Avalos Responds to Newsom Attempt
to Narrow Just Cause Eviction Protections

Supervisor John Avalos
Photo by Luke Thomas

By Carol Harvey, guest columnist

January 11, 2009

Standing behind a podium under the San Francisco Mayor’s office balcony on the City Hall steps, December 7, 2009,  Housing Rights Committee Executive Director Sara Shortt addressed a 300-strong crowd.

“There is an unfair and arbitrary inequity in San Francisco. A portion of renters here are without eviction protections,” Shortt said.

Since 1979, 16 to 23 thousand renters can be arbitrarily evicted without cause.

The proposed legislation is “simple,” Shortt continued. “It will tie up this loophole and require landlords of newly constructed units to give a fair reason to tenants if (they) are going to evict them.”

Inside City Hall, senior Maria Avilla addressed Supervisors at the San Francisco Land Use and Economic Development Committee.

“I really am scared about being evicted again, of being displaced and having to move again at my age,” Avilla said.

Said Tommi Avicolli Mecca, San Francisco Housing Rights Committee counselor, “I have the unenviable task of saying to (working class families sitting at my desk), ‘You have no rights. You can be evicted.’”

Karen Ricardo, volunteer HRC counselor, described the stress of traumatized families: “The fear in these people is unimaginable. Some are disabled, elderly, have children. It’s not easy to find places in San Francisco.”

Housing Activists work with Board of Supes

Responding in part to an escalation of tenant evictions in the spring of 2009 – collateral damage from bank foreclosures of San Francisco properties – three tenants rights organizations represented by Tenants Union’s Ted Gullicksen, Eviction Defense Collaborative’s Miguel Wooding, and Housing Rights Committee’s Shortt, met with Supervisor Avalos whose District 11 houses thousands of tenants and has the City’s highest foreclosure rates.

Several Board hearings later, Avalos posted a letter on the ProSF listserv announcing his sponsorship of legislation extending just cause eviction protections to tenants living in rental units built after 1979, including tenants in foreclosed properties. “Foreclosure is not a just cause for eviction,” he said.

Supervisors David Campos, Chris Daly and Eric Mar co-sponsored the measure.

At the December 7 Land Use and Economic Development Committee hearing, Supervisor Avalos echoed Housing Rights Committee statistics. “Nearly 40% of the evictions we have seen this year have come from buildings built after 1979,” he said.

San Francisco Rent Control and Eviction Protection, a brief history

On his November 10, 2009 blog, SF Bay Guardian publisher Bruce Brugmann wrote: “The Avalos legislation clears up a lingering loophole in the city’s rent-control ordinance,” from 20 years ago when landlords used a housing shortage to jack up rents. The supervisors exempted from all rent regulations – both price control and eviction protection – housing constructed post-1979.

Wooding stressed the recent surge in bank foreclosures triggered urgency for tenant eviction protections, but need for this legislation has for 30 years been, “a long-building issue.”

Wooding cited three converging forces creating a need for this legislation:

– Since 1995, the Costa-Hawkins Act instituted rent control in California, leaving an estimated large and growing number of 16-30 thousand rental-housing units unprotected either by rent control or just cause eviction protections. This situation has demanded legislation guaranteeing, “if the landlord is going to do an eviction, they have to state what it is.”

– Over 10 thousand new rental units in the pipeline, according to Wooding.

-  The economic meltdown is spawning the bank-generated home foreclosure crisis. Landlords and banks are unwilling to respect tenants’ basic needs for housing security when, through no fault of their own, tenants take up residence in foreclosed buildings and become subject to eviction by the banks.

Eviction protection – secondary benefits

Wooding emphasized additional bargaining leverage just cause eviction protections provide. The requirement that a landlord says, “I am evicting you for this particular reason,” is a hedge against discriminatory eviction, “I dislike your race or sexual orientation, so you’re gone.”

Public weighs in

During the Dec. 7, 2009 Land Use Committee hearing, Supervisor Avalos described the “long public process” since the legislation was introduced in May. “This is the fourth hearing.”

