Mayor Daniel Lurie declared the large spike in rent prices over the past year an “emergency” on Thursday, presenting a suite of measures intended to help tenants stay housed.
His move comes amid rising concerns about displacement among San Franciscans, over two-thirds of whom are renters. Driven by the AI boom, median rents in San Francisco have soared by 26 percent and eviction notices are up 44 percent over the past year.
Observers are predicting that prices could balloon even more after major AI companies go public over the next few years, minting hundreds of multi-millionaires overnight.
“Rising rents are making it harder for the people who have built their lives here to stay here,” Lurie said at a press conference in Alamo Square Park. “That is why today we are taking the urgent action to tackle the rent emergency head-on and help San Franciscans stay in their homes.”
While “affordability” has long been the byword of San Francisco politicians, the measures discussed today were more about stabilization — providing for tenants who already reside in San Francisco, rather than those who may at some future time.
Lurie plans to introduce legislation increasing the amount that tenants may receive if they are displaced by Ellis Act evictions by 25 percent.
Those evictions, intended to allow landlords to get out of the rental business and take their properties off the rental market, are sometimes abused by landlords hoping to turn units into more lucrative condos or tenancies-in-common.
Lurie also announced plans to give an additional $3 million to the city’s Tenant Right to Counsel program, which provides tenants facing eviction with free legal representation.
Lurie is not the only politician working on the issue. He also highlighted legislation sponsored by others, including Supervisor Jackie Fielder’s proposal that would only allow tenants to be evicted for not paying rent if they owe more than a month’s worth.
Supervisor Danny Sauter, meanwhile, is planning legislation that would prevent landlords of rent-controlled units from increasing rent by more than 10 percent a year due to capital improvement charges or banked increases (when landlords save yearly rent increases and then apply them all at once).
But Meg Heisler, policy director for the Anti-Displacement Coalition, sees such efforts as an “incomplete package,” though she says she appreciates that the mayor is taking the problem of rising rents seriously.
She’s glad legal services are being funded, but “too many tenants are being forced out of their homes before cases even get to court,” Heisler said.
“For example, we have a well-known buyout problem,” in which tenants are pressured into accepting a lump-sum payment in exchange for moving out — money that is often not enough for them to find a new place to live in the city, she said.
As for Sauter’s legislation, rent banking is just one of “many different strategies [landlords] employ to significantly raise the rent on long-term rent control tenants,” Heisler said, listing a series of other pass-throughs and fees.
“We can do better,” she said. “San Francisco tenants deserve more than that.”
‘We are doing both’
Lurie’s new focus on rent and tenant protections is a marked shift in his approach to housing affordability.
When running for mayor in 2024, he disappointed tenant advocates by refusing to support the expansion of rent control to more units in San Francisco. That year, Prop. 33, a state measure that would have allowed cities in California to expand rent control, was on the ballot but failed.
“I believe we should continue the rent-control policies that are in place now,” Lurie said on KQED’s Forum at the time.
While in office, Lurie has mostly focused on building new housing. Last December, he helped pass San Francisco’s first upzoning of western and northern neighborhoods since the 1970s.
In recent months, though, he’s run afoul of YIMBY groups, who have accused him of not going far enough to encourage housing production with that upzoning and other housing policies.
On Thursday, Lurie said he was committed to both helping tenants and building new housing.
“We need more homes. Yet a parent who got home last night to find an eviction notice on their door cannot wait for that housing to be built,” Lurie said. “We are building more housing to make San Francisco more affordable for the future, and we are keeping people in their homes today.”
San Francisco needs to do what both the City’s Economist, Dr. Ted Egan, and it’s own Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) recommended earlier this year, i.e., eliminate all unfunded inclusionary housing requirements as well as the whole spectrum of excessive and counter-productive impact fees.
Portland Oregon has finally come to their senses and they eliminated inclusionary requirements over 2 years ago and this year they’ve also eliminated all of their System Development Charges (i.e., impact fees) and this has spurred housing creation.
The only sustainable way to mitigate rising housing cost is to create new housing. The fundamental problem is housing scarcity and the only way to solve a shortage is to increase supply. Demand side solutions never work in the long term — in fact they ultimately make the problem worse.
The only way to mitigate rising housing costs is to restrict the speculative asset bubbles that drive asking prices higher.
^ BS economics in a nutshell, supply-side trickle down nonsense.
Expand rent control! What working class person can afford a market rate place in this city anymore? $4000 for a one bedroom it’s insane. Measures to stop this madness where needed yesterday.
When you restrict property owners further expect rent increases and less options. No good deed goes unpunished in SF.
The rental laws are quite ridiculous in S.F., and somehow we just push for more of the same…. and expect different results.
End rent control by phasing it out, we’ll have more options for housing at lower prices. Too many people don’t pay their fair share when they can very well afford it or become so lax in their lifestyle and think some mom & pop owners are going to house them forever. Keep dreaming that reality won’t bite. Rent control doesn’t keep up with inflation so at some point it’s time to go.
Rent control in SF does not apply to structures built since 1979. Yet, those properties are the ones getting more expensive. Exactly how are those properties’ owners being restricted?
Maybe the lesson isn’t that we need moar condos for itinerant coders, but instead that we need stronger rent control.
