Realtors Lie About Don Perata to Defeat Ellis Act Reform

The Ellis Act is a state law that allows property owners to evict an entire building of tenants when they want to “go out of business.” SB 464 is a modest but necessary reform that would limit the Ellis Act to landlords who have owned the building for more than five years. In San Francisco and Los Angeles, real estate speculators who never intended to become landlords have bought rental properties, used the Ellis Act to evict tenants within days, and then re-sold them at a massive profit. Average landlords who want to “go out of business” after years of renting out property would be unaffected by SB 464.

Several weeks ago, the sponsors of SB 464 amended it in committee so that it would not cover property owners who bought a building before March 27th of this year. Therefore, SB 464 will not affect anyone who already owns property but will discourage real estate speculators who want to buy a building to evict tenants. In the e-mail to its members, the Realtors acknowledged that this change “softens the effect” of SB 464, but argued that it was “critically important” to “aggressively oppose any change to the Ellis Act.”

That’s right. The Realtors oppose “any change” to the Ellis Act at all. In other words, the Ellis Act is a sacred cow – and they will always oppose any reforms, no matter how modest, reasonable or measured. The Ellis Act was supposed to be an exit for property owners who were sick of being landlords, not real estate speculators who buy up the property to then evict tenants. But for the Realtors, any reform at all is anathema.

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