Fighting evictions – at all levels

With a citywide tenant convention that will draft new legislation to fight the surge of evictions set for Saturday, Preston made a critical point: Renters and their allies have to fight evictions at every level – building by building, block by block, at City Hall, and at the state Legislature. This struggle has many levels, and all of them are critical.

The convention, Feb. 8 at 1pm at the Tenderloin Community School, 627 Turk, will look at ways the Board of Supervisors can stop the eviction epidemic. Proposals include a tax on real-estate speculation, the creation of a rent-control enforcement agency, higher relocation fees for evictions, and a moratorium on some types of evictions.

That’s the local level.

At the state level, Tenants Together is planning a Renters’ Day of Action in Sacramento Feb. 18, with buses leaving from San Francisco. Organizers hope more than 500 people will show up to demonstrate the strength of a growing statewide tenant movement.

“Our side has not organized at a state level,” Preston said.

There will be a bill this year to limit Ellis Act evictions, and it will take a huge effort to pass it. Preston also cautioned that, whatever the mayor says, the battle in Sacramento shouldn’t pre-empt the struggle at home: “Ellis Act reform will not happen tomorrow.” Even if a law limiting evictions were to pass this year, it wouldn’t take effect until 2015.

So in the meantime, we have to do everything we can on the local front – because at current rates, more than 1,000 people will lose their homes to Ellis evictions in the next 12 months.

Preston also offered a useful and interesting analysis of the history of the Ellis Act – and how its legislative intent has been abused.

When the bill came before the state Legislature in 1985, it was designed to address a Supreme Court case from the previous year. The city of Santa Monica had adopted strict ruled against evictions, and a landlord group sued, saying that a property owner had the Constitutional right to go out of business.

The Court disagreed.

So the landlords went to Sacramento, and, Preston noted, “paraded a string of senior citizens who were sick of maintaining rental property.” The bill passed – and at first, most people figured it wouldn’t amount to much.

Why, after all, would a landlord go out of business through the Ellis Act when there’s an easy way to go out of business – sell the building?

And in fact, for the next 15 years, there were only a couple of Ellis evictions in San Francisco.

Then came the dot-com boom and the popularity (and easier financing) of tenancies in common – and Ellis became the law of choice for speculators.

The result is almost comical: Most of the Ellis evictions are filed by speculators who have owned the building for less than a year (in many cases, less than a week). They buy rental property, immediately file Ellis petitions, and try to flip the buildings as TICs.

“People are buying buildings and going into the rental business – so they can go out of the rental business,” Preston said.

So the bill we’re likely to see in Sacramento would limit Ellis evictions to people who have owned for five years or more. State Sen. Mark Leno, when he was in the Assembly in 2005, tried that path; he lost.

But this time around there’s an organized statewide tenant group, a crisis in San Francisco, a mayor who agrees with the reform – and possibly, some hope.

In the meantime, tenant advocates say, there’s no reason to put all of our efforts in Sacramento, or City Hall – we need to fight in the streets, too.

Because it’s actually possible to win.