Chinese Real Estate Association of America (CREAA)

CREAA Opposes Anti-Family Legislation!

The Chinese Real Estate Association of America (CREAA) passes a resolution opposing the recently introduced legislation by Supervisor Eric Mar to amend the San Francisco Rent Control Ordinance by adding an additional class of protected tenants to the three existing groups. Currently, the protected class consist of people who are (i) 60-years or older who have resided in the unit for ten years or more; (ii) disabled, qualified to receive SSI payments and have resided in the unit for ten years or more; or (iii) disabled, qualified to receive SSI payments, “catastrophically ill”, and that have lived in the unit for five years or more.

The intent of the law was to provide protection to a limited class of disadvantaged tenants from eviction because finding another residence to live in San Francisco might present a difficult challenge for them. Thus these tenants are protected from eviction by owners who want to move into their units. Supervisor Mar’s new legislation proposes to add families with children to the protected class “where any tenant is under the age of 18 and a member of a household which has resided in the unit for at least 12 months.”

CREAA is opposing this proposal because if passed, it would create a disincentive for property owners to rent to families with children in San Francisco. Also, it takes away private property rights from owners who want to live with their extended families.

Eva Hom, President of CREAA, explains that Chinese families are extremely close-knitted, where sometimes a few generations like to live together in the same building and later pass that asset on to future generations. With the passage of legislation like this, it takes those options away from individuals.

Prior to introducing this legislation, the Office of the Legislative Analyst was requested to do a research report on how many families with children were impacted in the past 12 months by Owner Move-In (OMI) evictions. After gathering data from the Rent Board, examining Superior Court information, reviewing San Francisco Unified School District data, interviewing various tenant advocacy groups, and in a Legislative Analyst Report dated June 23, 2009, the report concluded that only 18 families were affected by Owner Move-in (OMI) evictions between March 2008 and February 2009!

Instead of using the actual small number of 18 out of approximately 200,000 rental units in San Francisco, Mar uses unsubstantiated sources in his press release dated August 17, 2009, “Tenant organizations report that 28% of the OMI evictions they have seen this year involved households with children…” to insinuate that this is an epidemic and that owners are evicting families with children out of San Francisco and thus legislation is necessary to stem this tide of evictions and protect our families!

CREAA believes that this is a classic case of proposing laws to please special interest groups; and even though Legislative Analysts do not find a legitimate problem, Supervisor Mar exaggerates the facts so that he can keep the special interest groups happy. This is bad legislation and CREAA is seeking a meeting with Supervisor Mar to ask him to withdraw this anti-family proposal.