Jack Halprin, a Google lawyer and now a landlord, stood resolute on Friday at 8:20 a.m. at the top of the stairs leading up to the seven unit building at 812 Guerrero St. where he began Ellis Act evictions against seven tenants earlier this year.
“I do not intend to turn this into condos,” he said as he let construction workers in. He declined, however, to talk about his intentions or to explain why he was evicting all of the tenants. He suggested that he will live in the building, perhaps the entire complex, but that was unclear. His only options would be to combine all of the units, leave them empty or to sell units as tenants-in-common. There are no condo conversions in San Francisco for the next ten years.
Rather than talk further, he turned to go into the building. “You can talk to my attorney,” he said.
An hour later, many of his tenants who had started the morning with a protest in front of a Google bus at 18th Street and Dolores, marched up Guerrero Street and stood in front of his door. A workman walked down the stairs, but the only possible evidence of Halprin was an arm that reached out to close a second story window and it is unclear if that was his. SEE VIDEO AND READ MORE