Having been charged with evicting tenants from rent-controlled units and then illegally marketing the apartments as short-term rentals on Airbnb, Homeway and VRBO, Darren and Valerie Lee agreed to pay $276,000 in penalties and fees back in 2015. As we first reported at the time, the settlement included injunctive... Read More »

The number of eviction notices filed with San Francisco’s Rent Board dropped 12 percent over the past year, from 1,881 to 1,657. But there was one category in which there was a notable increase in notices: those related to Ellis Act evictions, the number of which (201) jumped 58... Read More »

An aggregation of the Rent Board’s last twenty years of annual reporting, from March of 1997 to February 2017, provides a broader perspective with respect to eviction notice trends in San Francisco. While notices specifically related to Owner Move-In and Ellis Act evictions had been trending up in the... Read More »

Reversing a lower court decision, California’s First District Court of Appeal has ruled that minors living in a rental unit with a guardian are “occupants” but not “tenants,” an important distinction with respect to how San Francisco’s Rent Ordinance is written and the calculation of relocation payments due when... Read More »

In general, San Francisco’s Residential Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Ordinance prevents a landlord from exercising an owner move-in (OMI) eviction during the school year if the eviction would displace a tenant with a resident child under 18 years of age. Under a proposed ordinance which is working its way... Read More »

San Francisco’s Supervisors have unanimously approved legislation which will prohibit rent increases or evictions based on adding new roommates to an existing tenancy, will give tenants a chance to cure minor lease infractions, including violations of a no subletting clause, prior to allowing a landlord to initiate eviction proceedings,... Read More »

As it currently stands, affordable or ‘Below Market Rate’ housing units in San Francisco are allocated by lottery with preferences given to households that hold a rare Certificate of Preference or tenants who have recently been evicted by way of the Ellis Act.  And being a resident in the... Read More »

Facing protests over their role in providing “displacement mortgages” to those who buy tenant-occupied buildings and then invoke the Ellis Act in order to flip the property or occupy it themselves sans tenants, First Republic Bank will now ask mortgage applicants if they intend to repurpose their target property... Read More »

In addition to prohibiting rent increases or evictions based on adding new roommates to an existing tenancy, even when an existing lease specifically disallows new occupants or specifies an associated increase in rent, a proposed change to San Francisco’s Administrative Code would also prohibit landlords from raising the rent... Read More »

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors has rejected Supervisor Campos’ proposed amendment to San Francisco’s law regulating short-term rentals in the city and instead adopted a watered-down version of a less restrictive amendment sponsored by Supervisor Farrell and the Mayor. Both votes were 6 to 5, with Supervisors Farrell, Breed,... Read More »