From the streets of the Mission to City Hall, anti-eviction movement gains momentum

A series of recent actions have marked a movement spearheaded by community organizers and housing activists who demand that lawmakers and corporations show a social responsibility to the city and its residents.

While tech companies bring money and employees to San Francisco and rents are on the rise, advocates are now calling on city officials to put a stop to what they say is an epidemic of evictions exasperated by greed at the will of economic elites.

“We are asking the City to call for a state of emergency—we are experiencing a housing crisis in San Francisco because of the Ellis Act,” said organizer Roberto Hernandez. “It only takes two minutes to have a conversation with somebody, and they will tell you that they know someone who is being evicted.”

Hernandez refers to a piece of legislation known as the Ellis Act, that has effectively condemned many of the city’s long-term renters by making them subject to eviction with little warning and no legal defenses.

According to the San Francisco Rent Board’s Annual Eviction Report, Ellis Act evictions rose by 81 percent just over the past year.

Passed in 1985, the Ellis Act is a provision in California law that allows landlords seeking to leave the rental business to evict their tenants in order to sell the property. Originally intended to help these landlords to “go out of business,” a loophole in the law has served as an open invitation for real estate speculators to aggressively—and legally—take over the market.

“The justification for this Ellis Act was to allow long-term landlords a way to evict their tenants if they wanted to—it was not designed for the real estate speculators who never intend to be landlords in the first place to buy up buildings and immediately kick everybody out,” said Dean Preston, founder and executive director of Tenants Together. “There have been a number of proposals at the city level to try to mitigate the impact of these evictions and to try to prevent the conversion of rent controlled units to other uses.”

Hernandez and other activists behind the “Our Mission: No Evictions” campaign have drafted an emergency ordinance that calls for a 61-day moratorium on evictions and rent increases.

The idea behind this initiative is to cool off the market and give decision-makers the opportunity to devise a plan for further action.

Following the Nov. 5 release of a report examining the surge of evictions and displacements—city leaders now agree that San Francisco is facing a dilemma that requires immediate action.

“I asked (for) a comprehensive report that looked at evictions and displacements…so that it wasn’t just anecdotal data that we relied on, but hard facts,” said District 9 Supervisor David Campos. “Now we have data that is actually close to what we suspected—we have a housing crisis here in San Francisco.”

The report reveals that 42.5 percent of all San Franciscan households were “rent-burdened—” referring to those who are paying 30 percent or more of their household income towards rent.

Campos referred to San Francisco’s current eviction crisis as the tale of two cities—a city divided amongst those who live in prosperity and those who struggle to stay.

All parties agree that with San Francisco’s rapidly changing landscape, the new players should be held responsible for helping to preserve the existing culture and those who have shaped it.

“We need to be looking at these tech companies in the same way as we look at some industry coming in that is going to be harmful to the environment—we need to demand that they offset the impact that they are having on the housing market,” said Gullicksen.

“There is a solution to this problem, it just needs to be made a priority,” said Hernandez. “They need to assist families in the same way that they assist corporations.”

Campos agreed that accountability is a vital step in finding a solution.

“I have been reaching out to the tech industry to see if there are things they can do to work with us so they are part of the solution,” he said. “I certainly don’t have a problem with people being successful—we just want people to invest in their communities and neighborhoods and help the people that are struggling to stay in San Francisco.”