EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom, reeling from criticism of his
disappearing act last week and his failure to quickly reengage with San
Francisco, has an opportunity to repair some of his tattered image,
particularly among progressives, and mend fences with the majority of
the Board of Supervisors. It wouldn't even require a dramatic or
groundbreaking step — all he has to do is agree to sign legislation by
Sup. John Avalos extending eviction protections to roughly 20,000
vulnerable San Francisco renters.
The Avalos legislation
clears up a lingering loophole in the city's rent-control ordinance, a
leftover piece of a bad deal that tenants were forced to accept when
the city first moved to limit rent hikes 20 years ago. Back in 1978,
with greedy landlords taking advantage of a housing shortage to jack up
rents by astronomical rates, the supervisors and then-Mayor Dianne
Feinstein were under immense pressure to pass some kind of control. But
the landlord-friendly mayor and at-large elected board were unwilling
to do what Berkeley had done across the bay by setting permanent limits
on how much landlords could raise prices.
Instead, they approved a watered-down measure aimed largely at fending off a tenant initiative that would have gone further.
The
deal capped rent hikes — but only for existing tenants, allowing
landlords to raise rents whenever a unit became vacant. And, after the
real estate industry whined that rent control would cause developers to
stop building new housing in San Francisco (a dubious claim if ever
there was one), the supervisors agreed to exempt all newly constructed
housing (that is, anything built after 1979) from any rent regulations
at all.
That housing is still exempt from rent control —
and because the rent control law also includes eviction protections for
tenants, the post-1979 housing stock is also exempt from those rules.
Most
San Francisco tenants enjoy what's known as "just-cause" eviction rules
— that is, you can't toss a tenant out on the streets without a reason.
Failure to pay rent, of course, is legal grounds to send someone
packing; it's also okay to force a tenant out if the owner wants to
move in.
But for the roughly 20,000 renters living in
newer units, evictions can happen on a landlord's whim — and one of the
most dangerous problems is the lack of protection for people who live
in a foreclosed building. Tenants in older, pre-1979 buildings have the
right to continue to live in the property, under the same lease or
rental agreement, after a sale or foreclosure. The Avalos bill would
extend that protection (and the other just-cause protections) to all
tenants in the city.
It's hardly a radical idea — and
given the boom in high-end housing construction in this city over the
past decade (slowed only by the economic crash), the claim that tenant
protections will doom new housing is demonstrably false. It would save
vulnerable residents from losing their homes, protect people who live
(through no fault of their own) in foreclosed properties, and restore a
level of fairness to the local housing market.
The measure
will almost certainly get six votes on the board, so the only real
obstacle is the threat of a Newsom veto. The mayor should state
publicly that he supports the measure and will sign it — which could be
the start of a new, more promising chapter in Newsom's political career.
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