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SF Rent Board Closes Loophole, Clarifies that Disabled Persons Receive Eviction Protection Regardless of IncomeThursday, June 12, 2008
As reported yesterday by Paul Hogarth of BeyondChron (an excellent online alternative daily news source with a progressive slant and a locally oriented focus), the San Francisco Rent Board at their public meeting Tuesday, June 10, 2008, approved a change to their rules and regulations, making fully clear that disabled tenants are protected from Owner-Move-In evictions (which are often used by landlords as a pretense for speculative purposes, to free units of long-term rent-controlled tenancies prior to offering the property for sale, or simply to jack up rents to market rates), regardless of their income status.
Previously the regulations had a loophole in that they referenced the qualifications for SSI (supplemental security income - a welfare system for elderly and disabled persons with limited means) as a determining factor, without clarifying that it was the definition of 'disabled' under SSI which was to be determinative. Since SSI also has a "means test" to determine eligibility -- meaning that persons with certain minimum income or assets are not eligable -- some landlord advocates have been arguing that the same means-testing should determine eligibility for the eviction protections in the Rent Board regulations.
At the Tuesday meeting, the Board confirmed that the intention of the regulation is to protect disabled tenants, with no means test involved. This closes the loophole which landlords have been exploiting, and represents a solid step toward tightening the common-sense tenant protections which San Franciscans have been favoring over recent years -- including the disability protections passed by voters as Prop G in 1998, designed to protect just such disabled San Franciscan tenants.
For the full article: see here.
As reported yesterday by Paul Hogarth of BeyondChron (an excellent online alternative daily news source with a progressive slant and a locally oriented focus), the San Francisco Rent Board at their public meeting Tuesday, June 10, 2008, approved a change to their rules and regulations, making fully clear that disabled tenants are protected from Owner-Move-In evictions (which are often used by landlords as a pretense for speculative purposes, to free units of long-term rent-controlled tenancies prior to offering the property for sale, or simply to jack up rents to market rates), regardless of their income status.
Previously the regulations had a loophole in that they referenced the qualifications for SSI (supplemental security income - a welfare system for elderly and disabled persons with limited means) as a determining factor, without clarifying that it was the definition of 'disabled' under SSI which was to be determinative. Since SSI also has a "means test" to determine eligibility -- meaning that persons with certain minimum income or assets are not eligable -- some landlord advocates have been arguing that the same means-testing should determine eligibility for the eviction protections in the Rent Board regulations.
At the Tuesday meeting, the Board confirmed that the intention of the regulation is to protect disabled tenants, with no means test involved. This closes the loophole which landlords have been exploiting, and represents a solid step toward tightening the common-sense tenant protections which San Franciscans have been favoring over recent years -- including the disability protections passed by voters as Prop G in 1998, designed to protect just such disabled San Franciscan tenants.
For the full article: see here.
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