On March 23, 2015, the Rent Board published its annual statistical report on eviction notices, filed with the Board from March 1, 2014, through February 28, 2015. Page 2 shows a break-down by the types of notices and their change in usage in comparison to the previous year. I noticed a 48% decline in filed notices under the Ellis Act cause for eviction, and wondered, whether this decline is connected with the last year's attempt to increase the relocation payments due to the tenants to some cosmic amount, something the courts currently holding as unreasonable and unconstitutional. I saw it closely related, and along with that I also made several peculiar findings on how statistics work in scaling up (scarring up?) the reported amount of the Ellis Act evictions.
Starting with the basics, the Report on its page 2 reflects that in 2013/2014 period (the span covers from March 1 of the previous year through February 28 of the next year), there were 216 Ellis Act* eviction notices filed, and in 2014/2015 only 113, a 48% decline. A total of 216 notices for a year means roughly 18 notices per month.
The timing of the relevant events is this: the new Ellis Act regulation was introduced in February 2014, it passed all required levels of approval by April 22, 2014, and became effective on June 1, 2014. Federal trial court found the ordinance unconstitutional on October 21, 2014. State trial court found the ordinance unreasonable on February 19, 2015.
How this timing affected real property owners' decisions to proceed with the Ellis Act can be seen on the Report's page 3 (a break-down per month), but the dry numbers don't tell the whole story. I personally went to the Rent Board today and retrieved the actual record for the year 2014. The results are slightly different from what is reported (I don't know why the report states 25 notices for March 2014, the database was only showing 18), at can be show in the following graph:
The top (black) line shows the total amount of reported Ellis Act notices for each month. This line already demonstrates the chilling effect of the new ordinance, causing the number of notices to plunge and come to a screeching halt from July through October. Not that many owners were enthusiastic to pay hundreds of thousands in relocation fees while the ordinance was in effect. Following the court's finding of the ordinance as unconstitutional, the activity quickly restored to its average amounts.
The blue line shows an important discrepancy--reporting of repeats or refiles. In the month of December, 6 notices were filed and then refiled, all within the same month. The report includes it as 12 notices, a significant number for any month, but in reality there were only 6.
But wait, the property in these 12-but-really-6 notices was only one! The important detail of the Ellis Act, is that it is not performed on any particular unit—the entire building gets to be vacated, this is the whole idea and characterizing difference of this kind of eviction. Gov. Code § 7060.7(d). See also, S.F. Admin. Code, Section 37.9(13): "all rental units within any detached physical structure and, in addition, in the case of any detached physical structure containing three or fewer rental units, any other rental units on the same lot."
So when I went to the Rent Board, I counted the notices filed for apartments within the same building as one Ellis Act eviction. The red line on the graph shows the result—only 37 Ellis Act evictions were filed for the year 2014, roughly above a third of the reported 95 notices. The 95 happens when in December 2014 a single eviction first gets counted as 6 (for each apartment notice) and then as 12 (for each refiled same notice). And I don't even know why 18 total notices for March 2014 were reported as 25.
Reporting each filing without accounting to the details (repeated filings and same-building filings) causes a feeling of an epidemic. This feeling then leads legislators to come to "findings" of the situation in need of urgent fix, which in turn opens the road for the ordinances like No. 54-14, commanding the owners to pay tenants hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If we were to follow the math of the report, an owner of a single 50-unit building who decides to start a single Ellis Act eviction would be automatically ranked as a "serial evictor," because there would be 50 eviction notices filed. Heavens save this landlord from a refiling—it would at once make it a whole 100 of notices against his forever disgraced name.
As a final food for thought on how to read these eviction statistics, consider that the filing of an eviction notice is not yet an eviction. Psihozios v. Humberg, 80 Cal. App. 2d 215, 221 (Cal. App. 1947); Black v. Knight, 176 Cal. 722, 729 (Cal. 1917). We don't have data to conclude on how many from the 37 noticed buildings will actually undergo the entire process and become "Ellis-Acted." There is a big chance the final number will be even smaller.
[7-20-15 update]. A fresh example of mislabeling statistics is published in the San Francisco Chronicle on July 13. On its face, the article declares that: "the city added 6,559 affordable housing units between 2004 and 2014. But during the same period, 5,470 apartments were “removed from protected status” through a variety of “no fault” evictions allowed by state law."
To me, it means that 6,559 units were added, while only 5,470 units were removed. This is a positive difference of adding 1,089 rental units. And this is if we take the statement of 5,470 units being removed in its face value. As explained above, statistics for counting non-fault evictions are skewed to such a degree that the actual number of evictions is indisputably smaller. One more fact to consider, is that the units "removed" by those non-fault evictions are not actually physically demolished (although it is possible that some units were). Those units were re-rented by new tenants or re-occupied by their owners, and thus remain in the housing stock.
Another sample: S.F. Curbed article, titled "San Francisco's Median Rent Climbs to a Whopping $4,225" bases this assertion on a Zillow study, where it clearly says that the medium rent is .. $3,162.
______________________
* Ellis Act is a statewide law, Gov. Code 7060 et seq.
