Elderly couple served eviction notice even though one is battling cancer

SAN JOSE, Calif. (KTVU) - A San Jose couple is looking for a new place to live tonight after spending decades in the same home. 

Richard Kavanagh and his wife Helen have been served with an eviction notice even though Richard is battling cancer. 

After nearly 50 years of renting the same duplex, they're being forced to move out. 

"I was thinking that they can do that, that's fine. Throw people around, but that's not the way you do it here. You're going to put two people out in the street. 

The landlord has told the Kavanagh's she wants to move her own parents into the property.

But the couple, who are 76 and 80 years old respectively say they're in no position to apartment hunt.

Richard is currently at a skilled nursing facility due to his condition and is recovering from a surgery.

He says they'd pay more than their current $1,500 dollars a month in rent if they could just stay.

"'Hello. Let's talk. Would you be willing to pay another $500 more to stay here for another 10 years?' 'Sure. Let's do it!' haven't heard a thing,'" said Richard. 

We reached out to the landlord Marjaneh Hosseani by phone and by knocking on her door, but were unsuccessful.

Housing advocates say they've been asking her to reconsider the eviction and the impact it might have on the Kavanagh's health.

"I would like to see her have a reckoning and realize, would she want this done to her parents? No. Then why is she doing it to someone else's parents," said Shaunn Cartwright, a housing advocate. 

City officials have been reaching out to her too. They acknowledge she is within her rights to evict the couple and she's already moved the eviction back from November to February to help them.

Still authorities hope something else can be done.

"It's either a new place, we find one for them. In some circumstances we've even found affordable housing for individuals. They've qualified and they didn't even know it and then in the other case, it's maybe hopefully the landlord is in a place maybe to extend or relook at that eviction," said Don Rocha, a San Jose City Councilman. 

"Why don't you just leave it lie? Why don't you just let us live our life out there," said Richard. But if they can't, they say they don't have many options at their price point. "Then I don't know what I'm going to do or where I'm going to go. I have nowhere to go at all," he said.