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Community members rallied at the corner of 30th and Eugenia streets on June 23 to protest the eviction of three Latino families. Maria Alvarez, who has lived at 20 Eugenia Street for 20 years, said she was served with an eviction notice last September after landlord Sheng-Wei “Shawn” Lo purchased the building. Last July, Lo attempted to sell the building, said Alvarez, but was unsuccessful. She has until Nov. 1 to fight or move.

“I think he got mad, and he evicted me,” said Alvarez, a native a Guatemalan who lives with her son and daughter (ages 23 and 18, respectively), along with her brother, her niece and her niece’s infant daughter. For seven years, Alvarez alone has supported her kids while working as a cleaning person at Bloomingdale’s in San Francisco.

“I was left on my own, with my kids. That’s hard,” Alvarez said. “I was really sad when I found out I had to leave. But right now with these organizers, I feel much better.”

Alvarez’s neighbor, Rosalis Elias, a native of El Salvador who is also being evicted by Lo, has lived at 22 Eugenia Street for 18 years. She wasn’t present during the demonstration.

About an hour into the rally, supporters of the evicted tenants marched down to the Tiffany Gardens Homeowners’ Association (HOA) at 199 Tiffany Ave., where Guatemalan immigrants Brenda and Luis Palacios have lived with their three children since the building opened.

Brenda Palacios was close to tears as she and her family stood at the corner of Tiffany Avenue and 29th Street, just below the family’s home of 11 years from which they’re being evicted.

“If you fight, you can win,” Patricia Kerman, who last year defeated her Ellis Act eviction from her home at 20th and Folsom streets, empathetically told Palacios. “If you don’t fight, they’ll steamroll you.”

The Palacios were illegally served with a 30-day eviction notice after the HOA decided to turn their below-market rate rental unit into an ownership unit, said Gabriel Medina, policy manager at Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA).
“What makes this egregious is the system was not set up to allow—and when I mean system, I mean the inclusionary housing, below-market rate system—this working class Latino family of five to be able to remain in their unit,” Medina said. “And if inclusionary housing and below-market rate housing is supposed to be the solution, then the Palacios family would not be getting evicted.”

The Palacios were given two 60-day extensions and expressed interest in making an offer to purchase their unit of 11 years. Brenda and Luis say they did everything asked of them by the HOA in the attempt to purchase the unit, but claim that the HOA now says they have run out of time.

Mattias Kraemer, interim director of Asset Building Programs at MEDA, said that there wasn’t a bank on the Mayor’s Office of Housing & Community Development’s Lender List that could work with the Palacios during those first six months, but that in January a bank was approved to work with them.

“I feel this is important, because today it’s me, and tomorrow it can be someone else,” said Luis Palacios, who currently works nearly 80 hours a week between two jobs to try to come up with a down payment for the unit. On Tuesday, he took the day off to attend the rally. “If people unite, they have more power than just a person by himself.”

Near the end of the demonstration, the Palacios went to David Beaupre’s office—the President of the Tiffany Gardens HOA—to submit a letter asking Beaupre to redact the family’s eviction notice, slated for Aug. 9.

“I ask Mr. David and the board of this building to think a little bit about family, that not everything is a matter of money,” Brenda said, her voice trailing off with emotion.

“Right now the city is facing a crisis of evictions and displacement of 8,000 Latinos in the last 10 years 3,000 families who make less than $75,000 a year, and a 25 percent change in the number of families living in the Mission,” Medina said. “These are three things that they [the Palacios family] represent. And if our own inclusionary housing policies can’t keep them in their homes, how are we going to demand the private market do the same?”