Tenants speak up for a fair and balanced Rent Board

Tenants speak up for a fair and balanced Rent Board
by Tiny

Poor News Network

"I am an old school teacher, so I know I can make myself HEARD!" Lora Traveler, long-time resident of Parkmerced Apartments in San Francisco and past president of the Parkmerced Residents Organization, raised her voice above a malfunctioning megaphone at a rally in support of a fair and balanced rent board through rent board reform. "I am here to talk about a disfunctioning Rent Board. We as members of PRO, just as other tenants here today, have seen over and over again that instead of this Rent Board enforcing city ordinances and code regulations put in place to protect tenants, they act as ‘enforcers’ for landlords. Can I get an Amen?"

And Ms. Traveler definitely did get a very raucous “Amen” from an audience of over 100 tenants, advocates and community members gathered on the steps of City Hall on Monday to demand proportional representation of tenants on the San Francisco Rent Board. Currently, landlords fill a majority of the seats, with tenants in the minority.

"This rent board has never seen a landlord that they didn't admire and give them their undying attention. And don't let them meet a multi-billionaire (landlord) like mine. My God, their love is unfailing! Can I get an Amen?"

"Amen!" Ms. Traveler asked again, and the crowd responded. She went on to detail one of the recent flagrant scams conducted by Parkmerced’s landlord, Olympic View Realty, fronting for JP Morgan Chase. The rents were raised under the guise of "capital improvements," which in this case included the planting of superfluous palm trees. Now the trees are dying, but the tenants continue to be charged for them. Ms. Traveler concluded, "I urge each board of supervisor to vote yes on this much needed reform, including taking the seven rent board appointments out of the hands of the mayor.”

After being voted on by the Board of Supervisors, the proposed charter amendment to reform the Rent Board will hit the ballot in November. The proposal reasons that since two thirds of the City is made up of renters, two thirds of the Rent Board should be renters. Further, the proposal will give the Board of Supervisors four of the seven appointments and the power to veto the mayor’s appointments. In light of the fact that Mayor Newsom is aiming at rolling back rent control, this amendment may be the only way for San Francisco tenants to save their homes

"The San Francisco Rent Board has become controlled by landlords – 65 percent of the time the Rent Board rules in favor of landlords, and only 16 percent of the time do they even hear cases brought before them by tenants,” said Ted Gullickson of the San Francisco Tenants Union, citing a Tenants Union study. “And in case after case, the Rent Board approves rent increases even when the landlord has no documentation to support them."

Noting the dangers of keeping a landlord majority on the Rent Board, Gullickson said, "We saw one case where the Rent Board refused to penalize a landlord who owned several single room occupancy hotels (the only possible places to live for homeless and formerly homeless folks in San Francisco) for not putting in sprinkler systems, because the Rent Board claimed that the city didn't have enough water to supply the sprinkler system if he put it in."

PNN readers will remember from the many horrible fire stories we reported on and supported last year that effective sprinkler systems are one of the main ways to avoid fatal fires that plague the city's SROs.

I asked Ted how the more fairly proportional rent control board would impact the hundreds of senior evictions that happen constantly in San Francisco, like the eviction last year of Poor Magazine's Poverty Hero Grace Wells, an 86-year-old African descendent elder evicted from her long-time residence in the Fillmore.

"Over the years we have adopted a number of strong laws to stop these unjust senior evictions, and the Rent Board does absolutely nothing to enforce those laws,” he replied. “Each year about a thousand tenants file wrongful eviction petitions, and each year the rent board investigates about zero to three of them, and they don't even keep a registry or follow-up inspection on places like Grace Wells’ home to make sure the landlord didn't just re-rent it at a higher rate.”

To read about Grace Wells and other tenant resisters, go on-line to http://www.poormagazine.org and click on Housing Resistance.