Four days after her husband Lord Relentless Ha died in their Mission District apartment, Hannah Green paid the monthly rent like she always had. About a week later, a letter arrived informing her that the tenancy itself no longer existed. Green had lived in the apartment at 23rd and Capp streets for 16 years, but she was never the leaseholder, and under California law, that distinction now threatens to cost her the home she shared with her husband for a decade and a half.
Ha died on August 28, 2026, at age 64, according to The San Francisco Standard. He had lived in the same apartment since 1987, and Green moved in after the two met in San Francisco in 2011; they married five years later. On September 4, Makras Real Estate sent a letter addressed to the estate of Lord R. Ha, advising that the tenancy had been terminated. The letter did not mention any right Green might have to remain, and as of the Standard’s reporting, no further letter had arrived since.
A Legal Gap Built Into California Rent Control
The mechanism behind the notice traces back to the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, which took effect statewide and ends rent-control protection once the person named on the lease is gone, per the Standard’s report. Mark Chernev, a landlord attorney at Zacks, Freedman & Chernev, told the outlet that a tenant’s death automatically terminates the tenancy as a matter of law, and that he encounters similar situations a few times a year. Landlords must still cite specific causes to evict a remaining occupant, Chernev said, but they may raise rent to market rate while eviction controls apply.
Green’s rent had been $2,450 a month; her landlord could seek to raise it to three times that amount, the report states. Rahman Popal, a tenant attorney who advised Green, said her landlord may raise her rent but cannot force her out solely because she was not on the lease — though he noted a subsequent occupant does not carry the same rights as a tenant, and the law does not require a landlord to recognize that tenancy. Green and Ha had tried several times to add her to the lease, the Standard reports; she was instead offered occupant status without full tenant rights, despite covering most of the rent as the household’s main breadwinner.
Owners Dispute Whether to Recognize the Tenancy
The building is owned by Daggett H. Howard Jr. and Sara G. Howard, according to the Standard’s report; neither the Howards nor Makras Real Estate responded to the outlet’s requests for comment. Makras Real Estate was founded by Victor Makras, who was convicted of federal bank fraud in 2022 in a case tied to a City Hall corruption probe — a prior Hoodline report noted the same conviction in a separate dispute. Popal said a surviving spouse may still challenge a rent increase at the Rent Board by arguing the landlord had effectively recognized them as a tenant, and he added that parties in similar disputes tend to settle somewhere between the old rent and market rate…