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daughter climb out. • Her own worst enemy: Grappling with the other “voice” in her head. • Schizophrenia: Son struggles, family copes. • Identity claimed: Gay artist defeats her shame. • Cannot be stopped: Bipolar, homeless and back in college. | 10-11
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SUMMER 2018 • ISSUE 25
By Noah Arroyo // Public Press
B
ack in the spring, Berkeley’s rent board jumped out in front of San Francisco on a vote that could bring the most significant change to California housing in decades. A grassroots campaign had just announced it had gathered enough signatures for Proposition 10, a statewide November ballot measure to repeal the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act. The 1995 state law took power from local governments, restricting their ability to enact or expand rent-control laws. If voters strike down Costa-Hawkins, cities will have new policy tools to help build more housing while trying to curb soaring rents and displacement. Anticipating a repeal of the law, Berkeley officials moved quickly. They crafted a companion ballot measure asking city voters to approve a novel policy — called “rolling” rent control in some circles — to apply rent control gradually to additional apartments for decades to come. It would also immediately apply to as many as 2,000 additional units in Berkeley, about 10 perLandlords cent more than currently covered. vs. If adopted in San Francisco, it would Renters extend rent control to at least 32,500 additional apartments — an almost 20 percent increase — and to thousands more in later years, based on estimates from UC Berkeley researchers. The policy approach could reverse the loss of rent-controlled homes, and might be a compromise that real estate developers, landlords and tenant-rights groups could live with, said state Assemblyman Rob Bonta, an Oakland Democrat, who co-sponsored a legislative attempt at CostaHawkins repeal that failed in Sacramento in January. “We get the new construction that we all want, and we get the additional rent-controlled units for those who need it,” Bonta said about rolling rent control. “What we have now is a broken system, obviously. If it worked, we wouldn’t have the biggest housing crisis in the state of California.” Rolling rent control would retain existing tenant and landlord protections and apply them automatically to prop-
REMAKING
RENT CONTROL
HOUSING
SOLUTIONS
If voters strike down Costa-Hawkins this fall, cities will regain power to regulate housing. But would that help or hurt the affordability crisis?
RENT CONTROL continued on Page 6
Illustration by Reid Brown // Public Press
Cities Sic Taxman on Vacant ‘Ghost Homes’
MORE HOUSING SOLUTIONS COVERAGE
Reining in Real Estate Speculators: Politicians are struggling to regulate buyers who flip properties for a quick profit, without regard to displaced renters. | 3
Oakland votes on levy in fall; S.F. may in 2019
FREE LEGAL HELP: Tenants of all incomes will get counsel when facing eviction. | 4
By Liz Enochs // Public Press
s
I Attorney Carolyn Gold says tenants need lawyers to fend off evictions. Charley Goss, of S.F. Apartment Association, says that counsel should not be funded with tax dollars.
s an abundance of vacant units worsening the Bay Area’s housing crisis? That’s what some politicians have suggested. Their solution: a new tax on landlords who leave residential and commercial properties unrented. Oakland voters will decide in November whether to levy a parcel tax on empty apartments, condominiums and townhouses, plus all vacant industrial and commercial buildings and lots. If two-thirds approve, Oakland would become the first U.S. city to tax so-called ghost homes. In San Francisco, voters could face a similar measure next year. A vacancy tax was floated in 2015 by
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TENANT-LANDLORD MEDIATION: Solving
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S.F. STARTUP HELPS TEACHERS BUY HOMES:
Company pays half the down payment, gets some of the profit upon sale. | 9
OUR 2014 SPECIAL REPORT ON SOLUTIONS: sfpublicpress.org/ housingsolutions
Aaron Peskin
John Avalos
Photos by Garrick Wong // Public Press
David Campos
Eric Mar
Jane Kim
Hillary Ronen
Sandra Lee Fewer
Norman Yee
London Breed
Jeff Sheehy
then-Supervisor Eric Mar and again in 2017 by Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who, in a research request to the City Attorney’s Office, cited its potential to “help mitigate the impacts of the widespread practice of warehousing valuable residential and commercial units.” The most often-cited figure for a variety of vacant residential properties is 30,000, which is based on U.S. Census data cited in a 2014 report by the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, or SPUR, a local public-policy think tank. Peskin aide Sunny Angulo confirmed that the supervisor’s office is working to put a vacancy tax initiative before voters in 2019. She said Peskin decided not to push for this
November because “there are going to be a lot of taxes on that ballot.” She said it was too soon to provide details about the plan. Neither city would be the first to address what some critics have called a glut of vacant second homes hurting housing markets in some of the world’s most desirable cities. Paris began taxing second homes in 2015, and two years later tripled its surtax to 60 percent of the standard property tax. In 2016, Vancouver, Canada, enacted a tax of 1 percent of the assessed value on homes unoccupied for 180 days or more, the first in North America. This year Melbourne, Australia, adopted a tax on properties empty more than six months, and Hong Kong policymakers said they, too, were considering a vacancy tax. VACANCY TAX continued on Page 8
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BACK PAGE WHERE THEY STAND: How UC Davis faculty used voting records to map the city’s top politicians along a spectrum. | 12
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