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Software engineer Kip Macy, 33, and real estate agent Nicole Macy, 32, were arrested Tuesday and charged with felony stalking, felony residential burglary, conspiracy and other counts in the bizarre case of apparent landlord rage. The charges stem from tactics the Macys allegedly used after they bought a six-unit, three-story apartment building on Clementina Street for $995,000 in 2005 and started eviction proceedings against the five tenants living there. When one of the tenants, Scott Morrow, successfully fought eviction, the 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. Morrow has since sued the Macys.
Prosecutors said the Macys broke into the tenants’ apartment last June and stole $2,000 in cash, a Gucci watch and a cell phone. When Hernandez came home and confronted Kip Macy as the landlord was ransacking his apartment, Macy kicked him in the chest, the suit says. One day, Morrow noticed the blade of a saw come through his living room floor, his attorney said. He and a friend managed to bend the blade, which had cut a 2-by-4-foot hole in the floor.In October, Nicole Macy broke into the apartment and poured ammonia on clothes, bedding and home electronics, prosecutors said.
These people are insane, I think I would get out of that situation ASAP. Then sue them.
Holy crap…It would be interesting to hear their side. I wonder if they are insane or there is something else to this story that we aren’t being told.
I hope they lose enough money in the suit to lose the building. Let the tenants buy it for a huge discount from the city for about the price of the repairs that the city had to perform and turn it into a coop. IMHO, the owners, though their own actions, have forfeited their rights to the property.
Yes. I know the law doesn’t really work this way. Perhaps in extreme cases like this, it should. I could imagine the court simply awarding either punitive damages or damages for mental anguish in an amount chosen to be equal to the value of the property.
Wow! So much one can comment on here.
How did such f-tards get the $995,000 (or the loan, more likely) to buy the place in the first place?
Too bad this is San Francisco where the tenants can’t get a gun to protect themselves from these nutballs.
What is someone with a Gucci watch doing renting South of Market?
Why aren’t the Macy’s in jail on assault charges?
Oh, and I agree with Scott. They should lose the building. And any rent they have collected while they owned it!
The Board of Stupidvisors in SF have already “forfeited the property owners rights to the property.”
It’s impossible to evict anyone from a rental unless they repeatedly don’t pay the rent and even then its a PAIN!
Why couldn’t they be evicted? If their lease was up what is the problem? If the lease isn’t up then the Owners wait ’till then. What data is missing here?
In many places even if the tenants don’t pay you can’t evict them. It is very complicated, and there are plenty of rules as to what you can or cannot do. If they tell some sort of hardship story, maybe you’re stuck with them. You can maybe seize some property in the apartment in some places, but not kids’ Wii or Playstation.
#6 – “In many places even if the tenants don’t pay you can’t evict them.”
So private property rights are nulled in some cities like S.F.? Sounds like the local gov should be thrown out and replaced with people who will protect constitutional rights.
Everyone talks about the renters from hell, being a renter myself, I’m in the opinion many landlords think they can do about anything under the sun. Most renters are afraid of being evicted so landlords can get away with things renters would never think of doing.
#5, 6,
It’s true that in many places the laws are written to protect the tenants. The article makes no mention of whether the rent was paid, the lease was up, or any other factor. It may be that they just wanted to throw out tenants with valid leases that they felt were below market value.
Interestingly, at least in NYC, if the building is large enough, they have a lawyer on staff who has no trouble pushing evictions through. They know the protocol for doing so very well. So, the law ends up protecting either tenants or large landlords but never the little landlords. Still though, regardless of circumstance, the actions taken by these wack jobs was over the top by many orders of magnitude.
#9 “Still though, regardless of circumstance, the actions taken by these wack jobs was over the top by many orders of magnitude.”
Absolutely agree. I was just wondering if their motivation was because of unjust laws or just them being psycho.
#6. MikeN: Your correct, as a landlord and a tenant, I have experienced this firsthand, from the Landlord viewpoint.
I think the landlord’s POV is irrelevant at this point. The fact that he has stooped to such stunts means he has gone way past what the law, or any reasonable person, allows.
#12 “I think the landlord’s POV is irrelevant at this point.”
As far as being prosecuted, I agree. As far as understanding the story, I disagree.
Sweet Jebus, this is how they should have done it:
1. Buy some cocaine or other yuppie narcotics.
2. Plant it in the renter’s apartment.
3. Anonymously inform the police.
4. Police raid apartment.
5. Renter is in jail.
6. Eviction proceedings.
7. Profit!
If you want to be an evil bastard it pays to be smart as well.
#14 – I don’t think the police are allowed to arrest people for drugs in S.F. 😉
For some reason I’ve got Eddie Murphy talking about his landlord going though my pitiful brain.
Does Kip make terrorize FreeBSD users as well?
