{"id":50163,"date":"2026-09-13T14:08:29","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T21:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=50163"},"modified":"2026-09-13T14:08:29","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T21:08:29","slug":"tim-redmonds-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2026\/09\/13\/tim-redmonds-agenda\/","title":{"rendered":"Tim Redmond’s Agenda"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The good news, I suppose, is that the mayor of San Francisco has recognized that there’s a housing emergency and tenants are getting evicted. He issued a press release yesterday<\/u><\/a> outlining the steps he’s taking to “address San Francisco’s rent emergency.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of this is just fine: Finding legal counsel for people facing evictions is a demonstrated way to keep tenants in rent-controlled housing. Supporting Sup. Jackie Fielder’s legislation to prevent evictions over less than a month of unpaid rent is kind of a no-brainer. It’s always good to inform tenants of their rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the mayor didn’t even mention the cause of the eviction crisis: the AI boom in San Francisco that he has encouraged and supported. Tech Boom 3.0 has done exactly what the previous two did, and this was entirely predictable: It brought a lot of high-paid people to San Francisco, and gave greedy landlords a huge incentive to force out tenants with below-market rents. When Anthropic and Open AI go public, hundreds of their workers\u2014most of whom are young, single men\u2014will become very rich, and the situation will get even worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This will do nothing to promote the mayor’s “family opportunity agenda.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The element of his “plan” that made me gag was this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Legislation sponsored by Mayor Lurie will increase by 25%, nearly $3,000 per person, required payments to tenants being displaced under the Ellis Act to reflect the increased cost of finding a new apartment in San Francisco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For starters, the Ellis Act is an evil piece of legislation that allows speculators to buy up rent-controlled buildings, evict all the tenants (for no cause at all), and flip them as tenancies in common, a form of condos. The threat of an Ellis eviction is often enough to convince a long-term tenant to accept a buy-out\u2014that is, to take a lump-sum payment in exchange for moving out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If tenants fight the eviction and lose, they get a tiny pittance in statutory transition payments, and the mayor’s proposal will add so little that it’s worth almost nothing. You can’t even pay one month’s rent with $3,000, much less first, last, and security deposit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former Sup. David Campos got the board to approve a law that would have actually discouraged Ellis evictions and given tenants a chance: His bill would have mandated that landlords doing Ellis evictions pay the difference between a tenant’s current rent and market rent for four years.<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The landlords sued, and a bad court determined that the law was unconstitutional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former Mayor Ed Lee supported efforts by former state Sen. Mark Leno to reform the Ellis Act.<\/u><\/a> Lee said that “all roads [to preventing evictions] lead to Sacramento.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leno’s bill never got out of committee. Back then, the real estate industry owned the state Legislature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Big Tech has a lot of influence. If Lurie really wanted to protect tenants, he could get his billionaire backers to help fund a massive campaign to overturn the Ellis Act and Costa Hawkins<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rest is just words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The good news, I suppose, is that the mayor of San Francisco has recognized that there’s a housing emergency and tenants are getting evicted. He issued a press release yesterday outlining the steps he’s taking to “address San Francisco’s rent emergency.” Some of this is just fine: Finding legal counsel for people… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1878],"tags":[960],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50163"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50166,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50163\/revisions\/50166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}