Sebastopol to talk about rent control options
Robert Jacob is requesting that look into rent control and various tenant protect policies.
It's number 8 on the agenda for tonight's (Tuesday Oct 18th) City Council Meeting at Teen Center starting on 6pm.
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The Staff report is here.
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Sebastopol to talk about rent control options
MARY CALLAHAN
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT | October 17, 2016, 5:51PM
Sebastopol city officials may wade into the controversial arena of rent control and tenant protections this week, though just where any discussion might lead is not at all clear.
The subject is coming before the city council during its regular Tuesday meeting at the request of Councilman Robert Jacob, who said he wanted just “to start off the conversation,” though the end of his council term in December means he would miss out on any extended deliberations.
Jacob is asking the council to direct the city attorney to investigate and analyze options that might offer relief against the kind of skyrocketing rates and groundless evictions that have been rampant around the greater Bay Area in recent years.
It’s a small first step, but it reflects a housing crisis that has driven rent control movements in many area communities, including Santa Rosa, whose adoption of tenant protections in August helped spur Jacob to bring the matter before Sebastopol’s council, he said.
New laws could help “protect our most vulnerable populations,” and prevent the city from losing its working families, seniors and young people, Jacob said.
But the mere suggestion of action on rent control has mobilized opponents, many of whom already are chafed by the bruising battle in Santa Rosa, where the new law has been blocked by a successful petition drive and is headed to a public vote.
A “Call to Action” in circulation online urges opponents of “draconian housing policies” to speak out now against consideration of new Sebastopol laws that would “punish rental property owners to solve the city’s housing issues.”
The email was authored by the California Apartment Association, the same entity that successfully blocked imposition of the Santa Rosa ordinance. That law capped housing rental hikes at 3 percent a year, absent major capital improvements to the property, and specified violations for which tenants may be duly evicted.
Among those eager to voice his concern is Bill Kelley, owner of Sebastopol-based Kelley Rentals, who said provisions in the Santa Rosa law strip away the rights of landlords to control and vet those to whom their property is entrusted, and make even warranted, just-cause evictions so onerous that the only beneficiaries are attorneys.
He also said that unfair laws only drive away would-be landlords, potentially reducing the stock of available rentals.
But Sebastopol Councilman Patrick Slayter said a decision simply to explore its options, as requested by Jacob, would not commit the council to taking action. “We’re not saying ‘yes.’ We’re not saying ‘no.’ ” he said.
Vice Mayor Una Glass, meanwhile, said she had expected next year to address the issue of housing affordability and said it would be advantageous to have a “laundry list” of options that might include creative ways to expand the available rentals while allowing homeowners, especially seniors, who have more space than they need to rent out part of it.
“My sense is that we’re going to need to look at other kinds of options other than just like a standard rent control option,” Glass said
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Re: Sebastopol to talk about rent control options
Here's a excerpt of the pd's coverage of last night's City Council meeting where they considered investigating some type of Rent Control for Sebastopol, followed by a 6 minute video of the current candidates for council address the topic on September 28th:
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Sebastopol City Council advances study of rent control
MARY CALLAHAN
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT | October 19, 2016, 7:13PM
The Sebastopol City Council has voted to move forward with a look at measures to protect renters, including potential limits on rent increases and evictions, a move that is likely to be divisive in the community and could prove influential in next month’s election, with four candidates vying for two seats.
The decision Tuesday included a 3-2 vote in favor of considering an emergency freeze on residential rents to guard against sudden, reactive rate hikes while the debate is underway. That split decision alone reflected the deep public division over rent control inside and outside City Hall and uncertainty on the council about how to proceed in addressing a regionwide housing crisis.
Council members were unanimous nonetheless in saying it was time to learn about options to help ensure the elderly and other economically vulnerable members of their community weren’t driven out by skyrocketing housing prices.
“I think it’s just as likely that it’s a bad answer as that it‘s a good answer,” Councilman John Eder said after hearing from 20 residents, evenly split for and against the potential provisions. “I think we should at least have the opportunity to take a look at it.”
