Last month the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to pass the package of renters’ rights laws (restricting rent raises and expanding rights to add roommates) authored by Supervisor Chris Daly. As expected, on Friday the Mayor vetoed the legislation.
∙ Supervisors Pass Daly’s Renters’ Rights, But Mayor Expected To Veto [SocketSite]
∙ Note To Daly (And Others): Let The Market Take Care Of Itself [SocketSite]
How long before they vote to put these on the ballot? That will show if they were actually serious about passing them or if this was all just show so one group could act like they were sticking up for “poor renters” while the mayor could show he was sticking up for the “mom and pop” landlords. Typical SF political theater.
Actually, this is representative government functioning how it was designed. Enough with ballot initiatives. Ban them. They simply lead to power being wielded by well organized/ funded special interest groups. This is why we have elected government, to do the people’s business. If they have the votes, they can override the veto.
Good job by the mayor.
As I said before, this was DOA. The supes only put this forward to please vocal segments of their constituencies, they never intended or expected it to pass.
Daly should be publicly humiliated. Bring back those pie guys.
Section 8 takes care of this.
I agree with David. The ballot initiative process, both local and statewide, is a disaster. There is a reason that our federal government and other states rely on elected representatives who are paid a salary to spend all of their time (with the help of a full-time paid staff) to make budget decisions. Namely, that it’s idiotic to rely on the general populace who have no time to devote to thinking about governance (and particularly the interplay of different budgeting decisions and/or policies) to set the agenda. Of course, what actually happens as a result of voters not having time to consider these things is that moneyed interests make policy more easily and with less effort than they would through directly lobbying lawmakers. That’s “direct democracy” in a large populace for you. Prop 13 would not still exist in its current form if we had normal representative democracy.
This latest slew of rent control add-ons like limiting rent to a percentage of a person’s income would most definitely have been challenged and likely overturned in court. Well done to the mayor – rent control and the other assorted tenant’s rights are already pretty onerous for landlords – these latest proposals were just ridiculous.
Miles wrote:
> This latest slew of rent control add-ons like limiting
> rent to a percentage of a person’s income would most
> definitely have been challenged and likely overturned
> in court.
I can’t understand why we don’t have the California Supreme Court approve all ballot measures BEFORE they go on the ballot.
If the state supreme court thinks that it is unconstitutional for a city to limit rent (or stop giving illegal aliens money) it seems like both sides would like to know this before they spend thousands of hours and millions on ads.
There is a reason that our federal government and other states rely on elected representatives who are paid a salary to spend all of their time (with the help of a full-time paid staff) to make budget decisions.
While I agree with the overall theme of your post, Shza, I wouldn’t be arguing by analogy to that clown circus in Washington, DC on matters of fiscal discipline! 🙂
If rent control had been tightened 10 years ago, then complete failures such as City Appartment’s may have been avoided: they wouldn’t have been able to promise the insane ROIs they convinced UBS with…
Sometime regulation is good – to avoid the “irrational exuberance” that markets sometime have.
Today, as many other comments say, it’s probably just a political operation from our friend Daly to look good…
FAB,
All state initiatives have to be approved by the Secretary of State (or maybe it’s the Attorney general) before they are placed on the ballot. But I would imagine it would have to be blatantly unconstitutional to get rejected.
A law passed by the supervisors can’t be challenged before it’s passed; that’s not the way our legal system works 🙂
@amused_in_soma and @FormerAptBroker, in some states, the state legislature can seek an advisory opinion of the state’s supreme court before passing a bill. It’s completely voluntary on the part of the legislature.
If California had such a process, opening it to local legislative bodies and voter initiated ballot measures would overwhelm the court.
Faria Lima: just why did the Lembi/Skyline “complete failure” need to be avoided? Why is it anyone’s business whether a buyer and their lender make some poor decisions – where’s the public interest in such a private business relationship? It’s not like there are people out on the streets because of it.
The only possible public interest I can see here is that Skyline/Citi would have been granted larger O&M rent petitions at the Rent Board because of their inflated mortgage interest costs but that was probably cancelled out by the inflated prop taxes paid by them back to the City to waste on whatever pet schemes they chose.
Save your calls for government regulation for things that are really harmful to the population.