Eviction Ban Thrown Out in S.F.

PHOTO BY BERT ELJERA

Barely over a month ago, Supervisor Mabel Teng announced a new task force that was to come up with housing solutions during the moratorium. The panel's future is now uncertain.

Ordinance protecting seniors is not constitutional, judge rules

BY BERT ELJERA

A Superior Court judge has struck down a San Francisco ordinance prohibiting landlords from evicting elderly and disabled long-time tenants in order to move in.

Last Friday, Judge Raymond Williamson ruled that the city's 18-month moratorium on certain owner move-in (OMI) evictions, though imposed with good intentions, unconstitutionally "deprived property owners of their right to enjoy their own property without due process."

Property owners who brought the suit challenging the ordinance expressed elation with the judge's decision, saying that it vindicated their assertion that landlords should not be forced to subsidize private housing.

"While we have sympathy for the elderly and the infirm, it's not the responsibility of individual property owners to bear the burden of society," said Rose Tsai, a leader of the San Francisco Neighbors Association, comprised mostly of Asian American small property owners who led the fight against the ordinance.

The issue has been particularly sensitive in San Francisco, where the Asian American population is roughly evenly divided into tenants and property owners.

While the ordinance was intended to protect elderly tenants, Tsai and others say it also had an unfair impact on new property owners, many of them Asian American.

She said she hoped the city would put its efforts into finding public housing for needy seniors rather than continue to try to place housing problems on the backs of property owners.

"They should not be wasting money" to appeal, she said. "Instead, they should spend it on these people or give them priority on public housing."

Supervisor Mabel Teng, who wrote the moratorium ordinance, said that she would request that City Attorney Louise Renne not appeal the case. However, tenant rights advocates have vowed to fight the judge's decision.

Randy Shaw, executive director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, said his group will seek a stay of the decision, which he called "legally invalid."

According to figures from the city's Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Board, about 100 households each month have been evicted under owner move-in evictions--a huge jump. For most of the past 10 years, there were at most 600 such evictions a year. Furthermore, seniors comprise roughly 25 percent of those evicted, although they make up just 15 percent of the city's population, according to the Rent Board.

Teng said those statistics compelled her to sponsor the legislation, which took effect in January and was to have expired in July 1999. Under the ordinance, tenants at least 60 years old who had lived in the apartment for at least 10 years could not be evicted to allow an owner to move in, with rare exceptions.

In addition, disabled tenants who have lived in the unit at least 10 years and those with life-threatening illnesses who have lived at least five years in their apartments could not be evicted under owner move-in provisions.

In their suit, the property owners argued that the ordinance did not provide for a procedure to verify or challenge a tenant's claim of protective status.

The OMI legislation also created a nine-member Owner Move-in Task Force, comprised of tenant advocates, property owners, city representatives and community leaders, to try to find long-term solutions to the city's chronic housing problems.

Teng said she will meet with the members of the task force to determine the panel's fate. She said she is planning to ask members to create a senior protection fund to help relocate those who lose homes.

The ruling "still leaves us with the challenge to protect our most vulnerable citizens who are being evicted at alarming rates," she said.

Gen Fujioka, staff attorney of the Asian Law Caucus and member of the OMI task force, said: "the decision is clearly a wrong one. It's also just one judge saying something on just one case," adding that it did not set a precedent.

Like Shaw, he expects that a higher court will overturn Williamson's decision.

Clifford E. Fried, who filed the suit on behalf of four property owners, said he doesn't expect the city to appeal. Such a move, he said, would "just be a waste of taxpayers' money."

He praised Williamson for what he called a courageous decision. "Judge Williamson should be commended for his courage in handing a decision expected to not be popular in a city like San Francisco."

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