{"id":438390,"date":"2026-08-20T14:14:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T14:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/438390\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T14:14:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T14:14:13","slug":"their-roommate-died-then-their-rent-more-than-tripled-to-9250","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/438390\/","title":{"rendered":"Their roommate died. Then their rent more than tripled to $9,250"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dustin Lee, who has lived in the Castro for a decade, says he won\u2019t leave without a fight. | Source: Morgan Ellis\/The Standard<\/p>\n<p>Published Aug. 20, 2026at6:00am<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-block break-words article-body text-left\">Dustin Lee knew something was off when the apartment went quiet.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-block break-words article-body text-left\">His roommate, Michael Hutchings, known as Hutch, hadn\u2019t been seen or heard from in nearly a week \u2014 no snoring, no dog barking, no texted reminders that rent was due. Lee assumed he\u2019d left town.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-block break-words article-body text-left\">Then Hutch\u2019s sister reached out. She and her brother usually spoke every day, but she hadn\u2019t heard from him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-block break-words article-body text-left\">Lee knocked on Hutch\u2019s door. No one answered.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dustin Lee, who has lived in the Castro for a decade, says he won\u2019t leave without a fight.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[380,15682,21856,2655,169627,101,103,102,104,106,105,37511,7825],"class_list":["post-438390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-affordable-housing","tag-apartment-rentals","tag-castro","tag-housing-market","tag-rent-check","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-sf-reality-check","tag-tenants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}