This week, Carol Lloyd’s Surreal Estate column focuses on protected tenants, “Eloise, a grandmother who has lived in her home for over 20 years, is quiet and conscientious and always pays her rent on time. Even so, from the moment her new landlords bought the building some five years ago, they have made it abundantly clear that she’s not wanted.”

“In a different market, in a different city, Eloise might be considered an ideal tenant. She takes care of her home, she knows her neighbors, she dearly loves her neighborhood. But this isn’t anywhere. This is San Francisco, and Eloise lives in such fear of her landlords’ wrath that she asked that I not use her real name. Her crime is that she pays less than one-third of market rent — based on rent control — and she cannot be evicted. She is a protected tenant.”

“In San Francisco, Oakland and a handful of other municipalities around the country, it is a phrase that strikes dread in many a landlord’s heart. It also a phrase that invokes an invaluable right for many poor, elderly or disabled tenants who would otherwise be cast onto the rough seas of the rental market. For these vulnerable tenants, it offers the most basic refuge in a housing market that has virtually no affordable housing left.”

“Essentially, it’s a transfer of wealth,” says Joe Bravo, a San Francisco attorney who represents both landlords and tenants. “The basic question is, Can the city impose on property owners to give up part of their wealth in order to accommodate seniors and disabled people? And my answer is, How else are you going to keep people who are old and disabled in the city?”

“In San Francisco, there are three basic kinds of protected tenants: elderly people or disabled people who have lived in a unit for at least 10 years, and disabled and catastrophically ill people who have resided in their homes for at least five years. (The definition of elderly varies depending on circumstance — it’s usually set at 60 or 62 — as does the definition of disabled.) Whatever the case, even if a landlord wants to move into a unit himself, this is not a valid cause for evicting a protected tenant.”

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