No to Fast-Tracked Condo Conversions

Fight to Preserve Rent Control
No to Fast-Tracked Condo Conversions
Come to Rally and Supes' Land Use Committee
Monday, April 8, 12 Noon
City Hall Steps

Supervisors Scott Weiner (District 8) and Mark Farrell (District 2) are sponsoring legislation that would allow 2,000 buildings that are Tenancies-in-Common to immediately convert to much-higher-priced condominiums.

Their law would allow 2000 Tenancies-in-Common to by-pass the usual lottery process which limit condo conversions. Condo conversions provide the incentive for real-estate speculators to buy up buildings, evict the tenants, get would-be home-owners to move into a building together and share a mortgage (Tenancies-in-Common), promising them they can then convert the building into much-more-valuable condominiums, where the owners of each unit hold a separate mortgage and have the flexibility buy and sell their units as individuals. Affordable rent housing advocates fought and won a lottery process to slow this condo-conversion process way down, but Weiner and Farrell want to give speculators 2,000 buildings worth of free passes to condo conversion, on a "one-time" basis. Yeah, right!

Low- and very-low-income seniors and disabled people are particular vulnerable in this gruesome process, because they are more likely to have lived a while in rent-controlled housing, which is the only way they can afford to live in the City. When they are evicted as the first step in this condo process, there is nowhere they can afford to live. The same goes for low-income working families.