Residential Rent and Eviction Control Resources
This week’s Examiner features an Op-Ed from Supervisor Campos on his proposed amendment to the new “Airbnb Law”, seeking to give “teeth” to the recent regulation of transient use of San Francisco’s rental housing stock.
We did it, you guys… We’re still on top. SocketSite reports a record-setting asking price for apartments in San Francisco, as of first quarter 2015, of $3,458 per month. San Francisco renters may have reasons to be optimistic though. The rate of increase appears to be slowing (at least compared to rates in Oakland), and new construction projects should cause prices to at least flatten out eventually.
Curbed.com reports an increasing number of Ellis Act evictions in Los Angeles, as landlords seek to take advantage of higher property values.
While only pockets of Los Angeles County have rent controlled rental units, the number of Ellis withdrawals dwarfs those of San Francisco, which saw 216 Ellis Act terminations in 2013 and 113 in 2014, to Los Angeles’ 308 in 2013 and 725 in 2014.
The Board of Supervisor’s Land Use and Transportation Committee passed a revised version of last year’s “Campos Amendment” to the Ellis Act on a first reading last week. The Campos Amendment provided for enhanced relocation assistance payments based on the difference between rent controlled and market rental rates, for two years. First the federal district court in Levin v. CCSF and then the Superior Court in Jacoby v. CCSF found that payment metric unconstitutional, for lacking both an “essential nexus” with and a “rough proportionality” to a landlord’s act of withdrawing units from the rental market.
The proposed legislation responds directly to the criticisms laid out in these rulings. Its much less ambitious relocation payments are capped at $50,000.00 per unit, and the enhanced relocation payments are not required until a tenant returns a signed Declaration, stating that they will use the money for relocation costs. That said, the Declaration is now made a prerequisite to terminating tenancies under the Ellis Act, which may raise preemption concerns. And the enforcement mechanism contemplated by the proposed legislation requires a tenant to keep track of expenditures so that their former landlord can request and verify that they’ve used the money for housing, which may raise privacy concerns.
The proposed legislation is expected to pass on its second reading this Tuesday, before the Board of Supervisors sends it to the Mayor.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office, the California Legislatures nonpartisan fiscal and policy advisor, recently published a report on the causes of California’s high cost of housing and the effect that this has on the broader state economy.
Senator Mark Leno presented SB 364 to the Senate Housing Committee today – his second effort to impose “anti-speculator” restrictions on Ellis Act withdrawals in San Francisco. Busloads of San Franciscans, on both sides of the issue, headed to Sacramento to share their opinions. Ultimately, the 6-5 vote against SB 364 maintains the status quo in the City, pending reconsideration, where the housing committee will hold a second vote (so stay tuned).
Leno’s SB 364 would add provisions to the Ellis Act providing that, in order to invoke the Ellis Act to “go out of the rental business” an owner would need to own the property for “five continuous years or more”. It would also provide that an owner who even initiated an Ellis Act withdrawal for one building could not do so for a subsequently-acquired building for another ten years (forcing owners to really stand behind the statement, “I don’t want to be a landlord”).
SocketSite reports on new “group housing” units (buildings with single units but enough shared amenities to avoid “below market rate” unit requirements) targeted to San Francisco’s “working class”, who finally have an incentive to earn 150% of the “area median income”.
BeyondChron reports on efforts of tenants in apartment complexes in Richmond to go on a “rent strike”, in an effort to urge the city of Richmond to pass rent control legislation.
San Francisco Board of Supervisors passes legislation supporting SB 364 – Senator Mark Leno’s second effort to impose restrictions to the use of the Ellis Act to withdraw residential rental property from the rental market. (Among other things, the law would require that a landlord first own the property for five years before seeking to “go out of business” as an “anti-speculation” measure.)
SF Gate reports on single-room-occupancy hotels (“SROs”) in Chinatown as the next frontier for gentrification.