______________________
Your options and available strategies will depend on your case's particular facts. If you want to learn on your options, rights, and obligations in an Ellis Act eviction, make your first step toward taking control over the circumstances, and call my office at (415) 987-7000. I will be glad to assist in guiding you through the jungle. The only thing you can't afford is to stay put and uninformed. My office provides a confidential assessment of your particular scenario, free of charge, and I will share with you the results of the analysis along with my thoughts on available solutions.
Starting with the basics, the Report on its page 2 reflects that in 2013/2014 period (the span covers from March 1 of the previous year through February 28 of the next year), there were 216 Ellis Act* eviction notices filed, and in 2014/2015 only 113, a 48% decline. A total of 216 notices for a year means roughly 18 notices per month.
The timing of the relevant events is this: the new Ellis Act regulation was introduced in February 2014, it passed all required levels of approval by April 22, 2014, and became effective on June 1, 2014. Federal trial court found the ordinance unconstitutional on October 21, 2014. State trial court found the ordinance unreasonable on February 19, 2015.
How this timing affected real property owners' decisions to proceed with the Ellis Act can be seen on the Report's page 3 (a break-down per month), but the dry numbers don't tell the whole story. I personally went to the Rent Board today and retrieved the actual record for the year 2014. The results are slightly different from what is reported (I don't know why the report states 25 notices for March 2014, the database was only showing 18), at can be show in the following graph:
The top (black) line shows the total amount of reported Ellis Act notices for each month. This line already demonstrates the chilling effect of the new ordinance, causing the number of notices to plunge and come to a screeching halt from July through October. Not that many owners were enthusiastic to pay hundreds of thousands in relocation fees while the ordinance was in effect. Following the court's finding of the ordinance as unconstitutional, the activity quickly restored to its average amounts.
The blue line shows an important discrepancy--reporting of repeats or refiles. In the month of December, 6 notices were filed and then refiled, all within the same month. The report includes it as 12 notices, a significant number for any month, but in reality there were only 6.
But wait, the property in these 12-but-really-6 notices was only one! The important detail of the Ellis Act, is that it is not performed on any particular unit—the entire building gets to be vacated, this is the whole idea and characterizing difference of this kind of eviction. Gov. Code § 7060.7(d). See also, S.F. Admin. Code, Section 37.9(13): "all rental units within any detached physical structure and, in addition, in the case of any detached physical structure containing three or fewer rental units, any other rental units on the same lot."
So when I went to the Rent Board, I counted the notices filed for apartments within the same building as one Ellis Act eviction. The red line on the graph shows the result—only 37 Ellis Act evictions were filed for the year 2014, roughly above a third of the reported 95 notices. The 95 happens when in December 2014 a single eviction first gets counted as 6 (for each apartment notice) and then as 12 (for each refiled same notice). And I don't even know why 18 total notices for March 2014 were reported as 25.
Reporting each filing without accounting to the details (repeated filings and same-building filings) causes a feeling of an epidemic. This feeling then leads legislators to come to "findings" of the situation in need of urgent fix, which in turn opens the road for the ordinances like No. 54-14, commanding the owners to pay tenants hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If we were to follow the math of the report, an owner of a single 50-unit building who decides to start a single Ellis Act eviction would be automatically ranked as a "serial evictor," because there would be 50 eviction notices filed. Heavens save this landlord from a refiling—it would at once make it a whole 100 of notices against his forever disgraced name.
As a final food for thought on how to read these eviction statistics, consider that the filing of an eviction notice is not yet an eviction. Psihozios v. Humberg, 80 Cal. App. 2d 215, 221 (Cal. App. 1947); Black v. Knight, 176 Cal. 722, 729 (Cal. 1917). We don't have data to conclude on how many from the 37 noticed buildings will actually undergo the entire process and become "Ellis-Acted." There is a big chance the final number will be even smaller.
[7-20-15 update]. A fresh example of mislabeling statistics is published in the San Francisco Chronicle on July 13. On its face, the article declares that: "the city added 6,559 affordable housing units between 2004 and 2014. But during the same period, 5,470 apartments were “removed from protected status” through a variety of “no fault” evictions allowed by state law."
To me, it means that 6,559 units were added, while only 5,470 units were removed. This is a positive difference of adding 1,089 rental units. And this is if we take the statement of 5,470 units being removed in its face value. As explained above, statistics for counting non-fault evictions are skewed to such a degree that the actual number of evictions is indisputably smaller. One more fact to consider, is that the units "removed" by those non-fault evictions are not actually physically demolished (although it is possible that some units were). Those units were re-rented by new tenants or re-occupied by their owners, and thus remain in the housing stock.
Another sample: S.F. Curbed article, titled "San Francisco's Median Rent Climbs to a Whopping $4,225" bases this assertion on a Zillow study, where it clearly says that the medium rent is .. $3,162.
______________________
* Ellis Act is a statewide law, Gov. Code 7060 et seq.
______________________
Your options and available strategies will depend on your case's particular facts. If you want to learn on your options, rights, and obligations in an Ellis Act eviction, make your first step toward taking control over the circumstances, and call my office at (415) 987-7000. I will be glad to assist in guiding you through the jungle. The only thing you can't afford is to stay put and uninformed. My office provides a confidential assessment of your particular scenario, free of charge, and I will share with you the results of the analysis along with my thoughts on available solutions.
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