Mission Artists’ Eviction Timeline Sped Up
Evictions suck. They rip people out of homes and throw them to the streets, and it’s devastating to our community. One of the hardest parts about telling the story of eviction is the utter futility that hides under the covers of it.
Procedure turns into bureaucracy. Paperwork piles into an insurmountable path. Tenants with bad landlords end up with a treacherous mountain of forms and documentation instead of a bed in a warm home.
Next week, an artist in the Mission is facing down the barrel of the Ellis Act gun, and there’s not much anyone can do about it. His name is Sean Newport, and his story is a lesson on how even the smallest acts of rebellion can become the nail in your coffin.
The History
Newport has spent 15 years in a building on 17th and Capp that he’s transformed into a work of art. The landlord changed, but he’s always been the master tenant. The eviction process began, but now it’s on a faster timeline. Newport says he’s being cleared out because he painted the exterior of the building in protest with the words, “Artists live here.” And that’s triggered the city’s nuisance procedures. Because Newport graffitied the exterior, it’s considered grounds for eviction.
“It’s all just busy work. The stuff that they’re having me do…” Newport sighs. “Answering the same questions multiple times. One of the reports that they’re having me submit is over 100 pages. It feels worse than school.”
Newport also just found out a handful of days ago that his lawyer left the firm two weeks prior. To make matters worse, Newport says, “They didn’t submit any of my responses to Discovery for the plaintiff.” He had been trying to contact his previous lawyer for a week and a half and nobody was responding. Then he got a call from a different lawyer in the same organization who gave him the bad news that all of his answers had been submitted to the court as “admit” incorrectly.
Before the Crisis
For a long time, Newport rented a space from a different landlord. It wasn’t quite habitable, so the old landlord kept pulling permits. Newport says this made it look to the City like his old landlord was actually working on the multiple violations and getting the building up to code. In reality, the building would continue flooding during bad weather, among other problems.
Trouble was brewing. Then in 2023 an automotive dealer named Kent Putnam came around to have coffee with the tenant and inquired about purchasing the building.
Newport told Putnum he and the other artists had no plans to leave. “The world has changed and we don’t have the money to keep up with it but we have a sanctuary here,” Newport conveyed to the prospective buyer. “When I met with Mr. Putnam again, he agreed he wouldn’t buy the building; he believed in our artist community and wanted us to fight for it.”
The Change in Direction
But a few months later, in January of 2024, Newport discovered that Putnam purchased the building through a shell company. Because it had so many issues, “The original landlord did not [bring it up to code], so they had to sell the building on a short sale because they were getting penalized for not updating the [violations] that were accruing on the building,” Newport explains.
Newport describes working with the upstairs unit tenants and deciding together that they’d stay and fight, but they took a buyout shortly after. He thinks it cost Putnam about $50,000. “This man is so rich he could buy any building in San Francisco. He chose to buy the cheapest one that had 25 artists inside of it that will not have 25 artists inside of it anymore.”
A few months ago, there were five artists living in the building and two additional artists using it as a studio space. But as of this week, there are just three tenants; the others have moved out because of the layers of conflict.
Neither Putnum nor the property manager responded to requests for comment.
Can Anything Be Done?
Over the last few months, Newport reached out to Hilary Ronen’s office as well as his new supervisor, Jackie Fielder. He even talked to Dean Preston and Aaron Peskin. He says all of them have encouraged him to go through the courts. But he’s had three lawyers who have all told him he doesn’t have a chance and that he should take the deal.
Feng Han, one of Fielder’s aides, says, “We reached out to Sean in January with Tenant rights resources and to make sure that he is aware that he knows he has a right to counsel. Unfortunately I am not equipped to comment on his case… but we support every Tenant’s right to counsel and to eviction defense.” According to Han, “Preventing evictions is the most cost effective way to fix our homelessness crisis in SF.”
Newport will be offered a settlement next week; his court case will go through just a few days after. “This is shady shit and I want to call attention to it… If you wanna make a big fuss out of it with me, let’s do it please. I need help. I can’t do this myself.”
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