Imagine a city that is creating jobs — 68,000 of them in the past year. Now imagine that same city only adding 120 new housing units. It's an amazing supply and demand problem, and it's reality in San Francisco, where an increasing number of tenants are finding that they simply can't afford their rent anymore.
The San Francisco Chronicle has the story:
It is a situation rooted in limited housing stock and a surge in demand that has pushed the median rent up from $2,968 in 2010 to $3,414 this year and more than doubled no-fault evictions over the past year.
A 'no-fault' eviction is when a renter can't afford to stay due to rent increases, or because an owner wants to move-in to their rental. And while San Francisco is subject to some of the strictest rent controls in the nation, those controls aren't stopping rent increases:
Mieuli Jameson, whose family has lived in San Francisco for three generations, is simply being priced out. This summer, her landlord informed her that he was going to double the rent from $2,000 to $4,000, after he successfully petitioned the city's Rent Board to exempt the 21st Avenue home from rent control.
While the home has an in-law unit – making the house subject to San Francisco's strict rent control ordinance, even though it's a single-family home – a little-known state law allows owners to seek an exemption if they can prove the unit is not being used. In July, an administrative judge declared the home is not subject to rent control under the Costa-Hawkins Act.
