Tenants face huge rent hike: Residents at San Mateo complex complain that housing crisis is starting to displace middle class

Some wrote letters to the City Council decrying the huge rent increase saying it will displace many median-income professionals or retirees who have lived there for more than a decade.

The landlords, however, note that the rents have not been raised in more than 10 years and that they are simply going up to market rates.

The two-bedroom units have been renting in the $1,900 range but will climb up to $2,850 a month starting in October.

The property is owned by a trust in the name of Ted and Victor Baiz.

“As trustees, my brother and myself owe a fiduciary duty to that trust,” Victor Baiz said.

Many circumstances over the years, including illnesses in the family, kept the rents from increasing and were not addressed, Baiz said.

Each tenant was also given a four-month notice of the rent increase at the beginning of June, Baiz said.

Rents at the Laurel Street property will now be approximately $2.38 per square foot, which Baiz argues is below the rents of some other properties.

Baiz said the extra rent will also go toward needed improvements to the property.

But tenants Barbara O’Neil, who has lived there 11 years, and Diane Fjelstad, who has lived there 13 years, said they are also being asked to pay a second deposit to pay for fresh paint or carpet if they desire.

O’Neil’s rent will climb $1,100 a month and Fjelstads’ rent will rise $1,000 a month. They both rent two-bedroom units.

A $2,850 a month rent will eat up about 63 percent of O’Neil’s take home pay, who works as a teacher in the San Mateo-Foster City Elementary School District.

Fjelstad, 62, decided to apply for her Social Security benefits three years early just to cover the rent increase.

Her rent will now eat up 44 percent of her net income which includes the Social Security subsidy.

They were also told more rent increases are possible.

O’Neil has written letters to the San Mateo City Council and other policymakers about her plight.

“I see a lot about the displacement of low-income workers in this area but little reference to median income professionals who are also being displaced ... landlords and Realtors who see the handwriting on the wall are taking advantage of the opportunity to raise rents before the bubble bursts and/or laws are enacted to provide tenant protection in San Mateo County,” O’Neil wrote.

O’Neil and Fjelstad say it’s time for cities to start considering rent control as a way to combat the housing crisis.

“This is leading to the elimination of the middle class here,” O’Neil said.

The way tenants were presented with the rent increase was “callous and cold,” they said.

The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the county is now $2,516, a 50.2 percent increase in four years, according to a housing indicators report released last month by the county’s Housing Authority.

“At the rate things are going there will be no one left to work in the restaurants or mow the lawns and clean the houses of the few who will be able to remain in the area. There will also be no one to staff the hospitals, work in city or county offices, put out fires, enforce the law or teach in the schools. Many middle-income professionals are beginning to realize that we can no longer afford to live in the community that we have loved and helped build,” O’Neil wrote in the letter.

bill@smdailyjournal.com

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