Sebastopol would be the second city in Sonoma County to pursue limits on rent increases and evictions should it decide to do so as soon as next month. A split Santa Rosa council approved rent control in the city in late August, but that law has been suspended since rent control opponents filed a petition seeking repeal of the measure or a public referendum.
The debate, simmering throughout Sonoma County and the Bay Area, has boiled up in Sebastopol at the end of an election cycle in which two council incumbents who were among the three-member majority in favor of considering an emergency freeze on rents — Eder and Robert Jacob — are not running for re-election. They were joined by Vice Mayor Una Glass in directing City Manager/Attorney Larry McLaughlin to draw up a draft ordinance on an urgency moratorium to consider at the council’s Nov. 1 meeting.
Mayor Sarah Gurney and Councilman Patrick Slayter opposed the move to consider a rent freeze, citing the short time frame in which the city would have to act and a large volume of pressing city business to be addressed before year’s end.
“I’m just not convinced that doing this as an urgency is going to create a good work product from us,” Gurney said.
Further discussion of tenant protections was scheduled for Dec. 20 as part of a broad effort to tackle the issue of housing affordability that council members said they would undertake going forward.
By December, however, both Eder’s and Jacob’s council terms will have expired. Their seats will be filled by the two candidates who prevail in the Nov. 8 election, inheriting the new housing policy debate, which Jacob put on the agenda.
One of the candidates, Michael Carnacchi, was among those conceding that the outgoing members weren’t making it easy for whoever assumes their seats. “They kind of dropped it right in our lap,” Carnacchi said with a chuckle.
All four council candidates — Jonathan Greenberg, Craig Litwin, Neysa Hinton and Carnacchi — have cited housing affordability as a priority in their campaigns.
But none was prepared Wednesday to embrace rent control and just cause-eviction regulations without a better understanding of the potential for unintended consequences, like exploding rents on housing that’s exempt from local provisions by state law.
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Here's what the candidates for council had to say about rent control the Forum on Sept 28,2016 at Grange
Re: Sebastopol to talk about rent control options
The Sonoma West Times and News has an article about the October 18th Sebastopol City Council meeting where the decided to take a look at rent control options.
One thing the article points out is:
Of the roughly 3,500 houses in Sebastopol, about half are owner-occupied, leaving about 1,875 units available for rental. Many of those, according to Daniel Sanchez, government affairs director at the North Bay Association of Realtors, would be ineligible for rent control policies.
“Under state law, single-family homes, condominiums and older units cannot be under rent control,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez refers to the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act of 1995 which exempts rent control measures to be enacted upon single family houses and condominiums or properties built after 1995.
Additionally, housing units already classified as subsidized or affordable, such as Petaluma Avenue Homes, Bodega Hills Apartments and Burbank Heights & Orchard Senior Housing, are ineligible for rent control.
“That leaves roughly 88 units that could be eligible for rent control,” Sanchez said.
Re: Sebastopol to talk about rent control options
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Sebastopol City Council passes temporary cap on rent hikes
MARY CALLAHAN
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT | November 1, 2016, 11:01PM
The Sebastopol City Council on Tuesday adopted an emergency ordinance capping rent increases at 3 percent a year for qualifying residential units, with members saying they were moved to act, in part, by a flurry of recent rate hikes in apparent response to the city’s decision to explore rent control and other potential tenant protections.
The moratorium, adopted by a 4-1 vote, takes effect immediately and lasts for 45 days but can be extended twice, for a period totaling two years.
The council came up one vote short of the four votes needed to make the moratorium retroactive to Oct. 18. That means the rate cap will not protect tenants informed over the past several days that their housing costs will be rising.
Councilman Patrick Slayter was the sole voice opposing a moratorium altogether on the grounds that it would affect only a fraction of the city’s rental units and, thus, put likely pressure on those who occupy rental stock with unregulated rates.
[snip]
Under state law, the ordinance applies only to older, multi-family residential buildings built and certified for occupancy prior to February 1995.
Newer buildings are exempt, as are single-family homes and condominiums for which separate title is held. Also exempted are duplexes and owner-occupied triplexes, government subsidized housing and units vacated by one tenant and replaced by another.
