Tina Lam and her husband Michael Cheng are that couple. Both Asian immigrants who would have once been banned from the neighborhood by its early racial covenant, they’d purchased the street for $90,000 at public auction in 2015, where it had wound up as many lesser tax-owed properties do. The Presidio Terrace HOA had apparently forgotten to provide the city with an updated billing address for some 30 years, causing them to default on a $14 annual property tax on their gated street and common green areas. By 2015, they’d racked up nearly $1,000 in outstanding fees.

After Lam and Cheng picked up the property, they spent a couple of years considering their options—charging for parking, say, or selling back the cul-de-sac at profit. That’s how Presidians found out the street was no longer theirs: The couple sent an agent door-to-door to assess the community’s interest in repurchasing the cul-de-sac.

When the story broke, the internet relished the optics of Bay Area mansion-owners suddenly beholden to a new landlord. But it was also symbolic of all kinds of depressingly antidemocratic trends. Homeowners’ associations have often stepped in to buy property off the hands of cash-strapped cities, but they’re infamously shadowy about how they operate, even for members—which is why it isn’t that crazy that the residents had been poorly informed of their shared delinquency. Furthermore, cities sell off public assets to developers, investors, and universities all the time, for all kinds of reasons. Citizens are frequently not informed of these (often more worrying) transactions, either.

For now, Presidio Terrace belongs to its residents again. Their victory isn’t cause for celebration, though. The city’s highly unusual tax-sale reversal smacks of preferential treatment. It’s hard to imagine elected leaders going to bat for, say, each homeless individual who has had property seized by the city. Farrell, the city supervisor quoted above, is also the author of Proposition Q, a controversial measure approved by San Francisco voters in 2016 that allows the city to clear homeless camps given 24 hours’ notice.

But the saga of Presidio Terrace may not be over yet. Although the city promised they’ll get their $90,000 purchase price back, Cheng and Lam have said they plan to sue. For progressive politics, San Francisco was once a city upon a hill. Now it’s rich people squabbling over one.

This post appears courtesy of CityLab.

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