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 tenancy-in-commons.
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,” where 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.
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 passthroughs 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.”
