We need your help to stop evictions—Saturday by going door to door for Prop G and Monday by coming to a hearing to stop tourist conversions! Richmond District Literature Drop, Saturday, Sept. 27, 10 AM, Richmond Public Library, 351 9th Ave. With the realtors pumping in millions against Prop G, we can fight back with people power! We need your help to spread the word that Prop G ends the evictions. Join us this Saturday—well be going door to door in the Richmond District, a key neighborhood. Well assign you a precinct (and team you up with someone if needed) and then well go hang our door hangers. Just an hour or two and it means more votes for G and fewer Hearing on Legislation Regulating Tourist Conversions, Monday, Sept. 29, 10 AM, City Hall, Supervisor Chambers Conversions of entire apartment buildings—often using Ellis evictions—into permanent tourist rentals has removed thousands of rent controlled apartments from the housing stock and resulted in the evictions of hundreds of tenants. These are all illegal conversions, yet the city is doing virtually nothing to stop them. At the same time, tenants are being evicted when they use Airbnb for short periods of time while traveling themselves. In effect, tenants are being punished for benign uses of Airbnb while greedy landlords—who can get up to $500 a night—can get away with evicting tenants and permanently turning apartment buildings into illegal hotels. Legislation to regulate tourist conversions via Airbnb and similar sites will be at the Land Use Committee next Monday, September 29 at 10 AM). Proposed by Sup. David Chiu, the legislation seeks to bolster enforcement against landlords converting entire apartments and apartment buildings while allowing the more benign uses like when a tenant lists their apartment on Airbnb while traveling themselves. However, the legislation still needs some improvements and tightening up. Airbnb will turn out hundreds of their clients who will argue that the legislation goes too far and needs to be weakened. We need tenants to turn out too! We need people to tell the Supervisors that the legislation needs to be strengthened so there will be real and effective enforcement against landlords evicting tenants and converting apartment buildings to tourist use. And we need people to tell the Supervisors that tenants should not be evicted just because they listed their apartment on Airbnb during a 3 day weekend. Please join us: Monday, Sept. 29, City Hall Supervisor Chambers at 10 AM. Some of the key amendments we need to push to include: •Enable non-profits like the Tenants Union to directly sue landlords who permanently convert buildings into hotels (without first having to file a complaint with the city) •A solid 90 days/year cap of Airbnb use of your own bedroom in your own apartment. •No evictions of tenants who unwittingly violate their rental agreement when using Airbnb
Posted on: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 20:52:05 +0000