Dean Preston started a tenant rights group the same year his in-laws evicted a tenant

While Preston may not technically be a landlord, he's married with tenants

District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston got his start up the political ladder working as an attorney for Tenderloin Housing Clinic, the largest property management nonprofit in San Francisco. Currently, THC runs approximately 2,000 single room occupancy units, or SROs, throughout 24 buildings in the city, for formerly homeless people. The organization received more than $33 million in city funding last fiscal year, and they are not without controversy — from worker strikes to horrific conditions to evictions, to lawsuits by and against residents (more on that in an upcoming column). Preston’s secondary step up the ladder was positioning himself as a Democratic socialist and a fervent tenant rights activist, but his story didn’t start in San Francisco.

Born and raised in New York City’s Greenwich Village, Preston grew up in a co-op apartment building that his parents bought in the 1960s. As author Paul Hogarth pointed out in a 2007 article about Preston on THC’s blog, “You don’t want to know how much they paid for it back then, versus what it’s worth today.”

In fact, a Greenwich Village co-op building associated with the Prestons in public records, 32 Washington Square West, lists units between $3.75 and $5.25 million (there are two currently available if you’re interested in a little east coast pied-à-terre).

“32 Washington Square West is a pre-war co-op building in downtown Manhattan's Greenwich Village neighborhood finished in 1925. Situated at 32 Washington Square West, between Washington Place and Waverly Place, the building contains 31 units and rises 15 stories. The elevatored building's amenities include: full-time doorman, basement storage, washer/dryer in building, elevator and fitness center,” CityRealty boasts (there’s also a penthouse suite).

Preston attended Bowdoin College in Maine which, according to the John J. Pullen book Joshua Chamberlain: A Hero's Life and Legacy, was known from its founding to educate “the sons of the political elite, and catered very largely to the wealthy conservative from the state of Maine.” It was at Bowdoin that Preston met his future wife, Jenckyn Goosby, granddaughter of the widely respected Black community activist Dr. Zuretti Lee Goosby, who served as an Army Lieutenant in World War II and a military dentist during the Vietnam War.

Dr. Goosby spent three decades as a dentist in private practice and later served on the Board of Education for 12 years, while supporting other groups like the San Francisco Airport Commission, the Airport Museum Board, the Human Rights Commission, the Exploratorium Board, and the War Memorial Board, where he “served with great distinction,” according to Mayor Willie Brown. When he passed away in January of 2000, Dr. Goosby’s obituary noted that as the Board of Education’s president, he “played a key role in San Francisco’s difficult transition out of segregation in the 70s. As one of the strongest advocates for desegregation, he strived to ensure that it was achieved as seamlessly and as logically as possible.” Dr. Goosby and his wife, Jackeline, had three sons and four grandchildren. During their 55-year marriage they also amassed a large portfolio of investment properties in the Bay Area and beyond.

GO WEST, PRESTON FAMILY

Preston graduated from Bowdoin in 1991 with a major in anthropology and economics and relocated to Jenckyn’s native San Francisco. They left a lasting legacy at the school with the Preston Public Interest Career Fund to expand social justice educational opportunities, established by Dean’s late parents, Ken and Linda Rothchild Preston, and supported by sister Leslie Preston and Dean and his wife Jenckyn Goosby Preston. In 2002, the fund received a $1 million infusion from Ken’s bequest after his death in 2021.

Linda passed in 2009, a year after the couple moved to San Francisco to be closer to their children. Public records show they lived at The Comstock, a stock cooperative building at 1333 Jones Street in the heart of Nob Hill. The unit where they resided sold for $2.5 million in 2007, just prior to their move out west.

In San Francisco, Preston studied at U.C. Hastings College of the Law and, upon graduation in 1996, went to work for the law firm of John Burris, an Oakland-based civil rights attorney best known for representing victims and their families in police brutality cases. Preston spent the late 1990s working at public interest firms and clerked for Judge D. Lowell Jensen at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California before joining THC in 2000, where he transitioned to tenant rights law.

In 2002, Preston’s grandmother-in-law set up the Jackieline & Goosby Marital Deduction Trust and the Goosby Jackieline & Goosby Survivors Trust. In 2012, she made an intrafamily transfer and dissolution to the Goosby Jackieline & Jackieline Goosby Trust, and in 2013 she made another intrafamily transfer and dissolution to what is now Goosby Family LLC, a real estate investment company. According to public records, there are three properties in San Francisco associated with the Goosby family: 299 Maywood Drive, a single-family home which is owned by Jackieline and serves as the address for the LLC, and two apartment buildings — 430 44th Avenue in Sutro Heights, and 3233 Scott Street in the Marina District — which are both owned by Goosby Family LLC.

In 2008, Preston founded Tenants Together, a coalition of more than 50 local tenant rights groups in California. The organization campaigned against California's Proposition 98 that year, a ballot initiative that would have abolished rent control across the state (it was rejected by voters). As Executive Director, Preston advocated for legislation and helped form local tenant unions to promote rent control and tenant rights laws. Tenants Together also operated a renters rights hotline and a network of tenant attorneys. Between 2015 and 2017, Preston led tenant bootcamps to teach renters how to protect their rights in San Francisco. In 2018, Tenants Together celebrated its 10-year anniversary. “In 2008, Tenants Together formed to connect tenants across the state in the fight for the fundamental human right to safe, stable shelter,” the organization wrote. “We played a key role in saving rent control, passing new tenant protection laws, and changing the narrative on tenant rights.”

