Attempts to Place Rent Board and Affordable Housing Measures on November Ballot Fail

From the SF Realtor Advantage Online for August 3, 2010:


Two proposed measures that seemed destined to appear on the San Francisco municipal ballot in November, both of which were opposed by the San Francisco Association of REALTORS®, failed to receive the support necessary to make it.

The first was a Charter amendment proposed by Supervisor David Campos (formerly a deputy city attorney for the City and County of San Francisco, later, general counsel to the San Francisco Unified School District, and currently, a supervisor representing District 9) to change the composition of the city’s Rent Board to weight it in favor of tenants.

Currently, the mayor appoints the members of the Rent Board to serve four-year terms. The board consists of two tenants, two landlords and a neutral member who is neither a tenant nor a landlord and who owns no rental property. The members serve at the pleasure of the mayor.

Under Campos’ proposed Charter amendment, the Rent Board would consist of three tenants, two landlords and two neutral members. The Board of Supervisors would be authorized to appoint three members (one tenant, one landlord and one neutral), the mayor to appoint three members (one tenant, one landlord and one neutral) and the Board of Supervisors’ president and the mayor to jointly appoint one tenant member. The Rent Board would be added to the list of commissions whose members are subject to removal only for official misconduct.

The second was a Charter amendment proposed by Supervisor Chris Daly (representing District 6) to require the diversion of city funds to affordable housing projects in San Francisco.

Daly’s proposed Charter amendment, if approved by the voters, would have mandated that the city EVERY YEAR for 15 years spend 33 percent of every budget surplus on housing projects—NOT housing projects for typical San Francisco working class families but projects for a very narrow spectrum of the population.

The amendment’s mandate would take precedence over all other needs—regardless of how critically important those other needs might have been to those who live and work in San Francisco.