The Ugly, Two Headed Monster: Los Gatos Rent Increases

I stepped out of LeBoulanger on Monday morning and I had a friend grab me by the lapels and tell me “Now here’s a story for you!” I looked round to see what he was talking about, expecting to see a traffic accident or something. I tell him “I’m not a newspaper. I don’t do journalism.” I still didn’t know what he was so concerned about. He drags me down to the next storefront and starts railing about all sorts of social ills. I really was at quite a loss.

Over the weekend I had seen some signs go up in the windows of the Posh Bagel saying that the place was to be renovated and I saw some painters come and start masking off the counters and appliances. I didn’t think much about it, I’m not much of a bagel guy so I never frequented the shop that much. I just took it to be normal, periodic maintenance. I was wrong.

My friend who dragged me down to the Posh Bagel was waving his hands, all righteous and so very upset, was a bagel guy and apparently knew the Bagel’s owners pretty well. From what he said, the landlord of the Post Bagel had raised the rent by some excessive amount and the young Viet Namese couple who were running the franchise couldn’t afford the increase. Some new people who could afford the increase took over the Posh Bagel franchise and were fixing the place up before they started operating it. My friend was screaming about greedy landlords and the “one per centers” and all sorts of stuff. I had to calm him down before I got any really worthwhile information. Upon hearing about the plight of the young couple, all I could muster up was, “yeah, well, it’s been happening all over town for years.” The story wasn’t about the Posh Bagel, the story was about difficulty of small business owners to sustain themselves, and hopefully grow to some reasonable degree, in an environment as desirous and attractive as Los Gatos. The long, drawn out conundrum of Gardino’s expansion a few years ago, immediately comes to mind.

In 1960, my dad bought a long, skinny acre, with a dry creek running though it, from the farmer we rented our old house from. He bought a condemned house in Santa Clara, condemned as it sat on the right-of-way for a new freeway, he dug a well and buried a septic tank and set up housekeeping in a very nice place which he shouldn’t have been able to afford on his meager waiter’s income. I was twelve years old when we moved into this new house (obviously, only new to us) and I’d grown to this ripe old age under the tutelage of our land owner farmer named Al. As Al’s first-born was a . . .

(click here to read conclusion)