WHAT HEELS!: Landlords From Hell
It’s “Pacific Heights” in reverse. San Fran couple Kip Macy, 33, a software engineer, and Nicole Macy, 32, a real estate agent, have been charged with several felony counts including stalking, residential burglary and conspiracy, for allegedly “waging a campaign of terror” against their renters in a six-unit, three-story apartment building in the Market St. area, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
After the couple purchased the building in 2005 for $995,000 in 2005, they initiated eviction proceedings against the five existing tenants. When one of them, Scott Morrow, successfully fought eviction and two others began writing smaller checks to the Macys to bring their rent in line with the city’s rent control guidelines, things really got ugly:
[T]he couple allegedly told workers in September 2006 to cut the beams that supported his apartment's floor. They also shut off Morrow's electricity, cut his phone line and had workers saw a hole in his living room floor from below, prosecutors said. …
The couple were also charged with terrorizing two other tenants in the building …
Prosecutors said the Macys broke into the tenants' apartment last June and stole $2,000 in cash, a Gucci watch and a cell phone. The tenants, Erik Hernandez and Jason Lopez, later filed a lawsuit accusing the Macys of first changing the locks on the apartment, then illegally entering their unit and dismantling some of their furniture.
When Hernandez came home and confronted Kip Macy as the landlord was ransacking his apartment, Macy kicked him in the chest, the suit says. Threatening notes then started appearing at the tenants' door, and the water was shut off after the Macys stopped paying the bill, the suit says.
In October, Nicole Macy broke into the apartment and poured ammonia on clothes, bedding and home electronics, prosecutors said.
Morrow has holed up in his apartment, refusing to leave for even the briefest period, because he fears the Macys will change the locks in his absence.
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