Speculators who evict tenants under the Ellis Act in San Francisco are seeing staggering profits, and paying only a tiny fraction of that money to help the victims relocate, a new city study shows.

In some cases, the value of Ellised properties have increase by more than 400 percent, and the average profit from selling the vacated units is $429,000, the report by the city’s Budget and Legislative Analyst shows.

Only 5.2 percent of that money goes to relocation fees and expenses to displaced tenants, the data, which covers the past ten years, shows.

The report shows the need to significantly increase the modest relocation fees that landlords have to pay tenants who are evicted under the Ellis Act, Sup. Myrna Melgar, who asked for the report, told me.

“That’s what we’re looking at,” she said.

The Ellis Act, one of the most abused state tenant laws, allows landlords to throw all of their renters out in the name of “going out of business.” Then they can sell the vacant buildings as tenancies in common, the rough equivalent of condos.

Most of these evictions don’t involve longtime landlords who are tired of managing rental property. In the vast majority of San Francisco cases, speculators buy apartment buildings with longtime tenants under rent control, cite the Ellis Act to evict everyone, then flip the building for a quick profit.

Under current local law, the evictors are required to pay $7,419 to each tenant, up to a maximum of $22,257 for a household. That, the report says, is just 5.2 percent of the profit that the typical speculator makes on the deal.

More: The relocation costs aren’t even enough to cover first-and-last month’s rent on a new apartment:

The required relocation payments for a single tenant in a 1 bedroom unit moving to a market rate 1 bedroom unit would not be sufficient to cover first and last months’ rent, a security deposit (one month’s rent), moving costs, and lost wages for five days spent packing and moving (conservatively assuming a minimum wage job in San Francisco). We estimate the deficiency in such a scenario to be $2,470 based on a relocation payment of $7,419 and relocation costs of $9,889.

The BLA examined 59 properties, representing 135 housing units, over the period of 2011-2021.

We found that the median assessed value of … such properties … increased by 464.5 percent from $299,470 in FY 2011- 12 to $1,690,650 in FY 2020-21, or by approximately $1.4 million. This rate of increase exceeds the 223.4 percent increase in assessed value for all properties for which Ellis Act Withdrawal Petitions were filed during that same period (which includes those that were not sold after the Ellis Act Withdrawal Petition was filed). It also exceeds the increase in all home values ​​in San Francisco of approximately 116 percent between 2011 and 2021 as reported by Zillow. All of this data indicates that evicting tenants through the Ellis Act corresponds to increased value of the properties, particularly if they are sold, but even if they are not.

More:

Finally, we further analyzed the financial impacts of Ellis Act evictions by analyzing the change in sales price for just those properties for which the owners filed an Ellis Act Withdrawal Petition and subsequently sold the property. Comparing the most recent sales prices prior to the Ellis Act Withdrawal Petition with the sales price after the Ellis Act Withdrawal Petition was filed for 38 properties representing 73 housing units, we found a median change in price of $949,688 for all properties, or $429,000 per unit .

This is pretty dramatic information, and it shows why so many speculators want to buy buildings in San Francisco and evict all the tenants: the profits are giant.

In 2014, then-Sup David Campos introduced a bill to raise the relocation fees; Under his proposal, an evictor would have to pay tenants the difference between their current rent and market rent on a similar apartment for two years.

(The federal standard for people forced to move when the government wants to, say, build a freeway, includes that same level of payment for four years.)

Then-Sup. London Breed tried to derail it, but it wound up passing the full board.

A right-wing property-rights group sued in federal court, and Judge Charles Breyer struck it down.

The city decided not to appeal.

So now it’s going to be up to Melgar, her colleagues, and the city attorney to figure out a way to use the data in the BLA report to craft legislation raising the relocation fees in a way that will pass court muster.

The post San Francisco Bay Guardian | The gorgeous speculator income in Ellis Act evictions appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

The older you get, the more you remember advice that you received in your youth and that you didn’t understand at the time. My parents developed a congregational tradition; the congregationalists believe that everyone has a hotline to the Almighty, you don’t need bishops to lead you. My mother had an interesting religious background: her father was an atheist, but when she was a little girl of eight she said to herself, “If there is no God, we are all born in an orphanage” and became a Christian.

When I was very young she said, “The stories in the Bible are about the conflict between the kings who had power and the prophets who preached righteousness.” She was right: the kings are a threat, but the teachings of all the great religious leaders – Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Marx – are all the same: treat everyone fairly.

When I was eight years old, my father said to me, “Never ring a chimney sweep.” What he meant was, if someone plays dirty with you, don’t play dirty with them or you will get dirty too.

My father kept a timeline of how he spent each hour of each day, and I had one as a child. He believed that time is very valuable and that everyone is equal: nobody has more time and nobody has less.

He believed that we were also responsible for the way we spend money: I got a penny a week to exist, a penny a week to go to school, and it went up to three pence when I gave his secretary an account. I could never get permission to make a phone call. Father said, “Send me a postcard.” Once he was not feeling well and he sent the doctor a postcard. When the card arrived, my father was better and had to call the doctor and tell him not to come.

