Some good news for a change (xpost from GD)

Benicia landlord scraps plan to relocate mobile-home tenants

It’s rare these days to find a landlord who’d pass up a chance to fatten his wallet if it meant evicting tenants and causing mass misery.

But that’s exactly what happened in Benicia this week.

Ace Hardware store owner Gene Pedrotti withdrew his permit application to build a store at the site of the East N Street Trailer Park when he found out what lay in store for the residents. Most are senior citizens — some disabled seniors and military veterans — living on meager fixed incomes, and their stories were featured in The Chronicle on Aug. 7.

Two weeks ago, Pedrotti was ready to offer buyouts to the mobile-home owners so he could build a hardware store on the property. He was willing to pay for the relocation costs and subsidize their new housing for the next two years, time required by law to allow those in need to make the transition to decent housing they could afford.

He thought it would be a win-win situation for everyone involved: Tenants would move into nicer digs; the neighborhood, zoned for new development, would begin to improve; and he’d be free from his lease at the Southampton Shopping Center in town.

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/johnson/article/Benicia-landlord-scraps-plan-to-relocate-6456282.php?t=2b5e438356&cmpid=email-premium

With all the lack of humanity going in with 47% of the voting population voting for the empathy free republican politicians and the massive evictions going on in San Francisco, this is a feel good story. In today's paper there also was a story about a women who inherited an apartment house and tried to evict the long tome tenants. The tenants won but the landlord is now suing the estate of a women who died fighting the eviction for back rent. There is a place in hell for people like her and Mr.Perdotti earned his place in heaven.

h/t kimbutgar