallies) put a face on it.”
So on Tuesday morning when Marti joined about 75 demonstrators on 23rd Street in Noe Valley to protest an eviction, it was both familiar and very different. That’s because this time the family being evicted was his own, and the faces giving meaning to the tale of displacement were that of Marti, wife Michelle Foy and their 12-year-old son, Carmelo.
“It’s a very strange thing to be fighting for your own home,” said Marti, who is an architect and co-director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations.”
The case is significant because it is one of a handful of eviction cases that a San Francisco Superior County judge is allowing to go forward, despite a San Francisco city ordinance that extends the pandemic moratorium, according to tenant attorneys.
In April 2019 the Foy-Marti household, which has lived at 3868 23rd St. since 1998, received the first eviction notice from the property owners, the Omran family, who had bought the two-unit building the previous year. The eviction was an “owner-move-in” or OMI eviction, which allows property owners to get rid of tenants if a family member intends to move into the vacated apartment.
The original eviction was thrown out because of a technicality, and then the pandemic hit, along with an eviction moratorium. In April of this year, the family was hit with a second notice.
Marti and his attorney say that while the state ban on no-fault evictions expired at the end of September, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors extended it through the end of the year. Because of that, they argue that the latest attempt to oust the family is illegal and that San Francisco Superior Court Judge Charles Haines violated the law by allowing the Noe Valley eviction to proceed.
The demonstration Tuesday was attended by Supervisors Dean Preston, Myrna Melgar and Hillary Ronen, as well as Tom Temprano, an aide to Supervisor Rafael Mandelman.
“The entire effort to drive this family from their home violates the laws we have passed in San Francisco,” said Preston. “This eviction is illegal.”
Haines, a judge presiding over housing court, didn’t return a call seeking comment. Ora Prochovnick, director of litigation at the Eviction Defense Collaborative, said the court’s rulings on whether the city’s eviction ban is valid have been “somewhat inconsistent” in recent weeks. In some cases, Haines has allowed evictions to proceed only if the tenancy violates “health and safety” provisions; some OMI cases have been allowed to move forward, while others have not.
“Judge Haines has a lot of power to make these kind of decisions,” she said.
She said that eviction cases have been more of a trickle than a flood, “perhaps because a lot of landlords and attorneys acknowledge that the moratorium exists.”
San Francisco Apartment Association Executive Director Janan New said the city’s eviction moratorium remains in effect through the end of the year and that members of her organization are aware of that. “I have not heard of any evictions going forward,” she said.
Marti said the Omran family owns at least four other properties in San Francisco, as well as a home in Marin County, so the notion that they need the unit for a family member seems unlikely. Ashley Klein, attorney for the property owners, did not return a call seeking comment. Nor did Christopher Omran, a representative for the family.
Prochovnick said that so far none of the evictions has reached a “final judgment,” the last step before the sheriff’s deputies show up. Once that happens, Prochovnick or one of the city’s other nonprofit tenant attorneys will file an appeal.
Meanwhile, Marti and his family, who pay $1,600 a month for the unit, have no choice but to bring attention to their plight while challenging the legal decision to let the case go forward. Marti and Peter Cohen are leaving their positions as co-directors at the Council of Community Housing Organizations in April, and so Marti is facing an uncertain future on both his housing and employment. Foy works as a finance director for the Chinese Progressive Association.
Since 1998, the apartment at 3868 23rd St. has been a nerve center of progressive politics and the arts. It’s a studio for Marti, a printmaker and poet. Many roommates have circulated through over the 23 years. Melgar recalled “countless hours geeking out over wine” in the apartment on housing policy and tenant protections.
“It’s where many love affairs, great ideas and political campaigns were born,” said Melgar, who spends holidays with the Foy-Marti family.
At the rally Tuesday, Supervisor Dean Preston said, “It’s unbelievably stressful to face eviction.
“Thank you for doing this, for fighting in such a public way. It’s not easy to do,” he told the family. “Nobody should be in the position you are in.”
Carmelo Foy-Marti, who took the morning off middle school to join the demonstration, called the situation “very unjust and not right.”
“This eviction is awful, but we will push through it,” he said. “To be kicked out from this house I’ve lived in all my life is very hard.”