After failing to secure a veto-proof majority vote at the Board of
Supervisors to extend eviction protections in San Francisco, tenant
advocates are contemplating a pared-back version of their proposal that
could nail down the one extra vote they need.
''We're talking about it, but nothing has been decided yet,'' said Ted Gullicksen, who runs the San Francisco Tenants Union.
As
now drafted, the legislation would bring rental units built after 1979
- when the city's rent-control law was approved - under the same rules
as the rentals built earlier. In those older units, landlords only can
evict tenants for ''just cause,'' for example, not paying rent or
creating a nuisance.
The board gave initial approval to the
proposal Tuesday on a 7-4 vote, which is one vote shy of the eight
needed to overturn Mayor Gavin Newsom's threatened veto. Supervisor
Bevan Dufty, the swing vote who opposed the legislation, said he would
have been in the 'yes'' column if the protections for tenants living in
post-1979 rentals only would kick in when an eviction was driven by
foreclosure, that is, when a bank takes possession of a property and
wants to empty the place.
''I would be totally supportive of that,'' Dufty told The Insider Wednesday. ''It would be totally reasonable.''
Janan
New, who heads the landlord-backed San Francisco Apartment Association,
said she, too, could live with the amended legislation as long as it
put the burden on the banks to deal with the evictions and not the
owners who defaulted on their mortgage payments.
Supervisor
John Avalos, chief sponsor of the legislation, said he would consider
supporting the amendment as a first step to getting eviction
protections in place, even for the narrow issue of foreclosures. But
his goal, he said, is to see the just-cause rules applied more broadly
later on to give tenants living in rentals built within the last 30
years the same rights as those living in older buildings.
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