San Francisco Airbnb Horror Story Recalls ‘Pacific Heights’ Almost Perfectly

When I was in high school, our business teacher spent two 90-minute class periods showing us the 1990 R-rated thriller Pacific Heights, ostensibly to teach us about some aspect of business (real estate? tenant rights?) but also, probably, to fill up two 90-minute class periods.

(If we want to make a response thread listing all of the bizarre movies we watched in school, I have absolutely no problem with that.)

In case you aren’t familiar with Pacific Heights, the plot is essentially as follows: adorable couple Melanie Griffith and Matthew Modine purchase a San Francisco home that they can’t afford (they lie about their income to get the home loan, which is a key plot point), and rent out the home’s two apartments to help them pay the mortgage.

One of their new tenants is Michael Keaton, playing a man named Carter Hayes. This man is not really named Carter Hayes; instead, he’s a con artist with one goal: to get into the apartment, establish tenant rights, and become unable to evict.

I thought of Pacific Heights as soon as I read this real-life San Franciscan rental horror story:

Michelle Huang owns a two-bedroom tenancy-in-common unit in a “spectacular location” on Telegraph Hill near Coit Tower, a few blocks from the apartment where she lives with her boyfriend Thomas Payne. She and Payne allege that Sandeep Andre Hingorani, a fellow co-owner in the six-unit TIC property and a man with whom they’ve battled for years, concocted an ersatz profile on Airbnb, calling himself “Jim Tako” to trick them into renting the unit for 60 days to him and his associates.

That’s from the San Francisco Chronicle, and it’s just the beginning. See, now that Hingorani has occupied the unit for 60 days, he’s considered a tenant and is protected by tenant rights.

Pacific Heights’ Carter Hayes has a secondary plan, once he establishes tenant rights: he wants to become obnoxious enough that the other tenants leave and the owners are no longer able to pay their mortgage. The bank will foreclose, and Hayes will be able to buy the property.

The real-life case has a similar parallel:

Why would anyone go to such lengths? In court papers, Payne and Huang sought to explain. “Defendants’ reprehensible actions were intentionally calculated to cause plaintiffs severe emotional distress,” says their case against Hingorani and his associates for fraud, trespass and ejectment. “In particular, defendant Sandeep stated that he intended to drive plaintiffs from their property and to ‘inflict maximum pain’ upon them.”

Hingorani, meanwhile, argues that Huang and Payne—the people whom he tricked into accepting his Airbnb reservation—are “creating unsafe living conditions, doing major construction without permits and seeking to violate rent control.” He had previously reported Huang and Payne for running allegedly illegal short-term Airbnb and Flipkey rentals out of the apartment, arguing that the constant stream of tenants was disruptive. This, in turn, prompted Huang and Payne to shift to long-term Airbnb rentals, which gave “Jim Tako” his way in.

Which, by the way, is yet another Pacific Heights plot point; Carter Hayes keeps track of everything the adorable homeowners do wrong, so he can use that information against them later on. He also—well, I’ll just quote the film here:

CARTER HAYES: These people are completely pathological. They took a 1/2 year’s rent from me, and they said I never paid them. They evicted me, they slandered me, they totally destroyed my credit. They physically assaulted me. They threatened my life. And now this. These people are parasites.

Back to the true story. How was Hingorani able to create a fake Airbnb listing?

Airbnb guests are supposed to be vetted through reviews from other users. Some apply for “verified ID” by scanning in documents such as photo IDs and linking to social media profiles. The profile of “Jim Tako,” which featured a photograph of actor Don Johnson, did not have any reviews, Payne said, although underneath his Airbnb messages are the words “5 Verifications; 1 Review.” Higorani later testified that he paid the Airbnb rent with his credit card, meaning Airbnb failed to flag that “Jim Tako” did not have a credit card under his name.

Airbnb, of course, calls the whole situation “unfortunate” before reminding hosts that it is their job to research people before renting to them. Or, at least, to know who Don Johnson is.

Also? Don Johnson was once married to Melanie Griffith, making the Pacific Heights connection even stronger.

Not to spoil a 1990 R-rated thriller that should never have been shown to high school students because it clearly embedded itself into my formative memory, but Pacific Heights ends tragically. (It also hits #93 on Bravo’s “100 Scariest Movie Moments,” which is just one more reason why it probably shouldn’t have been shown in a classroom.)

Let’s hope this true story resolves itself in a calmer, more legal-system-oriented fashion—although, as the IMDB Pacific Heights FAQ section notes, this may be difficult:

At this point, the Rent Board and the San Francisco Superior Court are both involved, so we’ll see what happens.

Also, if you’re in the market to make one of those ‘90s nostalgia reboot movies, I’ve just given you a brilliant idea.

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