Although rent control does not apply to buildings whose certificate of occupancy dates after June 1979, there is a constant fear that they could later be brought under rent control. Few laws have been changed as much, and been made stricter, than the city’s rent ordinance.
And it is only the state’s Costa-Hawkins Act that prevents newer building from being covered. So developers, investors and landlords can never relax knowing for sure that their units are exempt. For example, owner-occupied 2 to 4 unit buildings used to be exempt. But that changed over 30 years ago.
I am a long time renter and have lived in the same apartment for many years. (If I could have bought my own home, I would have.) I care about these issues very much. I quite literally fear anything that would cause me to lose my apartment. I am elderly now, the loss would literally destroy me. I’d be on the street, or in some town or state where I’d feel completely alienated and lonely. That said, I always find it kind of funny that, whatever the issue is, advocates and activists always, ALWAYS say it isn’t enough. It’s never enough. Even if landlords had to pay tenants $1M for an Ellis Act eviction, even if rents were frozen, even if banked increases were banned (which I would support), there would still be those saying, “It’s not enough!”
Denim Dan has done way too little, way too late. He gives a lot of lip service to affordable housing and eviction restrictions, but his actions suggest otherwise.
Good that Lurie finally caught up to the rest of us and realized this is happening. Also good he’s supporting Jackie Fielder’s legislation, the most impactful part of this package!
Now if he means what he says, Lurie should reconsider his opposition to Prop I. Prop I is the only measure on the November ballot that dedicates money to rent relief and eviction protections, as well as a projected $60 million per year or more for building new affordable housing, without raising taxes. To be serious about addressing the rent emergency means being Yes on I.
We know that Daniel Lurie and his oligarch allies believe that for San Francisco to succeed (by their definition) the working class must suffer. So clearly, Lurie must be feeling the heat. These measures are a nice crumb, but NOT NEARLY ENOUGH. We need to repeal Costa Hawkins, expand rent control, and regulate how much landlords can raise the rent between tenancies (aka “vacancy control”). The Mayor can’t do those things without state laws changing, but he could indicate his support of such measures (like Prop 33 in 2024). Some things the Mayor CAN do: increase relocation fees even higher to eliminate the cost effectiveness of “no-fault” evictions; direct the District Attorney to stop going after the weak and the poor and instead aggressively pursue charges against shady/predatory landlords who break the rules and try to displace their tenants. I hope someone can put Lurie’s words to the test, and see just how sincere he is about his sudden concern for renters.
I am so happy that someone FINALLY SAID IT. It’s the Landlords, property management groups, and owners of these homes that are jumping on the greedy bandwagon
There is a ‘rent’ emergency because for 47 years San Francisco has been unfairly and immorally granting rent freezes to renters who don’t even need it. Just the fact they they got to the unit first, just somehow grants them special LIFE LONG rights they don’t even have to need or deserve… JUST SCREW THE LANDLORDS. Landlords are worse than Not-Zees after all, in the stupid logic of dumb as dirt marxists, in San Francisco.
too bad that 99% of the work to reduce rent is via “filtering”, which increases the supply and you have a trickle-down effect after people “shift up” to more expensive housing. Which works, if your housing is in the same target market or close to it, but the effect is less and less as the price differential increases. Adding a million dollar condo with 1k/month HOA is far far away from producing a unit that costs like 500k with a $300/hoa that can be rented out for $2k and bring the owner a profit. Like, decades – if ever.
The city has had rent control for over 47 years now. And yet we have the highest rents in the nation. When will our leaders accept that rent control has driven up rents by suppressing supply and deterring those willing to take risks to provide housing to others?
How is rent control suppressing supply in a meaningful way? It’ can’t be a deterrent for new construction, as it doesn’t apply to new construction, and is fixed to buildings built before 1980.
“Supply” in this case means a building owner choosing not to offer a vacant unit for long-term rental. But rather using it for some other purpose e.g. leaving it vacant, selling as a TIC, doing Airbnbs, using it for guests and visitors or some permitted commercial use.
Many owners will respond to a tenant moving out by deciding not to risk being stuck with another multi-decade rent-controlled tenant whom it is difficult or impossible to remove.
You don’t understand the SF market at all.
On the contrary, Mike, I have been involved with the local real estatemarket for many years. I have seen first hand how property owners have turned away from doing long-term rentals.
Thirty years ago, every building but one on my block had long-term tenants in them. Just one was owner-occupied. Now it is the opposite way about.
Small-time landlords want out. The Ellis Act gives them that opportunity to be free. And when you have only large corporate landlords in business here, watch out, because you won’t like it at all.
Just the fact that it does not apply to new construction should make rent control … UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Just like the commie empty apartment… “tax” has also been found unconstitutional … twice now. Marxists just hate Freedom and the Constitution.
The tenant advocate is correct, more needs to be done, but I’ll take this as good progress nevertheless. Finally, city leaders realize a sense of urgency to regulate the housing market. Scott Wiener and his “build more housing” to lower housing costs strategy has been exposed. The truth is, a progressive approach (as favored by Connie Chan) was always the best policy to advance housing affordability in SF.
“city leaders realize a sense of urgency to regulate the housing market.”
Bill M, offhand I cannot think of another business sector in the city that is more regulated than housing. And what good has that done us?