SAN FRANCISCO—A San Francisco woman was awarded $400,000 in a legal settlement on Tuesday, January 17, after her landlord allegedly performed a unlawful eviction.
Deborah Follingstad, was notified by her landlord, Nadia Lama, her rent was going to increase 400 percent form $2,145 to $8,900 a month in March 2015. Follingstad’s security deposit was also marked to increase from $1,500 to $12,500.
“I’ve been watching a tremendous amount of greed in this town, and not every landlord is bad, but some of them are,” Follingstad told ABC7 News.
Follingstad moved from her home of 11 years located on Bocana Street, and Lama moved in shortly after Follingstad left the property.
In August 2015, Follingstad and her lawyer, Joe Tobener, filed a lawsuit accusing Lama for violating a city ordinance that requires landlords to make payments to displaced tenants after a “owner-move-in” eviction.
Under San Francisco’s owner-move-in ordinance, Lama wold have been required to pay Follingstad $9,522 for coercing her to move, according to Tobener.
“[Lama’s] defense was, hey, they took the lower rental unit off the market, they took out the kitchen, and therefore it became a single-family home, so they were allowed to increase the rent to whatever they wanted,” Tobener said to KQED News. “Our argument was, ‘Look, you can increase the rent to market rate, but you can’t raise it way above market rate to force someone out to get around the owner-move-in eviction protections. ”
Follingstad says she spent more than a year couch-surfing and house-sitting around the San Francisco Bay Area before she found a new apartment in the city.
Follingstad was diagnosed with breast cancer in May 2016. Follingstad believes the stress of having to move out of her rented home, finding a new place to live, and court contributed to her illness.
“The intent was there, the bad motivation was there, and a jury would have heard that if Nadia Lama had done this right, she could have done an owner-move-in eviction for $9,500. Instead, she took the unscrupulous path and caused the tenant a lot of stress,” Tobener said to KQED News.
Lama’s lawyer, Paul Sheng, said Follingstad’s allegations and theories a were never proven.
“Both sides to the dispute reached a mutual and voluntary agreement to resolve the case in order to avoid the cost and uncertainty of further litigation . The parties’ agreement specifically provides that they are settling disputed claims, with no admission or acknowledgement of any liability or wrongdoing by any party,” said Sheng.
