With a ‘heavy heart,’ tenant protections move forward at Planning Commission

Planning Commissioner Gilbert Williams summed up Thursday everything that is wrong with state Sen. Scott Wiener’s housing laws and the terrible position that Sacramento has left San Francisco.

He was speaking at a hearing on a measure by Sup. Chyanne Chen that seeks to add what limited protections the state will allow to existing tenants whose homes may be destroyed in the name of new luxury development.

Chen’s legislation is a trailer to Mayor Lurie’s Rich Family Zoning Plan, which would allow the demolition of rent-controlled buildings of two or fewer units.

The new legislation seeks to add tenant protections to the law, and in many ways it does: New rules requiring the Rent Board to hold hearings for renters reporting landlord harassment were long priorities for tenant groups.

So there is much to like here, and all of the commissioners voted to support the Chen bill, and it already has eight cosponsors at the Board of Supes.

But Williams told the truth:

It’s not a joyous occasion for me knowing that there will be people impacted by this state bill. There will be vulnerable seniors, people with disabilities that will be now legally kicked out of their homes.

That’s not something that I think anybody anywhere would be happy with. And so as much as I appreciate all the hard work that has gone into the tenant protection bill, I personally come here today with a heavy heart because I understand the situation that the city is in because of the state mandates and restrictions on tenant protections. And whatever we do it won’t be enough, because we should not be demolishing occupied housing. period.

Given the fact that we might be in for a lot more demolitions in the future and given that we may be displacing residents I think we need to look at the demo accounts again. And I think we need to adjust them further. ….

I want to just emphasize that the more tenant protections that we can afford San Francisco residents, given what we’re up against is  appropriate it’s actually very, very unfortunate that we’re in this situation. I think our residents deserve a lot better.

More:

I just wanted to remind you, I know that there’s some issues with with the legislation and there could be challenges and things like that. But I would just say some things are worth fighting for in the courts on the streets and everywhere else—and protecting tenants and protecting people’s homes is one of those things.

The San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition and the Race and Equity in All Planning Coalition both generally supported the legislation, but warned the commissioners that

This legislation accomplishes much of what our coalitions set out to do: enhance noticing and language requirements, expand relocation assistance, and establish consequences for tenant harassment, among many other interventions. But, while the TPO is poised to accomplish much, there are still significant issues that have not been fully resolved, that go unmentioned or are inadequately addressed in Planning’s staff report. … The Housing Crisis Act, passed as SB 330 in 2019 and subsequently amended, presents a host of new threats to tenants that did not previously exist. Planning’s staff report characterizes SB 330 as a tenant protection measure, when in fact it is a measure that preemptively allows developers to demolish existing housing, including rent-controlled and tenant-occupied apartments. While SB 330 does require developers to meet a set of minimum standards in exchange for permission to demolish someone’s home, we must emphasize that these standards are nowhere near sufficient nor are they accompanied by any systems of enforcement or accountability.

For the record, SB 330 was sponsored by state Sen. Nancy Skinner, who in an earlier phase of her life was a strong tenant advocate on the Berkeley City Council but turned into a pro-developer Yimby. It was supported by Wiener and former state Assemblymember David Chiu, who chaired the committee that pushed it through, and is now the city attorney.

From ADC and REP:

There are provisions in SB 330 as well as other state laws, namely the Ellis Act, that constrain our ability to implement all of the local protections that are needed when developers seek to demolish existing units. For example, SB 330 makes distinctions between the relocation assistance and right to return that developers must provide to “lower-income” versus “above-lower-income” households that are displaced. While we do not support such a framework that distinguishes between tenants based on their incomes, we are focused on ensuring the TPO provides the greatest possible protections to tenants under existing laws

Among other things, the coalitions suggest, the current laws could encourage evictions under the Ellis Act, a terrible evil law that allows speculators to toss out all of their longtime rent-controlled tenants and flip the property for the equivalent of condos, making millions in the process:

Our coalitions and other members of the public have expressed repeated concerns that without stronger policies to address the threat of Ellis evictions, the combination of increased developer incentives and a recovering real estate market will fuel a new wave of Ellis threats and evictions. 6 As presently written, this legislation will additionally incentivize Ellis evictions. While the TPO does substantially increase relocation assistance and other protections for tenants displaced by demolitions, those protections are only triggered by an application to develop and demolish. If tenants are displaced by Ellis evictions prior to the project application then the enhanced assistance does not apply. Furthermore, our present rules in the Rent Ordinance do not require owners initiating Ellis evictions to disclose whether they intend to demolish the units after the tenants are displaced. As a result, enterprising owners or developers are provided a lower cost option to displace tenants through the existing Ellis eviction process. Thus our coalitions have recommended that San Francisco adopt Los Angeles’ approach to Ellis evictions. The LA model requires that all Ellis Act evictors must declare under penalty of perjury whether or not they intend to demolish after they evict the tenants. If owners acknowledge they plan to demolish they are then required to provide enhanced relocation assistance. If an owner does not report an intention to demolish they are required to pay only the standard assistance. But if that Ellis evictor subsequently does apply for a demolition permit then LA requires the tenant be provided enhanced assistance and the evictor pay a fine.

