It's never finished

My last post was about the coffee table I had custom made by an artist on Etsy. The final piece of furniture to complete my home. Done. Nothing else to get. I was so excited. It arrived on February 18th. On February 19th, I found out that my apartment needs to be combined with the apartment next door in order to comply with city codes, so I will have to move out at the end of my lease.

Seriously? Ugh. The story is like this. My building is a bunch of live/work lofts. These were approved by the city back when they were built in 2003. The original configuration of units in the building showed large lofts that could be used for both live and work space. My unit is 600 square feet. Perfect for a woman and her dog. Not ideal to run a full blown business and house a woman and her dog. (Although, to be perfectly honest, depending on what your business is, it could definitely be accomplished). The size isn't really the issue, though. The issue is that my 600 square foot unit was never approved by the city. The official plans were approved, and the building owner took it upon himself to divide some of the units into two in order to increase his profits (you can get more rent money from two smaller units than one larger units). Fast forward 9+ years, and the building was sold last December to a large company, Essex Property Trust. They learned of the discrepancy between the approved configurations and the actual configuration and tried to have the city approve the actual units that are in place. Since 2003, apparently a moratorium on new live/work spaces was placed in the neighborhood. So approving the current configuration would be like approving 35 new live/work spaces despite the moratorium. According to Essex, the city said its hands were tied. Now, the city did not say, "Essex, you must return the units to the approved configuration." The city only acts on zoning violations if someone submits a complaint. And in 9+ years with a lot of happy tenants, no one has complained. So Essex COULD keep the current configuration that is not in compliance and hope that this pattern continues, with no complaints. However, being a large company that fears litigation, apparently, they are choosing to put the units back into their originally approved formation. This means, my unit and my next door neighbor's unit will be combined into one unit of 1296 square feet. We each have the option to move back into the combined unit, but it will be at market rent, which means about double what I pay now. No thank you. (I also have been confused about how we can BOTH have the option to move back into the combined space. Seems like we'd have to do a little roshambo or something...)

The housing market in San Francisco sucks. I direct you to this post about last year's apartment search. It seems that fewer units are available in March than in June/July, but fewer people seem to be looking for them, too. That is good, but the pet issue still remains. And even worse than last year is the cost. Rents seem to have increased even more in the last year. The cheapest places I have found in my neighborhood are smaller than mine and cost about $600 more per month. It's absurd.

In addition to the annoyance of house hunting, the cost of moving is not something I had anticipated so soon. I intended to be here indefinitely. Obviously, there is always the chance that something could come up after your lease term expires, but had I known that my unit was essentially not in existence according to the city, I might have thought a little harder about whether I would have signed my lease last year.

And now I have the additional hassle of making my furniture fit into a new space. And/or finding new pieces to make a new space work. All over again.

So to the sketchy building owners who made this all happen, thanks. As if I didn't already have enough to do...