Ellis Act Task Force Disbands

BeyondChron today complains about the recent disbanding of the three-month-old Ellis Act Task Force. "The Ellis Act Task Force, convened by Mayor Gavin Newsom and Supervisor Aaron Peskin in the hopes of reaching a compromise in the city’s increasingly heated battle over condo conversions, disbanded last week after less than three months of existence. While tenant participants offered a variety of proposals benefiting both sides, it appears landlord intransigence towards changing state law regarding conversions proved the primary roadblock in the way of any progress being made. The Task Force’s failure and the speed of its demise raise important questions about what’s next in the fight over Ellis Act evictions."

"Despite their nice speeches about how they didn't like Elllis Act evictions, the real estate industry representatives were not willing to agree to any reforms that would discourage evictions,” said Dean Preston, another tenant representative on the task force. “Believe it or not, the realtors' "solution" to the epidemic of Ellis Act evictions was a proposal to allow practically unlimited condo conversions."

OK, so did anyone really expect that homeowners and landlords would just give up their already-limited rights to do what they wish with their properties? I won't say that I expected much from this task force, but the fact that any tenant activists thought that they'd find support from the Realtor community with regards to changing the statewide Ellis Act proves that nobody is paying that much attention to reality.

Mess with a free market and what happens? You get slapped every time. Tell a property owner that he can't do something that he could do anywhere else in the country, then try to restrict those rights even further? Who are you kidding?

Once again, for the record, I do not condone evictions of any sort, but I am also an intelligent and reasonable person who does not think that there is any solution out there that involves any further tightening of this already ultra-restricted market.

I'm sure that there's an economist out there that wants to argue with me about this, but I still feel strongly that San Francisco will never make any progress by trying to limit anything having to do with housing.

And you all know my solution: build more housing and build all types of housing. Period.

And as for the BeyondChron article, it's always the Realtors and the landlords fault that nothing gets done in this town. Right.