Landlords' Hidden Agenda Scheme Being Circulated for California June Ballot Under the Guise of Eminent Domain Changes

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Ted Gullicksen
San Francisco Tenants Union

For more than 30 years, the San Francisco Tenants Union has defended renters in San Francisco against attacks by landlords who want to eliminate affordable housing in our city. There is a dangerous measure currently circulating for signatures to qualify for the June 2008 ballot that would undo all of our hard work.

That’s why our organization helped to organize a rally Wednesday outside the San Francisco City Hall to protest this dangerous measure. More than 100 renters, tenants’ advocates, affordable housing advocates, seniors, environmentalists, labor advocates and others were joined by Assemblyman Mark Leno and Senator Carole Migden and San Francisco PUC Commissioner Susan Leal. All voiced opposition to the Hidden Agendas measure and highlighted the landlords’ very real and very devious intentions.

The event was an enormously successful, attracting San Franciscans from all walks of life and San Francisco press in full force. For many of our citizens, both young and old, rent control is the only way they can continue to survive in the city. Now the greedy landlords want to swipe the welcome mat from right under their feet. Hard working, low- and middle-income individuals took time off work to attend. Seniors showed up in droves. Their message was loud and clear – Californians are NOT going to allow landlords to sneak this measure by the voters.

The so-called California Property Owners and Farmland Protection Act – which we have more appropriately dubbed the Landlords’ Hidden Agendas Scheme – seeks to deliberately abolish rent control and other renter protections. In addition to attacking renters outright, the measure would also gut environmental protections and decimate local land-use planning – and all under the guise of eminent domain reform.

In fact, more than 85% of the funding for this deceptive measure comes from wealthy apartment owners, mobile home park owners, and the trade group that represents them. The measure is a sinister trick on the voters and unless we beat this back, the Landlords Hidden Agendas Scheme would hurt seniors, single moms and others who struggle to make ends meet by taking away safe, affordable housing. In San Francisco alone, this measure would affect more than 180,000 rental units.

This is what the Landlords’ Hidden Agendas Scheme would do:

Attack renters’ rights. The Hidden Agendas Scheme would outright abolish rent control laws in California and also gut renter protection laws. For example, the measure would also:

• Jeopardize laws requiring the fair return of rental deposits
• Jeopardize laws requiring 60-day notice before forcing renters out of their housing
• Outlaw local affordable housing and “inclusionary zoning” requirements
• Jeopardize laws that protect seniors and the disabled from drastic rent increases and that require landlords to give them ample notice before forcing them out of rental housing

Stop environment regulations and laws that protect our neighborhoods. The Hidden Agendas Scheme contains a clause which would flat out prohibit laws and regulations that “transfer an economic benefit to one or more private persons at the expense of the private owner.” Virtually all land-use decisions and environmental regulations can be argued to transfer an economic benefit from one owner to the next. This means that that ANY law that protects the land, air, water, or open space would be prohibited.