Thousands of tenants losing homes through no fault of their own in Mayor Lee’s San Francisco
By Tim Redmond
APRIL 21, 2015 – The number of evictions in San Francisco is at the highest level in at least ten years, and could very well set records in 2016, a new report by the San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition shows.
According to Rent Board data, 2,120 notices of evictions were filed in the year ending Feb. 28, 2015 – an increase of more than 50 percent over five years.
And that’s probably just a fraction of the actual number of tenants displaced – landlords have been using a wide range of harassment techniques to get renters to leave their apartments without a formal eviction notice.
If the current trends continue – “absent a more robust policy response” – the number of evictions in 2015 “will dramatically increase, resulting in even more massive displacement and gentrification,” the report notes.
At a press conference yesterday, tenants in the Mission who are facing eviction spoke about the human side of this crisis. The event was at Mission and Cesar Chavez, on the edge of a neighborhood where displacement has been rampant.
The renters along that boulevard have endured years of construction work as the city has poured millions in to traffic improvements and efforts to improve the look of the streetscape. Now, as property values are rising, they are being forced out.
Sylvia Smith has lived in the Mission for 41 years. She said she has never had any problem with past landlords, but the most recent owner keeps filing notices of nuisances – a common tactic to force tenants to leave. “They even said I was a drug dealer,” the 72-year-old grandmother complained.
She has refused to move, but the stress is taking a toll on her health, and she expects to be in the hospital in the next few weeks. Echoing half the tenants in the city, she said: “I live in fear.”
Dona Margarita has been in her place even longer – 52 years. It’s the only home she’s ever had in the United States. Six different landlords have owned the place, and she’s never had trouble; she always paid the rent on time and never caused problems.
But the tenants in the 12-unit building on Cesar Chavez just got Ellis Act eviction notices. She is determined: “They are not going to move me.”
The statistics in the new report are bleak: In the three months before last November’s election, when an anti-speculation tax was on the ballot, Ellis evictions fell, perhaps because the speculators saw a decline in their potential profits. But that measure lost, and the numbers are going back up.
In the first three months of 2015, 69 Ellis petitions have been filed.
Combined with harassment and nuisance evictions (for violations like hanging out laundry or bringing a bicycle into a common area), the numbers of people facing the losses of their homes are soaring.
“We are seeing thousands of economic bombs exploding in San Francisco,” Bobby Coleman of the SF Tenants Union said.
Some, maybe most of those evictions could be fought off if the tenants knew their rights, activists noted – and community groups are stepping up efforts to do outreach. On Saturday/25, more than a dozen tenant-rights groups will hold a series of workshops, with individual counseling available, on how to fight an eviction.
It’s at the Tenderloin Community School, 627 Turk St., 10am to 4pm It’s free and open to all renters who need help or think they may need help in the future. More info is here.
