Yesterday, Deb Follingstad, an 11-year resident of Bernal Heights, announced to the world via Facebook that her landlord, Nadia Lama, planned to raise her rent by $6,755 (with a new $12,500 security deposit to boot). San Francisco, already stricken by a predatory housing crisis, reacted vehemently, with the story ricocheting from Facebook to Reddit to local Bay Area publications. It even made national headlines (an article chronicling the issue on CityLab is currently the most read on the site). Commenters on The Bold Italic and other local blogs basically pilloried Nadia Lama, some going so far as to post her personal phone number and publicly shame her.
Thanks to some dogged sleuthing by commenters, it’s also come to light that Follingstad is using her predicament to drive customers to her side business: renting her Bernal Heights residence on Airbnb.
Follingstad announced to potential customers on Airbnb (where she has 38 reviews and a 5-star rating, if you’re curious) that, after 11 years, her landlord is essentially evicting her with “very shocking and unsavory tactics.” She goes on to say that her time in the “rent controlled apartment” allowed her to host family and friends, as well as run her acupuncture business. The space even provided a place for “patient’s families to stay when their loved ones were in crisis.” Now, with time running short, Follingstad is imploring Airbnb users to “help make the end of this era a special and memorable one!” — for a small fee, of course.
Currently, Follingstad rents a two-room suite (one bed, one bath with access to a kitchen shared with the “owner”) in the apartment for $90 per night, with a $300 security deposit, a $40 per night fee for additional guests (2 guests are included under the standard rate), and a $75 cleaning deposit. So, for one night, her two-room suite will cost three guests $505 (this includes returnable security deposit).
Clearly, Nadia Lama, the landlord, is using dubious tactics to remove Follingstad from the apartment. Nonetheless, that Follingstad is exploiting her situation to profit on Airbnb undercuts her decision to go public in the first place and complicates an already complicated story.
Follingstad’s actions reflect the flip side of SF’s housing crisis: everyone wants to make a buck off real estate, but when the tables turn, there’s hell to pay. What’s happening in San Francisco isn’t just the fault of landlords and developers colluding to make each other even richer, it’s the product of a system where everyone wants a little piece of everything. In other words, housing here is a food chain: The big fish eat the little fish, and the little fish eat each other.
Correction: The original version of this article stated that the Lama family shuttered the Reliable Grocery on Cortland and Bocana. In fact, the family owned and operated the grocery.
For more coverage of this story, view “Why It’s Legal for a Bernal Heights Landlord to Quadruple This Woman’s Rent.”
Photo courtesy of Google Earth
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