San Francisco icon and LGBTQ activist Cleve Jones and his landlord are engaged in a battle after it was announced the rent in his Castro building would be more than doubling in the next few months, according to reporting by the San Francisco Chronicle.
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At a rally on Sunday at Harvey Milk Plaza, Jones told attendees that despite previously intending to move out of his one-bedroom apartment, he's going to stay and fight the rent hike, said the paper.
"This is not a fight I chose, it's not a fight I wanted, it's certainly not a fight I'm prepared for," said Jones, who's lived in that apartment for more than 12 years, as reported by the paper. "But it has become clear to me that this is not a fight from which I can walk away."
Jones, 67, ultimately decided to stay on the principle that this issue is pervasive throughout the city, where his peers are increasingly being priced out of their homes, and others don’t have the same advantage and connections his fame awards him.
Jones rose to prominence after he joined the staff of the first openly gay Supervisor Harvey Milk in the 1970s, and took up the mantle of the majority of Milk's causes in 1978 after he and Mayor George Moscone were murdered by former supervisor Dan White.
At the height of the AIDS epidemic in the city in the 1980s, Jones pioneered advocacy for those affected by the disease and created the AIDS Memorial Quilt.
HIV-positive himself, Jones has spent a lot of time in a cabin he owns in Guerneville over the last couple of years to better protect himself from COVID-19 exposure, which his new landlord, Lily Pao Kue, used as part of her reason to raise the rent, according to the paper.
Earlier this month Kue told Jones she intended to raise the rent from $2,393 to $5,200 by July 1, according to the paper, citing the Costa-Hawkins Act, which allows landlords to raise the rent on their properties after a tenant moves out, according to the paper.
Kue, using surveillance, claimed that Jones does actually live primarily in the apartment and is illegally subletting it to a friend, the paper reported.
But Jones asserts that he lives there with his friend and meets the criteria to have established residency at the apartment, including having rental insurance and voter registration filed with that address, said the paper.
Kue is taking the matter to the San Francisco Rent Board, according to the paper.
"I look forward to justice," she told the paper. "I respect and will be gracious and accepting of the law. I hope Cleve will be too, despite his celebrity status."
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