SB 464 - The Ellis Act Bill

In the middle of flattening home prices, an imploding mortgage market, and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors' deficit spending (which now includes absolutely every scrap of surplus the City had, including the Rainy Day Fund), the movement of SB 464 continues through the California State Senate. SB 464 adds restrictions to already-restricted Ellis Act law by proposing that no landlord be allowed to exit the "landlord business" until after they have owned a property for at least 5 years.

That's right. No matter what financial, health-impacting, or emotional events befell a property owner during their first 5 years of ownership, if there are tenants on the property, the landlord will be forced to continue to perform all the landlord duties the State demands they perform for at least sixty months. Sure, not all landlords (or teachers, or bus drivers, etc.) are wonderful people. And this law assures that slumlords and evil landlords will have to stay in the business too.

Despite the obvious consequences of SB 464 (like that there's likely to be a mass Ellis Acting of all grandfathered buildings two seconds after the bill's passage and that it might be unconstitutional to force a citizen to work in a certain field for a number of years), tenant support groups are cheerleading the bill as the knife in the heart of evictions. The law would clearly steer developers and contractors away from tenant-occupied buildings, or in the least would increase the off-the-record tenant buyouts used to empty buildings before their sale in rent-controlled cities. SF tenants should be dancing in the streets if this bill stops getting postponed and is actually passed.

Keep up with it here.