Rent Control Expansion in San Francisco Results in Surge of Evictions and Wrongful Complaints, Research Shows

A recent study conducted by researchers at Northwestern University has shed light on the impact of rent control expansion in San Francisco.

The findings suggest that the rent control expansion laws in 1995 actually led to an increase in both evictions and complaints about wrongful evictions filed with the city’s rent board. (Photo: KQED)

Rent Control Expansion in San Francisco

The researchers, Eilidh Geddes and Nicole Holz found in the results of the study that the number of wrongful eviction claims rose by 125 percent in zip codes where rent control was newly introduced while eviction notices filed with the rent board increased by 83 percent. These results challenge the notion that rent control expansion provides stability for long-time tenants.

San Francisco’s original rent control ordinance, implemented in 1979, limited rent increases to 60 percent of inflation for buildings with five or more units occupied that year or before. In 1994, a referendum expanded the controls to include buildings with one to four units built before 1979, and the law went into effect the following year.

The sudden rent control expansion in San Francisco has been an area of interest for researchers.

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Results of Rent Control Expansion

Stanford researchers revealed in a landmark 2019 study that after the rent control expansion, tenants in pre-1980 buildings were less likely to have moved compared to tenants in non-rent-controlled buildings.

However, the same study also found that the supply of rental housing decreased by 15 percent as landlords converted their properties into condominiums or withdrew them from the rental market.

The recent study by Geddes and Holz supports this finding, as it revealed that evictions and complaints about wrongful evictions remained relatively stable immediately after the rent control expansion but started to increase alongside rising market rents, a published news article reported.

This indicates that rent control expansion offers tenants the least protection from rising rents precisely when rents are on the rise. Landlords, rather than simply raising rents on existing tenants, are encouraged to evict them and find new tenants who are willing to pay the higher market rent.

Advocates of rent control expansion often argue that the issues associated with it are not inherent to rent control itself but rather result from loopholes. They suggest that these problems can be addressed by eliminating vacancy decontrol, restricting condo conversions, and increasing enforcement against illegal evictions.

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