November 3, 2003
Mayor Dick Murphy & San Diego City Council
202 C Street
San Diego, California 92101
RE: I Refuse to Testify - Good Cause Eviction Ordinance
Dear Mayor Murphy and Council Members:
I refused to testify in court against my next-door neighbor, a San Diego
City employee.
My business office is in a North Park commercial/residential zone. The
tenant in the apartment
next-door had not paid his rent for over a year. My landlord had not evicted
him earlier because he came down with cancer about two years ago. The
tenant, however, apparently kept sub-renting one of his bedrooms to people
off the street, keeping the rent for himself. Prior to the court hearing
the police had been called several times by neighbors for disturbances of
the peace, fist fights among sub-tenants, soliciting, prostitution (both
female and male), vandalism and pilfering of coin laundries in nearby
apartments.
I made no complaints and would not testify when requested by my landlord of
over 20 years. Why? On two occasions in a three-month period while in my
office, five police officers in two cars drove into my parking lot. They
all put on bulletproof vests, and proceeded to serve arrest warrants to the
sub-tenants. Unfortunately, none were present at the time.
On at least three occasions the legal tenant himself called the police to
have his sub-tenants removed. The police told me the sub-tenants knew all
the tricks and had magazine subscriptions delivered to the apartment as
proof of residency and the police had no power to remove them.
Last week I had security bars and windows installed. They look like hell.
If the San Diego Police Department feels it necessary to put on bulletproof
vests before knocking on a door, the City Council is nuts if it thinks I'm
going to testify against these people under a "Good Cause Eviction
Ordinance." All too sadly this is not an unusual or rare case for landlords
in San Diego. The City Council should be applauding those landlords who act
as neighborhood cops when there are not enough police to go around, instead
of punishing them with this so-called "Good Cause Termination Ordinance."
This ordinance should be rejected immediately and unanimously.
Fred Schnaubelt
2728 Adams Avenue
San Diego, California 92116
619.280-2082 (All this can be easily verified with the San Diego
Police Department.)