They were wonderful people, always very kind and always fighting injustice. We had great discussions at home and my political memories go back a long way. My father was brave, independent, and worked on what he believed in. My mother also stood up for what she believed in. She left the Church of England because she did not want to ordain women and became a Congregationalist and President of the Congregational Federation. I have to be the only man whose mother was a denominational leader.

Together, their very simple principles have had a huge impact on my life. People say that as a rite of passage one should rebel against one’s parents, but I never felt the need to.

· For more information on An Evening with Tony Benn, visit celebrityproductions.info

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If there’s a publication in San Francisco that was as critical of Gavin Newsom as the Bay Guardian, we don’t know about it.

We have never endorsed Newsom for a local office before. We resisted his approach of attacking homeless people, which catapulted him into the mayor’s office. We opposed his budgets and policies that preferred the rich to everyone else.

In just over a term in office, he created both the failed SFMTA and the city’s failed homeless policy. He fronted SPUR’s “Muni Reform,” which created the deeply dysfunctional agency that brought the nation’s first urban transportation system to its knees, trapped in what the agency’s current director repeatedly calls the “death spiral.”

In the same brief tenure as mayor, he also created the political and political framework – “care not cash” – for San Francisco’s disastrous homeless policies and reduced them to a position with a disdain for robust public sector policies to support and maintain affordable housing he’s carried into the governor’s office.

In short, Gavin Newsom created the political and political context for two disasters that continue to challenge San Francisco to this day: affordable housing and public transportation.

While Newsom was mayor, San Francisco became a worse place, not a better place.

He didn’t do much better as governor. The state is on fire – and Newsom, as when he was mayor, has made no move to dissolve and let PG&E be taken over by public authorities. With its own agents enabling the company to devastate the state, its only response was to find ways to save the monopoly.

He supported the Yimby Laws to allow real estate developers to control local land use. He cannot figure out what to do with the high-speed rail (and the absolute necessity for the future of the state in a time of climate crisis). He is far too close to the same Sacramento lobbyists who support Republican politics.

And then came COVID.

His administration, filled with political ops pretending to “do things for the Californians,” failed to notice that Jerry Brown cut the public health budget to the bone, budget for budget, including money to provide emergency supplies such as personal protective equipment Maintain the health of workers and do not take corrective action to fill the empty stocks.

Newsom should not be held responsible for outages in the early months of the pandemic as no government was ready to respond to a global and rapidly evolving pandemic of airborne virus.

But he gave in to “business interests” early on and opened up too early, as would later the governors of the red states and contrary to the line of the current callers. When events forced him to shut down businesses and offices and produce effective public programs, his true incompetence and fondness for non-bid billion dollar contracts with private companies was revealed.

And then there is unemployment. Without making a big digression into the state’s multilevel failure, it has been clear for more than a year (!) That it is a pathetic failure that actually harms unemployed Californians – millions of them, as the governor declares.

The state vaccination program was handed over to a private health company with longstanding political support through a no-bid agreement negotiated by Newsom’s employees.

Gavin Newsom is a corporate democrat. Corporate Democrats always play quick and easy, always looking for a “win-win” deal with the private sector where all risk is public and all profits are private.

Newsom has always been about Gavin Newsom first and foremost. His politics are and always have been aimed at promoting his career. And this recall is no different.

Newsom’s arrogance and that of his close advisers this spring allowed him to pretend the recall was just a nuisance and he would easily survive. He hasn’t done anything to excite or encourage progressive voters to just assume that – as in the last election – we could go with him because there are no options.

And that stance – and its political scramble – deterred any leftist candidate who would have both encouraged progressive turnout and would be a credible alternative if Newsom (and it is now a real possibility) loses it.

That was almost certainly a strategic mistake – for both the governor and the California progressive movement.

So now we are stuck with a bunch of far-right Republicans who, at a critical juncture, could potentially win the government of the nation’s largest state. We’re talking about people who don’t believe in the minimum wage, who don’t believe in science, who are supporters of Donald Trump.

There is currently no way that a Republican could be elected governor in this state unless he is removed from office. And if it did, the result would be terrible.

Let’s not forget: the US Senate is 50-50 split. Should Dianne Feinstein – and it is becoming more likely every day – not end her term in office, a GOP governor would put a Republican in this seat – by 2015. That would be the end of the Democratic majority.

We get the topic of enthusiasm. We’re not thrilled to endorse a candidate who promised us sole health coverage and then stepped back the minute he took office. It’s hard for someone who hasn’t done anything to tackle income inequality to take to the streets.

But it is time we all on the left face the consequences of sitting it out or voting yes. There is massive national impact.

There are two questions on the ballot: Should we call Newsom back and who should replace him? Because of the cowardice of the Democrats, there is no credible alternative. There is no one to vote on on the back of the voting slip. We leave it blank.

Newsom will run for re-election in just 15 months. We strongly recommend a progressive candidate to enroll in primary school.

But now, hold your nose and vote no to the Newsom recall.

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