Lifestyle
Mary, 98, Paid Her Rent on Time for 50 Years. Then the Building’s Owners Moved to Evict Her: “I Am Too Old to Pack Up and Leave”
By Mike Harper · November 12, 2026
Mary Phillips was 98 and still answering her own door.
That is how KRON 4 reporter Dan Kerman found her in July 2014, in the Dolores Street apartment in San Francisco where she had lived for 50 years. She told him she had been very happy there, had “always paid my rent,” and had never been late.
None of that stopped what came next. KRON reported that the building’s owners had evicted her using the Ellis Act, a California law that lets property owners take rental units off the market. Phillips told the station she had nowhere else to go.
She said she did not break down when the notice came. She simply refused to believe it. With her attorneys, she decided to fight.
“I am too old to pack up and leave,” she told KRON. Then she added, with a laugh, that she would just “kick the bucket right here.”
Her story came out the same day several dozen protesters rallied outside the offices of the investment firm that owned the building, calling for an end to rising evictions in the city. The demonstrators claimed the firm bought buildings, cleared tenants through the Ellis Act and then resold them for a profit. Those were the protesters’ claims, as KRON reported them.
The apartment was filled with mementos, according to the station, and although she no longer went out, she watched the Fourth of July fireworks from her patio. When Kerman suggested her age might make her give in and move, she pushed back, saying her age did not give anyone the right to push her around. She said she hoped the owners would think about parents or grandparents of their own who were her age and reconsider.
They did reach a deal. In November 2014, BeyondChron reported that Phillips had settled her case, and it published her public statement: “Mary Elizabeth Phillips has reached an agreement with Urban Green Investments that will allow her to live in her apartment for as long as she likes, through the end of her life.” The site’s publisher works at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, the legal group that represented her.
Her case is more than a decade old, but the law behind it still applies. The San Francisco Rent Board explains that the Ellis Act is found in California Government Code Section 7060 and was passed by the state legislature in 1986 to require cities to allow owners to go out of the rental business.
The city’s process has protections that older tenants should know about. Under the Rent Board’s rules, an owner must serve notices of termination and file a Notice of Intent to Withdraw with the board, and the move-out date is normally 120 days after that filing. Tenants have a right to relocation assistance, half of it paid when the notice is served. Elderly or disabled tenants who have lived in the unit at least a year can extend the move-out date from 120 days to one year, but they must claim it in writing to the owner within 60 days of the Notice of Intent being filed.
That deadline is easy to miss. Anyone who gets an eviction notice should check the local rules right away. Many cities have a rent board or housing department, and legal aid groups and tenant organizations often help older renters for free. Rules vary widely by state and city, and California’s protections do not apply everywhere.
Mary Phillips got to stay home.
This article is for general information and is not financial or legal advice. The eviction details are from KRON 4’s 2014 report and the settlement statement as published by BeyondChron; protesters’ claims are their own. This article was produced with the assistance of AI and fact-checked against the sources cited by LightWave Reports.