Eviction Legislation Reshapes San Francisco Politics

The past decade has seen two waves of real estate activities that have spawned a sharp counter-reaction even from landlord’s traditional political allies. The first in the late 1990’s led Mayor Willie Brown to support strong restrictions on owner move-in evictions of senior and disabled tenants; the second has now led Mayor Newsom to endorse the imposition of disincentives for Ellis Act evictions of these same groups.

In both cases, a small number of real estate speculators engaged in conduct that was “off the charts” by San Francisco standards. San Franciscans simply will not accept throwing elderly or disabled tenants on the street so that speculators can profit.

Evicting entire buildings of longterm tenants is a great strategy for building grassroots opposition. These tenants often have deep roots in their communities, and in the past year have created a “six degrees of separation” affect whereby thousands of San Franciscans seemed to personally know someone facing eviction under Ellis.

These newly-created tenant activists spoke out at Supervisor hearings, lobbied officials, wrote letters to the editor, and enhanced the climate that something very wrong was going on in San Francisco. That so many of those facing eviction were seniors or longtime residents made a huge difference in building public support for the tenants cause.

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