San Francisco Examiner - May 5, 2004
Ellis evictions escalating, groups claim
Long-term renters fight move-out.

Sara Zaske
Staff Writer

Three multigenerational families desperately fought for their homes on Tuesday, picketing against the new landlords of a Folsom Street building who want them out.

More than 20 people live in the three-unit building, including seniors and disabled people. Some of them have lived in the rent-controlled apartment complex for 25 years.

But in spite of San Francisco's strong pro-tenancy laws, the families are facing almost certain eviction under the Ellis Act -- a state law that allows property owners to remove renters when a building is removed from the rental market.

"It's been really difficult for all of us. It seems that people just don't care," said resident Teresa Dulalas, who, as a traditional Filipino woman, lives with three generations of family in her four-bedroom apartment on Folsom Street.

Tenants groups say many stories like Dulalas' are occurring all over The City, as landlords invoke the Ellis Act in numbers not seen since the dot-com days drove housing demand to a fevered pitch.

When the dot-com bubble finally burst, Ellis Act evictions dropped to less than one a month. Now, they are back up to 30 a month.

"We are trying to figure out why this is happening," said Ted Gullicksen of the San Francisco Tenants Union. "Since most Ellis evictions lead to condominium conversions, I think a lot of owners are pushing to try and convert buildings into condos before the interest rates go up."

Andrew Zacks, the attorney for the Folsom Street's property owners, Alda and Joe Chan, said his clients' reasons for invoking the Ellis Act were straightforward: They want to live there.

"San Francisco passed a series of laws that limits the ability of owners to live in their own property," he said. "This is a brother and sister, both owners of the building, who want to live in it, and the only clear path for them is to take the building off the rental market."

Zacks pointed out that when voters approved Proposition G in 1998, it placed severe restrictions on owner move-ins. Prior to the initiative's passage, some of the building units could remain on the market if an owner moved in. Now, the only avenue left to owners is the Ellis Act, Zacks argued, a move that requires all the units to be taken off the rental market and the tenants evicted.

While his clients may want to turn the units into condominiums eventually, Zacks pointed out that San Francisco also has strong restrictions on the conversion process.

For example, there is a limit of 200 apartments that can be converted to condominiums every year, and those are determined by lottery.

But Dean Preston, an attorney with the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, argued that landlords are finding loopholes to that law, such as using a "tenancy in common" joint-ownership agreement to help with the condo-conversion process.

The tenants groups are pushing for city legislation to make it even tougher to convert apartments into condos in order to discourage Ellis Act evictions.

"This rise in Ellis evictions and purging buildings of long-term tenants is really how a city like San Francisco changes," Preston said. "We see it in these buildings like the Folsom Building, where there are about 20 tenants living there including seniors, children and long-term tenants and they are being evicted by two people."