Ellis Act Evictions "Up"

Channel 5 carried a story on Friday (http://cbs5.com/local/north.beach.evictions.2.1427811.html) that included a quote from Supervisor David Chiu:

"We have had a very marked increase in Ellis Act evictions," said David Chiu, the President of the Board of Supervisors who represents North Beach.

Data published by the San Francisco Rent Board in its annual eviction reports (http://www.sfrb.org/index.aspx?page=9) show an almost unbroken decline in Ellis Act evictions since 2005.

Unless Chiu is privy to information not yet published by the Rent Board, he seems to be pursuing legislation to limit property owners from adding garages to their property with the hope that it will curtail a growing trend in Ellis Act evictions that isn't supported by the city's own data.

There seems to be a growing trend in city government to propose legislation based on flimsy, anecdotal or non-existent facts and data and this seems to be another example.

Although I'm in the real estate business, I'm not a landlord or a tenant so I have no personal ax to grind.  No one can help but feel sympathy for the tenants mentioned in the story. But this is one of the consequences of city policy that places the burden of providing subsidized rent for low income and disadvantaged residents on the shoulders of individual landlords and building owners.

As reported elsewhere, some of the residents in the building that was the subject of the channel 5 piece have been there for many decades and for the last 30 years (since rent control was originally enacted) have been the beneficiary of below-market rents. The burden of that subsidy for all that time has fallen on the landlord, not the collective citizens of the City of San Francisco.

These burdens can fall particularly hard on a small building owner/landlord. It's one thing for a large landlord with hundreds of units to be able to sustain the cost of a certain number of below market tenants. It's something entirely different if you own a two or three unit building in which case just one long-term tenant is going to impact you disproportionately compared to the large landlord.

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that a long-time landlord and property owner might one day want to sell their property and recoup some of that rent subsidy. In fact, this is one of the usual arguments in favor of rent control -- the property owner will eventually make up for it with the increased value of the property.

If our City deems it appropriate public policy that tenants should be spared the vagaries of a free market approach to rents and that they should be permanently guaranteed a place to live at subsidized rents, the City should find a way to spread that burden in an evenhanded way across the entire population.