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An archival photo shows the rooftops of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco from Marin's promontories above Sausalito, California (Eric Risberg).
There was something immediately surprising in the eight San Francisco apartments owned by owners Darren and Valerie Lee, who claimed that different families lived in each of them.
The identical indoor plants were quite shady. But in each of the eight units, the families who lived there also had the same way to store all their dirty dishes in the sink. They also filled their kitchens with the same Costco food, their cupboards with the same shoes and clothes, and their bathrooms with the same hygienic products and wet towels, each thrown over the door with the same negligence.
Or at least that's what the Lees wanted to make the housing inspectors in the city believe.
The inspectors soon realized that this was all part of an ill-concealed scheme involving an illegal hotel chain involving Airbnb, which crashed on Monday, after the owners of these strangely identical apartments did not fool the investigators of different people. , paying a rent, lived there really.
According to a city survey, less than a year after the 2015 injunction, the Lees have raped it more than 5,000 times. The couple has repeatedly referenced its properties on Airbnb for vacation rentals, generating more than $ 900,000 in bookings, said Herrera.
"The Lees concocted an elaborate program in which friends, family members and associates – none of whom lived on the properties – pretended to be straw tenants or Airbnb hosts to unlawfully announce and rent 14 units. homes for short stays, "said the San Francisco City District Attorney's Office. said in a statement. "The project included the establishment of false leases and even the organization of apartments to give the impression of living … before City investigators inspected them."
The city first attracted the Lees by renting two of their properties to vacationers in 2009, when the Lees' Victorian residence rents provoked the irritation of their neighbors, who complained loud nights between singles and of corporate pensions, according to the lawsuit brought against them by the city 2014.
The couple had purchased the property in 2004 and within a few months had quickly evicted long-term tenants from both units, including a handicapped tenant and a young family, announced the lawsuit. They could evict them under the California Ellis Act, which allows homeowners to abruptly abandon well-heeled tenants if homeowners plan to withdraw units from the market and leave the rental business.
Instead, the Lees have just returned to the rental business in 2009 according to a different business model: attracting vacationers, lawsuits. The lawsuit accused the Lees of violating the restrictions imposed by the Ellis Act and the townhouse ordinances which limited short-term tenancies.
The Lees fought with the city for years before the 2015 colony banned them from turning any of their 17 apartment buildings in San Francisco into de facto hotels. But in a few months, the inspectors found that the same properties were constantly appearing on Airbnb under fake names of hosts, said Herrera in a statement.
The Lees insisted on telling the city that it was impossible: they claimed that long-term residents lived in all units, according to the lawsuit. Valerie Lee even invited the municipal inspector to examine eight of the units in order to prove it.
But it was then that the inspector Adrian Putra arrived and found that everything, from the dishes of the tenants to their clothes, was identical.
"Each of the eight properties we inspected was organized as if a tenant lived there, but it was obvious to me that it was a trick because the staging of each apartment was the same," Putra said in a statement. a statement filed in court. "Each apartment had the same items."
The Airbnb files cited by the city showed that the Lees had pocketed more than $ 700,000 on more than 5,000 illegal registrations in the 11 months following the injunction.
A Lees attorney could not be immediately contacted for a comment late Monday, but Valerie Lee told the San Francisco Chronicle in a statement that he chose to settle because they did not want to continue arguing. with the city about the impact of their vacation rentals the affordable housing crisis. She said the settlement "helped us understand the city's need for affordable housing on a much deeper level."
The lack of affordable housing in San Francisco has resulted in even stricter regulation on vacation rentals in the city last year, forcing anyone offering their property via Airbnb for less than 30 days to register to the city first, reported the Chronicle. This caused a halving of Airbnb lists, the newspaper revealed.
Herrera said that this initiative was aimed at preventing situations like this and that part of the $ 2.25 million fine imposed on the couple would be used to fund the future application of the right to the short-term rental of the city.
"This serious financial penalty has a significant deterrent effect," Herrera said. "It sends a clear message to those who are trying to illegally profit from the San Francisco housing crisis: do not try, we'll catch you."
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