Landlord Anne Kihagi was ordered by Judge Angela Bradstreet to pay around $2.4 million for violations of state housing laws, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
In a tentative ruling, Judge Angela Bradstreet said landlord Anne Kihagi and her associates had “purposefully destroyed their tenants’ quiet enjoyment and any sense of sanctuary through their long, continued and unrelenting campaign of harassment, reductions in services, and unlawful and fraudulent evictions.”
“Their reprehensible conduct had a terrible effect on the lives of multiple San Francisco citizens,” Bradstreet stated.
Kihagi and “family members” reportedly bought up 50 residential units and were able to add $8.8 million in value by getting rent-controlled tenants out of those properties. San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera began this suit against Kihagi two years ago. The filing details are a pretty intense and extensive campaign on Kihagi and her associates.
But the full scope of related violations and appalling tactics employed by Kihagi, her business associates and companies under their control—as detailed in the 38-page complaint filed in San Francisco Superior Court late yesterday—distinguishes their predatory business model as one of the most ruthless in recent memory. Herrera’s office continues to investigate possible wrongdoing among the more than 50 rent-controlled apartments Kihagi has acquired in San Francisco since 2013. But the investigation has already established compelling and actionable evidence of illegal tactics to bully tenants into surrendering their rent-controlled apartments. At least six elderly and disabled renters were among those targeted for harassment by Kihagi or her agents, according to the complaint, including a 65-year-old Army veteran battling cancer, a 71-year-old retired school crossing guard, and a bedridden 91-year-old great grandmother.
Herrera’s civil suit alleges that Kihagi or her agents: interrupted gas, electric, water, and cable service; disrupted mail service; failed to cash rent checks, only to later claim them as untimely rent payments; backdated correspondence and notices; violated tenants’ privacy by entering their apartments without required notice; refused to timely abate unsafe and substandard habitability conditions; and even retaliated against tenants who cooperated with city inspectors by installing video surveillance cameras aimed at the residents’ front doors. Well-known among tenants for her harassing text messages and shrieking, expletive-ridden personal interactions, Kihagi is even reported to have made an apparent threat against a tenant’s cat, urging the resident to be careful “because someone might let her out.”
The Chronicle says that Kihagi’s defense lawyer argued that she was being “scapegoated” because of “a tenant-activist group.” This is hilarious since it’s not a defense at all. It may very well be true that Kihagi isn’t the only terrible landlord in the Bay Area. In fact I can guarantee that she isn’t the only one. But arguing that just because she’s not the only terrible human being doing the terrible things she is doing, does not a defense make. Kihagi has also been in trouble with the law in West Hollywood. According to WEHOville, Kihagi was sentenced to five days in jail for violating a court order.
Kihagi was held in contempt of court on Feb. 21 for violating a preliminary injunction that prohibited her from re-renting certain units at her property, an eight-unit building located at 1263 N. Crescent Heights Blvd.
The preliminary injunction was obtained after the City of West Hollywood intervened in a case against Kihagi, filed by a former tenant, who contends he was wrongly evicted when Kihagi used the Ellis Act as a pretext to terminate all of the leases in the building. Kihagi violated the injunction by re-renting the former tenant’s unit.
So, scapegoat or not, this lady is a nightmare.