The buses left early – we were on the road a little after 7:30, insanely close to the scheduled departure time (this is, after all, the San Francisco left). By 10 am, the staging area was packed — and a march around the Capitol filled an entire city block.
An energetic crowd filled the Capitol steps.
Top on the agenda, of course, is the Ellis Act, that heinous piece of legislation that allows a building owner to evict all of his or her tenants and sell the place as tenancies in common. The law is absurd on its face, as state Sen. Mark Leno noted: The intent was to allow longtime landlords to go out of the rental business – but speculators who have no intention of ever being landlords are using it to buy and quickly flip property.
Leno, who addressed the rally on the Capitol steps, promised to introduce a bill within the next week that would make some changes to the law. He warned that it might be next-to impossible to get the Legislature to repeal the Ellis Act – but since the law isn’t being used as it was intended, even the more moderate members might be willing to make some changes.
“The word ‘speculator’ is not in the Ellis Act,” he said.
The most likely scenario: A bill emerges that makes a property owner wait a certain period of time – say, five years – before using the Ellis Act. That would slow down the “dirty dozen” – the speculative real-estate operations that are responsible for some of the worst Ellis Act evictions in the city.
Combined with local moves to better regulate TICs and ensure reasonable relocation fees for evicted tenants, it would make a major dent in the eviction epidemic.
The march took up an entire city block
Also a top statewide priority: The renters rebate, also known as the renters’ tax credit, a program put in place many years ago to recognize that renters don’t get the property-tax advantages that landlords and homeowners do.
The credit amounted to maybe $300 a household, not a huge sum – but enough, as retired teacher and union activist Hene Kelly noted, “to help make it through the year.”
More than 250 Chinatown tenant activists came to the rally
The rebate was summarily axed by former Gov. Arnolds Schwarzenegger, and while the state’s budget shows a healthy surplus, the current governor hasn’t moved to restore it.
Tenants Together is also pushing SB 391, a bill that would help fund affordable housing efforts statewide.
Supervisors Jon Avalos, David Campos, David Chiu and Jane Kim were all on the scene, an indication of how critical the eviction epidemic has become in San Francisco – and how important the tenant vote will be this fall.
Ammiano and Leno both stepped out of the busy Legislative session to talk to the crowd – but there was no sign of state Sen. Leland Yee, who is running for secretary of state, or of Assemblymember Phil Ting, who represents the west side of town. “If you talk to Leland,” Preston noted, “ask him to support our bills.”
