John M. Lee: Bad Legislation Introduced

San Francisco Supervisor Eric Mar introduced legislation Aug. 17 to amend the San Francisco Rent Control Ordinance by adding a third class of protected tenants to the two existing groups.

Currently, the protected class consists of people who are 60 years of age or older who have resided in a residential unit for 10 years or more; and "disabled" or "catastrophically ill" people who have lived in the unit for five years or more. These people are handicapped and in need of some protection from eviction, according to the intent of the law, because finding another residence to live in San Francisco might be a difficult challenge for them. Thus, these tenants are protected from eviction by owners who want to move into their units.

Mar's new legislation proposes to add families with children to the protected class for "any tenant who is under the age of 18 and a member of a household which has resided in the unit for at least 12 months."

Prior to introducing this legislation, the Office of the Legislative Analyst was requested to do a research report on how many families with children were impacted in the past 12 months by Owner Move-In (OMI) evictions. After gathering data from the Rent Board, examining Superior Court information, reviewing San Francisco Unified School District data, interviewing various tenant advocacy groups, a Legislative Analyst Report was released June 23. It concluded they were able to substantiate 18 families that were affected by the 159 OMI evictions between March 2008 and February 2009.

A press release issued by Mar's office on Aug. 17, 2008, reads: "Tenant organizations report that 28 percent of the OMI evictions they have seen this year involved households with children."

Mar insinuates that this is an epidemic and that owners are evicting families with children out of San Francisco, thus his legislation is necessary to stem this tide of evictions and protect our families!

Let's look at the actual numbers, 18 evictions out of 159 OMIs filed equals 11 percent, not 28 percent. Out of approximately 200,000 rental units in San Francisco, 18 represents 0.009 percent of the total number of rental units. Do we really need to have legislation over this?

This is a classic case of proposing a law to please special interest groups. Even though legislative analysts do not find a legitimate problem, Mar exaggerates the facts so he can keep the special interest groups happy.

This is bad legislation! If this proposal were to pass, there would be unintended consequences that will hurt families with children from renting in San Francisco. From my experience selling real estate and talking to property owners on a daily basis, protected tenants depreciate their property values and create a stigma around their properties. Thus, landlords are extremely selective when choosing their tenants.

Families with children, because they will become a protected class after residing in the property for 12-months (much shorter than the period needed for the others), will have an extremely difficult time renting in San Francisco. The law that reportedly is designed to keep families in San Francisco will work exactly in the opposite way.

From working with families moving out of the City, the main issues expressed are housing affordability and the quality of our schools. Many of my clients are relocating from the City because they need a larger home to accommodate their growing families and concerns about the quality of the San Francisco school system. Come to think of it, wasn't Mar the president of our Board of Education prior to being elected as District 1 supervisor by a narrow margin of 300 votes?

I believe that we should not be formulating legislation and then go looking for a problem that does not exist. Let us work together and have substantive dialog to tackle the problems of building affordable housing and developing a better school system, instead of crafting laws for issues that do not exist.

I would strongly suggest that you contact your district supervisor and Mayor Gavin Newsom to express your opposition to this onerous proposal.

John M. Lee is the incoming president for the San Francisco Association of Realtors and specializes in the Richmond and Sunset districts. If you have any questions, call him at (415) 447-6231 or e-mail him at johnlee@isellsf.com.