The Sebastopol City Council, worried about pre-emptive rent hikes as it embarks on a study of tenant protection measures expected to last weeks or months, will consider adopting an emergency moratorium Tuesday that would temporarily cap rent increases at about 3 percent a year.
The emergency proposal would require four of five council members to vote for approval. If adopted, it would take effect immediately for 45 days, with the possibility of successive time extensions totaling two years altogether.
But it’s not at all clear there’s enough support for the measure. It was hastily drafted in the nine days after Councilman Robert Jacob introduced debate at the Oct. 18 meeting on measures to protect vulnerable residents from being priced out of their homes and the housing market.
Jacob argued that just knowing there might be future restrictions on rent increases would likely provoke landlords to spike rents now, inflating the base rates to which future provisions would apply.
Only three council members voted in favor of even drafting the proposed moratorium to be considered at the Tuesday meeting, with Vice Mayor Una Glass joining Jacob and Councilman John Eder.
But Mayor Sarah Glade Gurney and Councilman Patrick Slayter dissented, saying there was insufficient time to give proper discussion to a moratorium.
Jacob said he only wants to preserve the status quo and keep rents from escalating during the upcoming debate on whether rent control, rent stabilization or just-cause eviction measures made sense for Sebastopol.
“All we’re asking is that the council press the pause while we research and discuss the issue,” Jacob said in an interview Sunday.
City Manager/Attorney Larry McLaughlin told the council earlier this month he could only produce a draft moratorium on such short notice by hiring outside legal help.
San Francisco municipal attorney Steven Mattas, who provides legal counsel to several Bay Area communities and government agencies, drafted a proposed emergency resolution to address the local housing crisis based on census data. The data indicates that about half of the city’s housing stock is renter occupied, and about 65 percent of renters are considered “overpaying households” spending at least 30 percent of their income on housing costs.
In addition, the growing number of Sebastopol families with income below the poverty line is 10 percent and rising, Mattas’ draft said.
The draft moratorium caps rent hikes at 3 percent, though Mattas recommended somewhere between 2 percent and 5 percent, given surveys of other communities.
But because landlords have a right to earn “a just and reasonable return” on their property, it includes a process for landlords to petition the city for permission to raise rates beyond the cap on a case-by-case basis.
What’s still undetermined is how many housing units in Sebastopol would be subject to the moratorium, given the many exemptions to local rent control measures listed under state law.
The exemptions include any housing for which occupancy was authorized after February 1995, single-family houses or condominiums for which title is held separately, duplexes and owner-occupied triplexes, and government-subsidized housing.
Jacob’s interest in pursuing rent control arises at a busy time for the city, with the council wrapping up work on the 20-year general plan amendment and addressing several other weighty and controversial issues.
Plus, city elections will put two new people in office Nov. 8, replacing Jacob and Eder, who did not seek re-election.
That means any discussion of rent regulation will fall to a restructured council, prompting some frustration among both the council members and candidates, who would have preferred a more deliberate approach.
Writer and City Council candidate Jonathan Greenberg said unintended consequences, including the prospect of rising rates among unregulated units, are among the reasons he would vote against the moratorium as proposed.
“I’m interested in that objective — how we can resolve this housing process,” he said, “and the idea of not to make it worse seems to be the first step that I think we ought to take.”
Candidate Michael Carnacchi said he was “on the fence,” but would be inclined to vote in favor of the moratorium, only because the subject of rent control already had reared its head. But he noted that adopting a rent-increase cap for a small number of apartments would do nothing to address the problems of residents with low or declining real incomes trying to pay for already high-priced housing, nor the many renters for whom the moratorium would not apply.
Council candidates Craig Litwin and Neysa Hinton declined to take a position on the moratorium. Hinton said her shared interest in a rental house might preclude her from voting on rent control issues, though, as a single-family home, it would be exempt from any such laws.
Litwin said via email he needed to hear public testimony and council debate before knowing how he would vote.