San Francisco Assessor Phil Ting did his best impression of a broken record at a news conference Wednesday. At least it was for a good cause.
"Did we say 'stay in your house' enough?' " Ting joked. "Do not leave. Do not leave your home."
Ting wasn't alone. A representative from the city's Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Board and members of the Housing Rights Committee were all in attendance to speak out against a truly unfair and harmful practice: Some renters are being told that if their landlord defaults on the mortgage during this foreclosure crisis, they must move out - even if they've been making their rent payments on time.
The fact is, in San Francisco that is simply not true.
"Tenants in rent-controlled buildings in San Francisco are protected by the need for a 'just cause' for eviction," said Darlene Wolf, executive director of the rent board. "And foreclosure is not just cause."
To make that point, the assessor's office will send letters to tenants in buildings that are in default. The letter will say, "According to San Francisco law, it is illegal for the new owner (typically the bank that has foreclosed on the loan) to ask you to leave without just cause or shut off your utilities."
The hope is that the letter will help stop the unsavory practice of intimidating tenants into vacating. With foreclosures up 500 percent in San Francisco over the last two years, according to Ting, the tactics being used by some banks and their brokers are unforgivable.
"We have tenants who have had handwritten notices slipped under their door saying that they have to vacate," said Sara Shortt, executive director of the Housing Rights Committee. "We've had brokers letting themselves into the apartment and telling tenants that they want to show the place to prospective renters. Unfortunately, the majority of these cases are immigrant families who often speak no English."
But even if they understand the language, many renters are unclear on their rights. Having heard about the foreclosure crisis for months, they assume that they've just been caught up in the U.S. economic meltdown.
"Intuitively, it seems to make sense to people," Wolf said. "If the owner of the building did not make his payments, of course we have to go. And surely the bank would know the law."
Shortt said it is impossible to know how many renters got a notice of eviction and meekly packed their things and left their apartment. Best guess is that the numbers are unacceptably high. Shortt said her office has handled 75 foreclosure cases in the last year, 17 in September alone. The Eviction Defense Collaborative, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that provides counseling and legal help to tenants who are being evicted, reports that foreclosure evictions here went up 257 percent this year. That's on top of a 250 percent increase in 2007.
Genevieve Hilpert has successfully held onto her apartment in the Outer Mission after a foreclosure. Hilpert, who has lived in the city for eight years after arriving from the African republic Cameroon, was handed a letter in September ordering her to move.
"I told them I wasn't moving," Hilpert said. "And I went to the housing department."
Still, everything is far from perfect. Her gas has been off since October because of a leak; the bank still hasn't made the necessary repairs.
The San Francisco real estate market has seemed largely immune to the nationwide housing crash, but those days appear to be ending.
Rental buildings make up 25 percent of the city's foreclosures. If San Francisco catches up with the rest of the country, it will aggravate this already ugly trend. Nationally, 38 percent of foreclosures are rentals, with areas like New York as high as 60 percent.
"Given the horror stories we are hearing from the rest of the country," Shortt said, "I am very concerned looking into our future."
It will be interesting to see the reaction to this strong statement by the city.
"The problem is that the banks do not see themselves as landlords," Shortt said. "They have not done their due diligence to see what the laws are in San Francisco."
That's the charitable view - that the banks that have taken over the properties do not realize that tactics they may be able to employ in other jurisdictions are illegal in San Francisco. The less generous opinion is that the banks are simply pushing as hard as they can regardless of the law, and if they can clear out some of the buildings, all the better.
"Obviously," Wolf said, "the best thing for them to sell is a vacant property."
Ting is pushing the banks to change loan terms so owners can make the payments. But the city will not look the other way if they continue to try to push out renters.
"Things are messy enough already," Wolf said. "They don't want an unlawful eviction suit on top of it."
Consider that fair warning.
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