‘Cruel’ San Francisco City landlady wants to restore her innocence over $25m property debacle

A San Francisco landlady and estate developer, Anne Kihagi, has accused the city of falsifying evidence against, her three years ago, to seize her buildings worth $25 million. Kihagi, who has been dubbed “San Francisco’s cruelest landlord”, says she has been a subject of racial abuse, vowed never to relent until she gets justice.

For about a year, Kihagi has asked for investigations into at least 20 depositions made against her by tenants and former tenants to be resolved. According to her, the San Francisco city attorney knew that the claims against her were false but presented them to the court in order to secure a judgment against her.

“Whenever we hear about cops that have falsified evidence, we all pay attention,” she said, according to Black news. “Yet, when the city attorneys deliberately mislead the court, the courts do not want to hear it and neither do the Bar Associations. So, who will police dirty city attorneys?”

“The court ignored the evidence,” she comments. “And now I have to file an action against such a practice that the courts know most people cannot afford to do. Why should anyone be subjected to such dishonest public officers?”

Kihagi was sued in San Francisco Superior Court in 2015 over an alleged pattern of unlawful business practices that include waging “a war of harassment, intimidation, and retaliation” against tenants in order to force them from their rent-controlled homes, according to San Francisco news.

According to the City’s Attorney, Dennis Herrera, the defendants—Kihagi, her sister Christina Mwangi, and their company Zoriall LLC– acquired 50 rent-controlled units in nine multi-unit residential properties in San Francisco and, “in defiance of numerous state and local laws protecting tenants,” Herrera said, have used illegal tactics to bully tenants into surrendering their rent-controlled apartments.

According to Black News, by the time the city filed the lawsuit against Kihagi, the alleged “violations” had been resolved. The report also said some tenants even bragged that these complaints didn’t matter but were being made to harass Ms. Kihagi.

Nonetheless, the court ruled against her and imposed a fine of $2.7 million on her. The court claimed that Kihagi and her associates had engaged in a campaign of harassment, retaliation and fraudulent evictions of tenants at seven rent-controlled buildings in San Francisco.

Herrera called the ruling a “resounding victory for San Francisco tenants and the rule of law.”  “I’ve gone after a lot of lawless landlords in my time, but Anne Kihagi has a special place reserved for her in San Francisco’s abusive landlord hall of fame,” Herrera said. “Her cruelty is stunning.”