Another problem renters in the city face, and will face under the new Yimby state laws, is the tenant buyout process.

Speculators who buy rental property with longtime rent controlled tenants often threaten the use the Ellis Act, and then offer the renters cash to move out quietly. Since it’s difficult to fight an Ellis eviction, many renters have no choice but to accept the buyouts:

Tenant buy outs are one of the leading landlord strategies to displace tenants today. According to Rent Board records in the past ten years (2014-2024) there were 6681 reported attempted tenant buyouts. Our tenant counselors report that there are many more unreported attempted buyouts. Both reported and unreported buy out attempts are almost always associated with threatened eviction. The legislation would strengthen existing disclosure requirements for buy out agreements. But despite our expressed concerns, the enforcement standards (set forth in Section 317(g)(6)(G) for such disclosure requirements are incomplete, leaving out other important disclosure requirements that already exist within the city’s buyout ordinance. We see no reason why the ordinance would require only partial compliance with city law to the disadvantage of tenants who need full disclosure of their rights.

Everyone agrees that Chen’s legislation includes a lot of important protections, and is a big step in making the Rich Family Zoning Plan less likely to destroy existing low-income and working-class communities.

But we also need to realize that Wiener, who now wants to be in Congress, and Chiu, who is supposed to protect the city from legal action, including legal action from the state, put the city in an intolerable position.

We come away with a heavy heart.

I get that The Washington Post is now a right-wing newspaper. It’s not surprising that the editorial page let loose on Zohran Mamdani, suggesting that he’s some sort of crazy commie, accusing him of fomenting “class warfare:”

It isn’t about letting people build better lives for themselves. It is about identifying class enemies — from landlords who take advantage of tenants to “the bosses” who exploit workers — and then crushing them His goal is not to increase wealth but to dole it out to favored groups. The word “growth” didn’t appear in the speech.

(Lots of prominent economists today agree that growth isn’t and shouldn’t be the primary goal of public policy. The problem isn’t that the so-called “pie” isn’t big enough in the US; it’s that a handful of people have taken 90 percent of it. Redistributing income is a well-established policy in the US, going back to FDR, and I think Mamdani’s “favored groups” are low-income and working-class people. Besides, we didn’t start the class war. The billionaires and their political allies did.)

The New York Post, also a right-wing paper, had fun calling Mamdani a Marxist (which he isn’t):

But the San Francisco Chronicle is typically not that unhinged. So while I know it’s a conservative paper, I was a bit surprised (although I probably shouldn’t be) by the vicious attacks on two sitting supervisors today.

The Chron’s Sunday editorial praises Pelosi, which is to be expected; the paper always loved her “pragmatic” centrism, which meant: Never ask rich people to pay their fair share and never offend the ruling class.

But it also calls the election to fill her seat a “political circus,” which apparently is just an excuse to attack Sups. Connie Chan and Jackie Fielder.

The Chron of course loves Scott Wiener, but also gives a bit of a nod to Saikat Chakrabarti, who must be okay even if he calls himself a democratic socialist because he helped the billionaires take over the local Democratic Party and Board of Supes:

State Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco is California’s most impressive legislator and the primary architect of the state-level movement to make California housing more abundant and affordable. Saikat Chakrabarti is a talented political mind who helped a 29-year-old bartender named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeat 10-term New York incumbent Joe Crowley for a seat in the U.S. House.

(There is absolutely no evidence that Wiener’s bills will make housing more affordable in California. There is much evidence that it won’t.)

Here’s where it gets a bit looney:

But the game of political musical chairs that Pelosi’s departure will create is already incentivizing the worst kind of San Francisco performative theatrics.

How else to explain the recent pugnacity of Supervisor Connie Chan, who is rumored to be interested in pursuing Pelosi’s seat? Her loud efforts to defend and even add new layers of red tape to the city’s land use policies scream political pandering.

And then there’s the mangle further down the ballot.

Is District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder, who made a losing run for Wiener’s state senate seat in 2020, angling for the job once more? Her recent bout of big, dumb headline-seeking over the killing of a bodega cat by a driverless Waymo car would appear to indicate so.

Umm … You can agree or disagree with Chan, but she has been entirely consistent for her entire political career. She has always supported tenants and small businesses over speculators. Her latest legislation is nothing different from what she’s done since she was first elected.

Fielder, who was running a underdog campaign against an incumbent state senator and almost won in 2020, has raised a critical point: If a Waymo can’t see a cat, maybe it can’t see a little kid—and if the robot runs over and kills someone, nobody will be held accountable.

A human driver who kills another human can face serious criminal penalties. No executive at Waymo would go to prison if the car ran over a toddler.

The idea of allowing cities to regulate taxis is nothing new; it was the law of the land for decades until Uber convinced the state to take it away.

I don’t know who might run for Wiener’s seat if he gets elected to Congress or loses and is termed out in 2028. But again, Fielder challenging Waymo is entirely consistent with her political career.

So it’s going to be election season soon, and here we go again.