SF Tenant Convention

Contact website: http://www.sftu.org
This is the San Francisco Tenants Union website. Every San Francisco tenant should should the tenants union and should check this website often. Your membership entitles you to an excellent tenant handbook, counseling, and an opportunity to unite with the rest of the 2/3 of San Francisco residents who are tenants to defend and strengthen our dear, precious rent control, which we won in 1979.

We are having this Tenant Congress to finalize a November 2004 ballot measure to have an elected rent board which we feel will be more favorable to tenants, unlike the current rent board with its mayoral and supervisor appointees, which is usually pro-landlord.

Also on the ballot this November will be a measure to save the 300+ rent controlled apartments at Trinity Plaza from demolition by a greedy landlord, which will be put there by our signatures. We need signature gatherers for this effort. Pro-landlord mayor Gavin Newsom vetoed the legislation to save these apartments from demolition, and his pro-landlord lackeys on the Board of Supervisors, Bevan Dufty, Tony Hall, Fiona Ma and Michela Alioto-Pier, opposed overriding Newsom's veto.

The primary issue in San Francisco as far as local politics and the mayor's and supervisors' positions are concerned is rent control. Because we have a well-organized tenant community, we continue to have rent control. That organization is only possible if all tenants participate. We are 50% of the voters in a high voter turnout election, which the November presidential election always is. The other 10% of the pro-tenant vote are property owners who favor tenant positions.