Despite losing his first race to now Mayor London Breed, that altruistic message of tenant advocacy and activism resonated with the progressive, mostly renter voter base in District 5, leading to Preston’s eventual election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. But apparently his wife’s family didn’t get the memo: while Preston was building Tenants Together in 2008, his grandmother-in-law, Jackieline, was evicting a tenant from her apartment building in the Marina District.

On February 22, 2008, Jackieline Goosby filed an unlawful detainer suit in San Francisco Superior Court against Nathaniel R. Head, a tenant at the Goosby’s building at 3233 Scott Street. Head’s monthly rent was $1,575, and when the 3-day notice to pay rent or quit was served, $3,950 was past due. Goosby also requested forfeiture of the apartment, reimbursement of her attorney fees, late charges of $135, and payment of a $2,175 security deposit. On July 9, 2008, a judge signed off on the eviction, plus restitution and attorney’s fees for Goosby in the sum of $1,650.

That wasn’t the only time Goosby attempted to evict a tenant at the Marina District building — on September 25, 2003, she filed a lawsuit against a woman in another unit but lost the case. According to public records, the tenant still resides at the address, paying $3,870 per month in rent.

As of 2022, Kevin Goosby — uncle of Preston’s wife, Jenckyn — is listed as the property manager and also resides in the Marina District building, which features 18 units and three stories on a 6,300 square foot lot. Jackieline Goosby, now in her 90s, still ostensibly runs the family LLC. Kevin registered as a property management LLC before the Goosby Family LLC formed, after which he allowed his LLC to terminate. Public records show no job information other than managing the Scott Street property. In 2008 the Goosby family evicted a tenant paying $1,575 a month and records show a tenant they attempted to evict currently paying $3,870 a month. With all 18 units occupied, the Scott Street building is likely grossing over $50,000 per month. In 2022 the building was assessed at $1,723,317 and the Goosbys paid $21,920 in property taxes.

Since Goosby Family LLC keeps the identities of its members private, an educated guess would be that the grandmother retains 50 percent, Kevin has one-third of the remaining 50 percent, and the rest is in the hands of the grandchildren, including Jenckyn. It is also likely that the great-grandchildren, including those of Preston and Goosby, are set up to benefit from the real estate holdings down the line.

‘FOR THE 1000TH TIME I DON’T OWN RENTAL PROPERTY’

In a Dec. 17, 2022, tweet, Preston said, “For the 1000th time I don’t own rental property. I’m not a landlord and never have been one . . .” He continues to dance around his connection to the Goosby family’s long legacy of owning and running rental properties, which includes at least one eviction and one attempted eviction. If he wants to get technical, he could just say he’s married with tenants.

In a segment titled “Understanding Landlords,” Investopedia describes a landlord as “anyone who owns property and rents it out to someone else. This party is called the tenant or leaseholder. Landlords invest in real estate as a source of financial profit. By owning property and leasing it out, a landlord can earn a steady stream of income along with the potential for appreciation of their properties.” This all makes perfect sense to me because I have been a landlord in San Francisco. I am also the beneficiary of a trust where my father’s San Francisco condominium passed to me at his death.

Owning property is the foundation of the American Dream, and those who achieve that dream are incredibly fortunate. Evicting tenants is also part of being a landlord, albeit not a fun part. So, to be clear, I don’t begrudge Preston’s in-laws owning properties, profiting from them, or occasionally evicting residents. My problem is with the outright hypocrisy of Preston selling himself as a Democratic socialist savior of tenants battling the bad and greedy landlords when his wife’s family built their fortune as landlords charging tenants hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent.

I believe anyone can create a hypothetical situation where they come to the same conclusion. As a vocal, lifelong anti-breeding, anti-dogfighting, pit bull advocate, mine might look like this: My husband's mother is a 92-year-old CEO of Pit Bull Family Farms LLC, which lists no other members on their statements of information. I know they have two top female pit bulls with excellent genetics, and they each crank out several litters a year. My husband's uncle lives where the dogs are bred because his elderly mother is no longer running the day-to-day operations. When an interested party inquires about purchasing a puppy, my husband’s uncle answers the call, sets up the sale, and collects the money, which goes back into Pit Bull Family Farms LLC. Technically, I can say my husband and I have never bred pit bulls, sold pit bulls, or benefited directly from the business, but in reality it’s a word salad that lands me squarely on top of Hypocrite Hill with Dean Preston.

Figuring I couldn’t be the only one feeling this way, I asked a real estate expert to take a look at the Goosby documents, which he agreed to do on condition of anonymity. “Based on ownership chain, this is an inheritance, held once in a trust and now owned by Goosby Family LLC…” he explained. “Technically, LLC is the ‘landlord’ so it looks like this is one of those cases where the simple truth of an ownership interest and control over an apartment building is obfuscated through lawyerly evasions and linguistic slitherings.”

“Lawyerly evasions and linguistic slitherings.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Susan is an investigative reporter best known for breaking the corruption stories that rocked City Hall. As a columnist, she believes in backing up her opinions with facts.

Follow Susan on Twitter @susandreynolds and read her monthly Reynolds Rap column in The Marina Times.