On July 3rd, protesters gathered in front of Bank of America in San Francisco demanding that the bank sign a pledge agreeing not to provide mortgages for buildings where senior and disabled tenants have been evicted.
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The "Ellis Act" is a state law which says that landlords have the unconditional right to evict tenants to "go out of business." For an Ellis eviction, the landlord must remove all of the units in the building from the rental market, i.e., the landlord must evict all the tenants and can not single out one tenant (with low rent) and/or remove just one unit from the rental market. When a landlord invokes the Ellis Act, the apartments can not be re-rented, except at the same rent the evicted tenant was paying, for five years following the evictions, While there are restrictions on ever re-renting the units, there are no such restrictions on converting them to ownership units (e.g., tenancies in common or condos).
San Francisco Tenants Union | Recent actions around the Ellis Act in San Francisco: 1 | 2 | 3