Developments in Development is a “weekly” column recapping real estate, housing, planning, zoning and construction news. California voters next year may be facing a ballot that pretty much asks them how to solve the housing crisis. Already there’s a housing bond measure slated for the ballot, and now the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (usually referred to as ACCE,...
Fur is flying nationwide as cities around the country figure out how to deal with the housing arm of the sharing economy – short term rentals, a.k.a. Airbnb. Locally, District 9 Supervisor David Campos has joined lawmakers around the country in signing a letter, Elizabeth-Warren-style, to the Federal Trade Commission asking it to study to what extent Airbnb and other...
San Francisco Supervisors David Campos and Jane Kim on Tuesday introduced legislation intended to protect tenants in the event of a fire by requiring that landlords keep the city informed of safety standards within their buildings. The legislation would also require that all buildings be outfitted with smoke detectors and loud alarms. It would mandate that landlords file reports with...
Some of the most progressive members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors are firing another shot in their ongoing battle with short term rentals, introducing legislation that would require homesharing platforms to verify whether hosts are registered with the city as local law requiresand charging hosting platforms fines of up to $1,000 per day per violation. A 2015 Budget...
Rent Masters, a startup offering to help tenants willing to move out of rent-controlled housing figure out what they would be owed in buyout money, came under fire last week by the city’s housing rights community. In a buyout, a tenant agrees to vacate a unit in exchange for a payout by the landlord. Negotiations involved in this process can be lengthy and taxing and...
Advocates for the tenants who were displaced by a fire at Mission and 22nd streets last year held a press conference Friday to affirm that tenants do in fact have the right to return. “The tenants in this building have not lost their rent control rights. These tenants maintain their right to return,” said Tommi Avicolli Mecca of the Housing...
Either something is actually going on with the housing market or us media people are just so sick of writing the same headline about rents being up that people are starting to write alternative predictions out of sheer spite. Is the bubble bursting? Or is this bubble more of a balloon, having grown huge and strong with the burst of...
The anticapitalist collective Station 40, which has been protesting its eviction from 16th street near Mission street, announced today that its landlord has halted the eviction and offered to start their discussion afresh. Station 40 states that the Jolish family, which owns the building they live in, has legally rescinded their eviction notice and is willing to discuss selling the building. The family issued...
Within a few days of the fire that destroyed their homes on 22nd and Mission Streets, the 65 displaced tenants were told repeatedly that city officials and rights groups were there to serve them, would help them, and would guide them on their long round-trip journey back to their apartments. After all, tenants were assured, they had a right to...
Linda Perez, a teacher at Buena Vista Horace Mann, shares her home with nine people — only two of them are family members. Frank Lara teaches fourth grade at the same school and has crashed on friends’ couches or shared a bedroom to make ends meet, all while struggling to repay a mountain of student loan debt. Laura Rocha, who...
Ellis Act evictions are on the rise and in the news almost daily – so much so that Mission Supervisor David Campos and Mayor Ed Lee have been proposing legislation to either ban them or make them more expensive for landlords. Here’s the personal story of tenants in one ten-unit Mission property at 23rd and Florida facing an Ellis Act...