Oops… forgot to delete “make”…
First of all this is a building with 6 rentals and in San Francisco you usually sign a 1 year lease which automatically goes month to month after it has expired and there are very strict laws to protect renters from abuse and owners like the Macy’s. When you buy a building you also acquire it’s history and tenants. Once a building is a rental building it is always a rental building except for some rare cases where the owner can say they are getting out of the rental business which I believe the Macy’s did and 4 or 5 of the tenants moved…however they then started to rent the units to others and at a much higher rent which you can not do. When you evict a renter under these conditions you can not rent the units. Remember they were only vacant because the Macy’s said they were getting out of the rental business. Another way to remove a tenant is as an owner move in and this would be for only one unit and it is only that unit for the life of the rental building. I know more about this type of eviction because this happened to me this month after 23 years. Now if that owner does not move in and live there for 36 months and rents this to someone else I could take him to court for wrongful termination. This would also be the case if the building was to be sold. That unit could not be rented and also none of the other tenants can ever be evicted as an owner move in so they are safe from that.
Many people may feel that this is not fair when a person buys a building they should have the right to do with it what ever they want but under rent control laws in San Francisco the new owners have to follow the same laws and carry the same history of the building from owner to owner and all this is disclosed at the time the building is being sold. The new owners are given all the information about the building and it’s tenants such as rent increases an occupants and they need to make a judgment call as to weather it is a good investment for them or not.
It would appear that the Macy’s felt that they were above the law. We are only hearing about the harassing 2 of the tenants because they other’s moved out because they got Ellis Eviction notices (Getting out of the rental business)but really the Macy’s had abused all 6 tenants and felt that they were above the law. You must also keep in mind that many of the tenants like myself do not make the amount of money that is required to live in a nice and remolded apartment and have no where else to go. I am now staying with friends and have had a family member refinance their home so that they can invest in a condo with me and for me. I am needless to say very fortunate.
#16 Thank You
I live in SF as well and was wondering how to explain this to the others, but you hit the nail on the head.
A Poem:
Kill my Landlord!
Kill my Landlord!
What the heck!
Break his neck!
Kill.My.Land.Lord!
Eddie Murphy
Kip Macy was a software engineer at Network Appliance in the late 1990’s, back when it was still pretty small, so his stock options became worth quite a lot of money. (He quit NetApp in summer 2005.)
I was an acquaintance of his in NetApp engineering, and I am completely surprised and saddened to hear this news. He is a talented and enthusiastic software developer who has contributed a great deal to the open source community, and he always seemed like a nice enough guy to me. I have no idea what the hell happened.
@Netapper
Well if this guy is an OK dude it must be HIS WIFE that is the problem. LOL
#19 – Thanks. So SF is doing away with private property rights. What I thought.
>Well if this guy is an OK dude it must be
>HIS WIFE that is the problem. LOL
Well he most certainly can not be an OK dude recently. He was confronted while burglarizing the tenant’s home and resorted to physical violence, not his wife. It sounds like a case of entitlement and being above the law and I hope that him and his wife are penalized to the fullest and loose their money and their freedom. Keep in mind they theorized the tenants in their HOMES.
Can you imagine not feeling safe in your own HOME?
I would hate to be “theorized”… (okay, I know, cheap shot… I just thought it was a funny transposition of words)
Not feeling safe would feel like… like… like I live in some other country not this one…
I can only “theorize” what it would be like to live somewhere like Iraq…
Greed is an awful thing and this happened two years ago before the economy started to really sink. Imagine all the landowners who will now be between a rock and a hard place – your renters can’t afford for you to go up on rent, you cannot afford to make mortgage payments because utility costs are through the roof. So they can’t be evicted, but you can lose your property.
I don’t know the circumstances about it all… but I know if it was easy, we wouldn’t be reading about stories like this.
There are what are called “pass throughs” that take into account increases in operational costs to protect the building owner. The owner is fully aware of the income and expenses before they buy a building.
San Francisco is a renter based city where only about 40% of the population own their homes vs. about 70% of the rest of the country(learned this in a home buyer course recently). Land lords are not hurting and most have a very good relationship with their tenants. This is looks to be a case of greed and well greed can make people do very strange things!
I live in NYC in a large private residence. In 2000 the building had new owners (BSR management) and these people stooped to the lowest of tactics.
They watched us for months, broke up friendships by either evicting tenants they did not like or moved them to higher floors. Most of the tenants, elderly mind you, lived on lower floors. They were moved to higher floors. Many elderly tenants began dying suddenly. There was a very religious woman who worked in the office who stated that all catholics, jews basically anyone who wasn’t “saved” would be evicted. Thankfully there were so many death threats against these lowlifes they were removed from the building.
I am appalled with what I am reading. How can anyone be so heartless as to harrass people.
Karma will have its due.