April 27, 2006

Dear Supervisor,

In San Francisco, the desire to own property often outweighs all other motivations, including compassion, empathy, even common humanity. Realtors and their attorneys have proven themselves positively eager to use the Ellis Act to evict long term tenants — even elderly, sick and disabled tenants — to profit handsomely, selling to buyers who already have homes but who want to “trade up.” As one critic put it, Real Estate has become the pornography of the middle class.

The Ellis Act is the means most often used to this end, the legal ax that is bludgeoning the soul of this city. These evicted tenants usually have no place to go, not in a city where HUD found the median income was $66,500 in 2005. They certainly cannot afford to buy a $500K-plus condo, much less a house.

It is not the hills or the buildings that make San Francisco a great city, but rather its people. And without its people, its vital core, San Francisco is in serious danger of becoming merely a theme park. Supervisor Peskin’s ordinance, permanently prohibiting condo conversion where multiple evictions of the most vulnerable tenants have occurred, removes the incentive for such brutal, and usually everlasting, displacements.

Note also that while there have been 3,000 Ellis evictions since 1999, and nearly 500 rental units were lost through the Ellis evictions in 2005 alone, the San Francisco Planning Department has already approved approximately 5000 new condo units, 3000 of which are under construction. For those who want to own, the housing stock is there, and increasing, which obviates the specious (and cynically self-serving) rationalization that Ellising is somehow “necessary” for home ownership in San Francisco.

Prohibiting condo conversions to protect the most vulnerable of our citizens is not only sound urban policy, it’s also the fair, right and just thing to do. I strongly urge you to sign the Peskin legislation.

Sincerely,