Save Our Rent Controlled Homes
Tell Your Supervisor to Reject the Mayor's "Constraints Reduction" Legislation
The "Constraints Reduction" legislation is extremely dangerous to tenants and threatens our precious rent-controlled housing stock. File 230446 will be debated at the Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee on Sept 18th, 2023 starting at 1pm. We urge you to voice your opposition to opening the floodgates to speculators who want to demolish your home to make way for condos giving no recourse to object.
Our longer analysis of this serious and flawed legislation can be read here. It is worth your time to read to understand what is being proposed rather than reading a distortion in the news.
The “Constraint Reduction” legislation (Breed, Engardio, and Dorsey) is being sold as a way to speed up housing production by eliminating staff review to make many permits automatic with no public objection allowed. The problem with this is that it includes demolishing sound rent controlled units "as-a-right" which is exactly when tenants should have a public right to contest the loss of their own homes.
As long as an owner or architect declares either: 1) there have been no records of buyouts or evictions in the last 5 years, and tenants currently do not inhabit the unit; or 2) if tenants currently occupy the unit, displacement will be granted but the tenants have a “right of return” when and if their units are rebuilt. This is a serious end-run around hard-fought eviction protections.
The demolished units must be replaced and increase in number but there is no requirement that the new units actually become rental units - more likely they will become owner-occuped “Tenancy-In-Common” units leaving tenants nowhere to return to. This change-of-tenure result is already playing out at the Planning Commission where they still hold hearings and vote on demolition projects for now.
The Mayor’s legislation also strikes an existing one-year ownership requirement (already too weak!) down to zero. This practically invites speculators to start buying rent-controlled buildings to demolish and create condos. It would be a government sanctioned way around rent control and the condo moratorium. Supervisors Engardio (homeowner) and Dorsey (renter) should be ashamed of themselves for co-sponsoring this disastrous bill.
It is important you voice your opposition before they turn your home into someone else’s condo.