City Manager/Attorney Larry McLaughlin said the city staff had not yet determined how many of the city’s roughly 1,800 rental units would be effected, but stakeholders have estimated between 88 and 350 would qualify. That makes the moratorium “an inequitable solution,” one local property owner said, “to exempt the 1,500 and lean on the very few, including me.”
[snip]
See full article here.
Re: Sebastopol to talk about rent control options
Would be nice to apply this to Commercial properties as well.
Re: Sebastopol to talk about rent control options
Yes, perhaps we should have rent controls on commercial properties. Also, there should be price controls on the cost medical care, gasoline, pot, candy bars, everything!
This was tried in the Soviet Union, & other places, including wage & price control under President Nixon - it's basically a planned, controlled economy. They've all been failures... compared to a market economy, which is how the US economy operates... with government interaction in some areas such as minimum wage, the price of milk, etc. A market economy has proved to be the best allocation of scarce resources.
Rent control has never worked. Cities with rent control have the highest rent: San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Berkeley, New York, Washington DC. It's great for the small number of people lucky enough to find a rent controlled apartment. But those people stay in their apartments for a very long time, effectively removing them from the market, creating a shortage, and causing rents to rise for other non controlled apartments. It's similar to the effect of Airbnb on the rental market - the cost of housing goes up, because a significant amount of housing has been taken off the market.
Rent control also decreases the supply of housing: in San Francisco, an average of 550 apartments are withdrawn from the market each year, and converted into for sale housing... as owners reap much higher profits from the sale, compared to yearly rental increases of 1 or 2%/year, and an apartment renting for 1/3 or 1/2 of it's market rent value. Some in rent controlled apartments don't need the protection of rent control: a 2000 study in San Francisco, found that 25% of rent controlled tenants make over $100k/yr. But in general, because rent control has been found to raise the cost of housing, and diminish the supply, it hurts the poor and minorities the most, as they must live further and further away from good jobs and schools, and move to places with cheaper rent.
The reason rent control in Sebastopol would apply only to multi family housing built after 2/1995, a few hundred units, out of a total of 1500 rentals, is that the CA State Legislature was intelligent enough to pass legislation in 2/1995 exempting all single family houses, condos, and housing built after 2/1995 from rent control (Costa Hawkins). It was done to encourage the construction of new housing.
Any society has its winners & losers. There are those in Sebastopol who've been hurt by rising rents and values: they get a rent increase they can't afford, or lose their rental house as the landlord sells it. Others move to a more affordable place, such as the Russian River area. Other people move in, who have more money, the place gets gentrified. Many can afford the higher rent.
I was at the City Council meeting Oct 31, where they passed the rent moratorium, 4 to 1. Those voting for the moratorium, and possibly starting the unfortunate march toward rent control, were voting in support of the minority of those who can't afford higher rents, or have lost their housing. This is a short sighted position. Rent control will lead to higher rents, and a bloated city bureaucracy enforcing rent control. The City will get caught up in it's petticoats, regardless of its good intentions.
I own 5 multi family affordable properties in Sonoma County. Admittedly I've been a winner. Yet economic principles apply to all. Interestingly, the family that rents my most affordable house, renting for $1052/month set, by the County... says they'll be moving out & buying their own house. That's the most intelligent response to the housing crunch... compared to useless complaining about the high cost of housing... and a government making laws that make the problem worse.
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by kane:
Would be nice to apply this to Commercial properties as well.
Re: Sebastopol to talk about rent control options
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE TO PROTECT THE RENTERS OF SEBASTOPOL.
I've lived and raised my children for over 20 years. I'm passed middle aged and retired. Four years ago I had to move because of my disability into a triple-plex.
I've had TWO $100 RENT INCREASES in LESS THEN 2 YEARS. The reason given both times by HDC the management company is my rent is below the going rate in town.
I've lived since the first rent increase without heating and a working toilet because I was afraid to contact HDC to have repaired, because I was afraid of a rent increase if I made a request for repairs.
My only income is Social Security, which hasn't increased.
It this pace I will have to move out of Sebastopol, if something isn't done to regulate rents.
SOMETHING HAS TO BEEN DONE TO STOP RESIDENTS BEING DISPLACED.
