Close to 20,000 more apartments in San Francisco would come under rent control if Prop. 33 passes and the supes approve a bill that comes before the Land Use and Transportation Committee Monday/30.
The measure, by Sup. Aaron Peskin, would extend rent control to all housing units built between June 1979 and November 2024 if California voters approve Prop. 33 this fall.
Prop. 33 would overturn the Costa Hawkins Act, which bans rent control on any apartment built after 1979.
If Prop. 33 passes, rent control could once again become a central issue in San Francisco politics. Today, the state so limits what cities can do to limit rent hikes that it’s hard for the supes to do much beyond what already exists in local law.
The first step would be adding all the units that are now exempt. But Costa-Hawkins also bans rent controls on vacant apartments—and in the 1980s and early 1990s, that was a central issue in every local election. Supervisor and mayoral candidates who supported vacancy control—meaning the rent doesn’t rise to market levels whenever a tenant moves out—won the support of tenant groups. Those who didn’t were rejected by tenant groups. There wasn’t a lot of room for “moderates” to say they supported rent control but opposed the only form of rent control that really works to fight displacement.
Peskin has four co-sponsors, Sups. Dean Preston, Connie Chan, Hillary Ronen, and Shamann Walton. They need one more vote.
The landlords who are opposing Prop. 33 argue that tighter rent control discourages developers from building housing and thus drives up housing costs. Many of these same folks say that local oversight of land use in San Francisco has made housing unaffordable.
That doesn’t track with the data: Vancouver B.C. has rent control; it’s also seen massive new housing construction, tripling the housing stock in the last 30 years. So rent control didn’t stop developers. Oh, and housing prices have not come down; they’re the highest in North America.
I’m sure we’ll hear the same arguments from some of the supes as this works its way to the full board. I hope Peskin and his allies challenge those statements with the reality of housing economics in 2024.
That meeting starts at 1:30 pm.
San Francisco is now moving aggressively to tow RVs where people, often families, are living on city streets. As El Tecolote reports, it’s not even clear that the approach is enforceable, and it’s certainly another level of cruelty in the mayor’s approach to homelessness.
But the SFMTA will be voting Tuesday/1 on a measure to ban overnight parking by almost anything resembling a trailer or RV almost everywhere in San Francisco and allowing the city to tow and essentially confiscate people’s homes.
Democratic Socialists of America will hold a rally at noon on the steps of City Hall, and the group is encouraging people to go to the meeting and give public comment against the plan. The meeting starts at 1pm in Room 400.
The San Francisco Unified School District is facing all kinds of problems, including the inability to fill special education positions that are required by state law, and the superintendent has delayed telling families which schools will close. (There’s not even much evidence that school closures will save the district significant money.)
The real issue, of course, is that California spends far too little money per student on public education (about half of what New York spends), leaving districts scrambling to provide basic services. That’s one of the results of Prop. 13.
Meanwhile, Mayor London Breed has allocated $8.4 million for a “School Stabilization Team” that includes Rec-Park Director Phil Ginsburg, who is best known for seeking to make money by privatizing the parks.
Rori Abernathy, who teaches seventh grade math in the district and is a California Teachers Association state delegate, told me the whole idea is a disaster. “It’s just another attack on us,” she said. “Haven’t we been attacked enough already?
“Teachers are talking about this and saying it’s beyond fake, it’s just going to cause chaos. Not one of us has been asked about this, and there’s no plan for asking us.”
The supes were a little dubious about it at the last meeting, and now Sups. Ahsha Safai and Aaron Peskin have called for a special hearing of the full board, as a Committee of the Whole, to discuss the situation Tuesday/1. That hearing is scheduled for 3pm.
