SFAA | SFAA News | September 2003

SFAA News

September 2003

Rent Board Election—A No Go

Last month, the San Francisco Tenants Union failed in an attempt to place a Charter Amendment on November’s ballot that would have called for the election of the city’s Rent Board Commissioners. The proposal fell far short of the six supervisorial votes needed for passage, garnering only three votes of support from Supervisors Ammiano, Daly and Gonzalez. Many prominent civic and housing industry leaders strongly denounced the ill-conceived amendment. Special credit in exposing the weakness of this flawed proposal should be given to Supervisors Bevan Dufty, Fiona Ma, Jake McGoldrick, Rent Board Executive Director Joe Grubb and the Coalition for Better Housing.

Public Comment Sought on City’s Fair Housing Plan
The Mayor’s Office of Housing is currently conducting a review of the city’s Fair Housing policies. As mandated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the city must identify the issues and impediments to fair housing every five years. A draft analysis should be available by the beginning of September; the public is invited to make comments on the draft during the following 30 days. Areas of concern, according to Joe LaTorre of the Mayor’s Office of Housing, include identifying issues that create basic impediments to federally classified “protected classes,” such as accessibility issues. After public comment has been received, the department will release a final set of recommendations. The draft should be available at www.sfgov.org/moh.

Gonzalez to Tackle Occupancy Standards
Supervisor and mayoral candidate Matt Gonzalez has introduced legislation intended to expand the rights of tenants, by allowing them to bring additional roommates into their homes. The legislation is an attempt to reverse a legal ruling, known as the Artal case, which resulted in tenants being barred from bringing in a spouse if the rental agreement prohibited it. Our hope at SFAA is that a compromise will be reached by all the concerned parties, resulting in a workable solution that will address some of the discriminatory flaws in the Artal case.

The SFAA Adds New Staff Member!
Lara Bogardus has joined the SFAA as our new Membership Development Director. With over six years of property management experience with the Lightner Property Group, Lara is excited to be a member of the staff and is eager to apply her skills at membership retention and recruitment. She holds a CCRM designation through the California Apartment Association, and is a volunteer with San Francisco Neighborhood Emergency Response Team (NERT). Lara is a native of the Bay Area and is a big Giants fan.

Education
This fall, the SFAA will again sponsor the successful CaliforniaCertifiedResidentManagementProperty Management Series. The classes provide excellent overall training on how to effectively manage and operate rental property in California. Classes are held on Saturdays at the Fort Mason Center and run from September through November. For more information, please call SFAA Educational Director Greg Miller at 255-2288 or visit www.sfaa.org.

Another Ruling, Another Victory
The California Supreme Court reaffirmed a landlord’s right to go out of the rental business under the Ellis Act by holding that retaliation is not a defense. That holding is important because retaliation is the only significant substantive defense that the tenants have been asserting in Ellis Act evictions. In Drouet v. Superior Court, the Court held that a landlord who is actually going out of business has the right to do that—even if the landlord is evicting the tenants to retaliate against them for prior complaints to the landlord or the city about the condition of the property. The tenants are only allowed to assert a defense of retaliation if they can show that the landlord does not intend to go out of business. In short, the landlord’s motive for going out of business is irrelevant so long as he or she is actually going out of business. The net result for San Francisco landlords is that it remains extremely risky to use the Ellis Act as a bluff or a threat to persuade tenants to give up their tenancy. But for landlords who want to go out of business entirely, the Ellis Act is the best strategy to accomplish this objective.