Real estate and business interests – the Small Property Owners’ Association, the Apartment Association, the Board of Realtors and others — engaged in hot debate.

Andrew Ong’s criticism that this legislation is “a solution looking for a problem,” was followed by an angry stream of unfocused censure.

“Banks won’t loan! I’ll lose my equity! Too many property restrictions and regulations! Enough is not enough for you people!”

Wooding observed, “This is relatively minor important legislation. Yet, the noise was large and out of proportion. Anything that touches renter protections is automatically suspect by landlords.”

Refinement of legislation: Avalos works with realtors

Emphasizing that, “We have made a strong good-faith effort,” Supervisor Avalos accommodated those realtors’ concerns that demonstrated discernible merit.

“They Want Rent Control For All Our New Units!”

Avalos stressed, “This ordinance is not about extending Rent Control,” but “extending Eviction Control to post-1979 buildings. There’s a big difference.”

“Just Cause Protections Could Prohibit Multiple Landlord Move-In Evictions!”

Supervisor Avalos’ amendment resolution stated, “the one unit-per-building does not apply to the post-1979 condos.”

“Banks Won’t Give Us Loans!”

Avalos stressed, “Through work with the Mayor’s Office of Housing, reaching out to HUD and the Federal Housing Administration, we’ve found there was no justification for that statement, either.”

“In This Economy, With Just Cause Eviction Protection, We Won’t Be Able To Sell Our Buildings or Units As Condos!”

Board President President David Chiu introduced a 16th just cause amendment, resolving this developers’ concern.

After massive amounts of work by tenant activists, Supervisors Avalos and Chiu, the political fate of the just cause eviction protections for renters appears dim. Swing vote Supervisor Bevan Dufty gifted Mayor Gavin Newsom the fourth vote to veto the legislation.

On a December 16, 2009 YouTube video, the Mayor announced his intent to put forth his own legislation, narrowing the renter protection limits to foreclosure situations, which number in the hundreds, not thousands, protecting far fewer renters – a clear nod to real estate interests and a safe demonization of banks in the present economic climate.

Avalos updates just cause eviction protection legislation

On Wednesday, after the Board’s continuation of the proposal to Tuesday, January 12, I spoke with Supervisor Avalos for whom some minor “health issues” blocked his January 5 attendance.

Avalos  said the Mayor’s proposal to afford just cause protections only to tenants in foreclosed buildings, “is very limited.”

Of the Mayor’s one-year time limit, he stated, “I want to make sure we’re allowing greater in-perpetuity protections for tenants in buildings where foreclosures have happened.”

Additionally, “I heard that Newsom’s measure was written by Michael Yarne, an attorney, not working out of the Mayor’s office of Housing, but for the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development on “behalf of the Administration’s real estate and developer side… opposed to any form of my just cause legislation.”

“So we do not have housing experts that wrote the Mayor’s legislation.” Therefore, it “is not about promoting real public policy that protects tenants from arbitrary evictions, but trying to look like you’re protecting tenants and finding the easiest pathway to do it where buildings have been foreclosed.”

He reiterated that his just cause legislation already protects tenants in foreclosed buildings. He emphasized that his proposal is not “radical” but provides “eviction protections everyone should have.”

Referring to Dufty’s vote, Avalos said when Dufty runs for Mayor, he will be “on record as not supporting tenants.”

“The Mayor has the opportunity to do that as well by putting his signature on the ordinance. If he doesn’t do that, then we don’t have a measure that’s going to pass. [But, he added], “We’ll have a victory no matter what.”

“VICTORY, NO MATTER WHAT!”

If this legislation doesn’t pass, Sara Shortt suggested a possible future ballot measure to re-introduce Just Cause Eviction Protection. John Avalos will work with tenant advocates toward the same goal.

Avalos pointed to San Diego’s Just Cause eviction protections without rent control. “If they can do it in San Diego, we can do it here.”

Whatever its pathway to resurrection, Just Cause Eviction Protection is an initiative whose time has clearly come.

FCJ Editor

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