A House Divided

Asian Americans split over OMI eviction restrictions

By Julie D. Soo

With the housing market on the upswing and their own health in decline, Barbara and Henry Perez decided it was time this year to sell the Mission Terrace house that Henry had inherited from his mother.

They quickly found prospective buyers-a Chinese immigrant family who hoped to live across the street from other relatives. But the deal hit a snag when the Perezes' tenant, a woman in her early 60s, wouldn't move. And thanks to an owner-move in eviction moratorium first spearheaded by Supervisor Mabel Teng, the renter likely won't be going anywhere anytime soon.

Though a court invalidated Teng's 18-month moratorium this spring, Supervisor Sue Bierman within the last few weeks persuaded the Board of Supervisors and Mayor Willie Brown to sign off on legislation to extend the ban to at least next summer. Proposition G, on next month's ballot, could make the ban permanent.

Tenant advocates say such legislation is the only way to protect San Franciscans from a soaring rise in OMI evictions, which have more than tripled in the past three years. According to San Francisco Residential Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Board records, landlords filed 439 owner move-in eviction notices from March 1995 through February 1996. But from March 1997 through February 1998, landlords filed 1,253 OMI evictions, and such evictions have continued to climb since.

But prospective buyers-including some current renters-say more OMI restrictions would curtail their ability to buy a home in the city. Many residents have teamed up with, say, two or three other buyers for a two- or three-flat building. Under Bierman's measure, the tenants of at most one flat can be evicted under OMI.

"Young buyers and minority buyers-Asian, African American and Latino families-pool their resources and buy together. That's the only way they can buy property now," said Realtor Donna Caravelli, who warns that new OMI restrictions will fall disproportionately on younger minorities. "The increased ownership percentage would make it impossible for them to move in themselves."

While the city's rent board cannot say how many OMI evictions have been unlawful or how many have affected elderly, sick and disabled people, Asian Law Caucus attorney Gen Fujioka says with the increased number of evictions, "it stands to reason that seniors and disabled are also increasingly affected."

But that's no consolation to Barbara Perez, who this month sent off an appeal to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. "What has happened to our rights?" she asked. "Although we don't think of ourselves as "old and disabled," my husband is almost 85 years old, has a heart condition, sleep apnea, glaucoma and is very hard of hearing. I am over 73, have had cancer surgery in the past, and my hands are severely disfigured by arthritis.

"We want to get our affairs in order, and we are no longer able or willing to be bothered with a rental property. And frankly, why shouldn't we be able to sell our own property even if we were young and healthy?"

Elderly tenants, too, have compelling cases. A 76-year-old nisei widower, who has called his tiny Russian Hill apartment home for 45 years, was shocked this year when he received a 30-day eviction notice. The Asian Law Caucus later managed to divert it.

"My head was messed up," said the tenant, speaking of the eviction trauma. "I'm on a fixed income, and there are not too many vacancies."

The man, who has rented since being released from a Japanese American internment camp more than half a century ago, said he never managed to save enough money to buy property. Still, he said, he's not unsympathetic to property owners, especially smaller landlords. Maybe the barracks at the Presidio could become housing," he suggested.

But such creative housing solutions are unlikely to come to fruition soon-the Mission Bay Development, which could add 6,000 housing units might be 10 years from completion. Meanwhile, says Sonia Ng, a frequent co-host of the San Francisco Neighbors' Association radio program, prospective buyers like the ones who wanted the Perezes' home will be left in the lurch. (Landlords, however, have said they would fight OMI restrictions in court or turn to the state Ellis Act, which allows a landlord to pull all units off the market for at least 10 years.)

Ng estimates that half the city's adult Chinese Americans are property owners-a figure borne out by a poll sponsored by the Chinese American Voter Education Committee, which found that 56 percent of respondents drawn from a pool of San Francisco Chinese Americans owned their homes.

Caravelli, the Realtor, says San Francisco's supervisors are merely pandering to political interests in a city where two-thirds of residents are tenants. But Teng, a Chinese American in a conservative, west of Twin Peaks district, has found that the OMI issue is far from an easy plum, especially for someone trying to appeal to both sides.

With only a week until the election, her hopes to get the most votes-and thus beat out Supervisors Tom Ammiano and Gavin Newsom for the board presidency-may have been compromised by her efforts at moderation. Last fall, Teng authored a watered-down version of Ammiano's OMI eviction moratorium; this month, she voted with the rest of the board for Bierman's legislation. Still, she says she cannot back Prop. G's permanency.

"I do not believe a permanent taking away of property is good," said Teng, who met with editorial boards at the San Francisco Independent and AsianWeek, its sister paper. Instead, Teng suggests that her Housing Task Force be left to develop the best solution, perhaps including a rent subsidy program to help seniors and catastrophically ill tenants.

Her actions haven't sat well with the left-the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the pro-tenant API Force have thrown support to Ammiano, saying Teng hasn't done enough. Nor has Teng won over conservative and moderate forces like the San Francisco Neighbors Association-whose leader, Rose Tsai, has been an outspoken proponent of property rights.

Samson Wong contributed to this story.

©1998 AsianWeek. The information you receive on-line from AsianWeek is protected by the copyright laws of the United States. The copyright laws prohibit any copying, redistributing, retransmitting, or repurposing of any copyright protected material.