Cleve Jones. Photo: Pax Ahimsa Gethen, via Wikimedia Commons
An estimated 250 people convened at Harvey Milk Plaza Sunday morning to stand in solidarity with Cleve Jones — the celebrated 67-year-old gay rights activist and longtime resident of a one-bedroom apartment inside a duplex on 18th Street — as he now goes about battling his new landlord from pricing him out of his SF home of 12 years, reports SFist.
San Francisco is often called a renter’s city. An estimated 65% of the city’s housing stock is made up of rental households. Of that percentage, about 60% of those tenants are protected under the San Francisco Rent Ordinance, a.k.a. SF’s version of rent control, which protects renters in older buildings from the most severe of rent increases. But that’s not to say both private and corporate landlords can’t attempt to navigate around those protections, reports SFist.
Cleve Jones, who’s shared a small one-bedroom apartment in the Castro with a roommate since 2010, is facing one such situation: a landlord who is trying to prove that the apartment is not his primary residence — therefore allowing the unit’s rental price to go to market rate, which means Jones’s rent will be hiked from $2,393/month to $5,200/month starting July 1.
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