A woman marching for housing rights stops on Mission Street to listen to speakers talk about the luxury condos being constructed where the Giant Value store once stood. Photo by Molly Oleson.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports today about a lawsuit filed by property owners against the city for two recently approved measures to ease the housing crisis.

The lawsuits target ordinances authored by Supervisor John Avalos, which were approved by the Board of Supervisors and signed by Mayor Ed Lee in December.

One would allow property owners to upgrade or alter an estimated 52,000 existing units that are legal but don’t conform to zoning laws governing density. It would also, however, deny owners the ability to upgrade or alter those units if there had been an eviction at the property in the last 10 years.

The second law seeks to discourage owners from taking rental units off the market by making it more difficult to merge multiple units into a single-family home, convert housing property to commercial or other use, or demolish a rental. READ MORE HERE.

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4 Comments

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  2. More crap ordinances trying to micro-micro manage property in SF. More restrictions = more expensive housing = only real estate ownership for the wealthy elite. Way to go SF.

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  3. Look, its not NIMBYs, city goverment, tenants, leftists, or the anti-tech-bus and anti-tech-establishment crowd, preventing reasonable housing reform from going forward …

    The landlords, realtors, and their lawyers strike back. Do they like the current status quo? I think this lawsuit is a resounding YES!

    So, when the people speak, the politicians act, and self-identified interest groups representing a small minority of wealth and high value react to shut things down — what do we call this? Sabotage of society?

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    1. When this law passed, I didn’t think it was very effective anyway, as it only applies in a very narrow range of cases. In fact, i got the impression the Supes passed this as an acknowledgement that they really cannot do anything about Ellis evictions and TIC formations, since both are subject to over-arching State laws.

      In fact, the main effect of these laws would be negative i.e. they encourage property owners to bypass the city’s DBI regulations and just do the work without permits, which of course many do anyway because of the restrictive nature of the building code and the excessive fees involved.

      The suit has merit as the restrictions seem both invasive and ineffective at the same time. I guess we’ll see.

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