Read El Tecolote’s feature on tenants at three different buildings who are taking on their landlords with the help of San Francisco’s groundbreaking Tenant Right to Organize legislation. Learn more about the Union at Home legislation at sfadc.org/rights/.

Immigrant tenants lead rent strike movement against San Francisco’s largest landlords

by Beatriz Johnston Hernández

April 26, 2025, Updated April 28, 2025

Tenants and supporters rally outside the San Francisco Superior Courthouse on April 23, 2025, demanding better living conditions. The demonstration was organized by the Housing Rights Committee. Photo by Pablo Unzueta for El Tecolote/CatchLight Local

Johana Ramírez has lived in her tiny Tenderloin studio for 17 years. The walls are cracked, the kitchen is infested with cockroaches, closet doors hang loose, and broken tiles litter the floor. Still, she sweeps, scrubs and does her best to keep things tidy — because it’s home.

For the past two years, Ramírez has been on rent strike with her neighbors at 434 Leavenworth, demanding basic repairs, pest control, and compensation for unlivable conditions. Instead, they received eviction notices. Now, the remaining tenants are taking their landlord, Ballast Investments — the city’s largest residential landlord — to the Rent Board, San Francisco’s arbiter in conflicts over fair rent and evictions.

Lea esta historia en español.

“I fight for myself, yes. But we have to set a precedent to protect others like me,” Ramírez said, seated inside her 370-square-foot home in the building known as the Rainbow Flag Apartments. “This landlord has hundreds of apartments.”

Johana Ramírez shows the unsafe living conditions she and her neighbors face daily: a broken window that won’t stay open and a cockroach infestation spreading inside her Tenderloin studio in San Francisco, Calif. Photo: Beatriz Johnston

Around the corner, another tenant association is also on rent strike. The 781 O’Farrell strikers are preparing to meet their landlord, Veritas Investments, in eviction court later this month.

Backed by private equity, both Ballast Investments and Veritas Investments have amassed huge shares of San Francisco’s rent-controlled housing stock, especially in the Tenderloin.

This neighborhood is home to thousands of non-English-speaking, working-class immigrants who have lived in their rent-controlled apartments for many years.

“The neighborhood’s Latinos, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Southeast Asian residents — we’re all screwed in the same way,” Ramírez said. “We’re all too poor to afford anything better.”

Since corporate ownership took over, long-term, non-English-speaking tenants like Ramírez have become prime targets for displacement in favor of higher-paying tenants. Language itself, tenant advocates say, is being weaponized.

At both buildings on rent strike, Veritas removed bilingual onsite managers, posted critical notices only in English, and instructed staff to speak English only.

Tenants and supporters rally outside the San Francisco Superior Courthouse on April 23, 2025, demanding better living conditions. The demonstration was organized by the Housing Rights Committee. Photo by Pablo Unzueta for El Tecolote/CatchLight Local

“Tenants have been hit with fees after being left in the dark about rent changes,” said Lizzy Kramer, spokesperson for the Housing Rights Committee, a San Francisco nonprofit organizing renters into building-by-building tenant associations like Ramírez’s.

San Francisco law requires all landlords, public and private, to provide housing free of garbage, cockroaches, rats, and vermin. Plumbing and gas facilities must be in good order and must provide hot and cold running water.

Tenants have the right to report landlords to city agencies, to withhold rent, or to “repair and deduct.” Landlords are prohibited from retaliating against tenants for exercising these rights; any eviction or rent increase within six months of a tenant complaint can be scrutinized as potential retaliation by a judge.

However, San Francisco’s Language Access Ordinance (LAO) only requires public landlords to provide translation and interpretation services for important documents and notices — not private landlords like Veritas and Ballast.

Some landlords openly celebrate the loophole. “Do you know how many languages we’d have to translate?” one Veritas employee told El Tecolote anonymously.

From broken closet doors to loose, cracked tiles in the bathroom, Johana Ramírez’s studio reflects years of neglected maintenance in San Francisco, Calif. Photo: Beatriz Johnston

A rising tenant movement

The rent strikes are the most visible edge of a growing tenant movement fueled by the Union-at-Home Ordinance, a 2022 city law that mandates landlords negotiate with tenant associations formed by a majority of a building’s residents.

“Tenants have always formed associations,” said Fred Sherburn-Zimmer, lead tenant organizer at the Housing Rights Committee. “But Union-at-Home has solidified and sped up the process of tenant associations being formed.” Within a year of the ordinance passing, 55 buildings had organized associations.

“To have a process that’s clear and written out has been amazing,” Sherburn-Zimmer said. “Some landlords, just at the sight of a tenant association, start obeying the law. But others, like Veritas, are hard to get to the table [to negotiate].”

In response, tenants are increasing the pressure on corporate landlords like Veritas and Ballast.

Tenants and supporters rally outside the San Francisco Superior Courthouse on April 23, 2025, demanding better living conditions. The demonstration was organized by the Housing Rights Committee. Photo by Pablo Unzueta for El Tecolote/CatchLight Local

Coordinated campaigns — and small victories

In mid-April, Ramírez joined a citywide call-in campaign coordinated by the Housing Rights Committee, targeting Veritas, Ballast, and Ballast’s management company, Brick + Timber. Every day, tenants called a different landlord or manager, delivering the same “business is not as usual” message to show their strength.

Tenants from 11 Veritas buildings also protested at the city’s Rent Board in solidarity with the 781 O’Farrell tenants, Sherburn-Zimmer said.

Drawing on their labor organizing experience, tenants have signed petitions, occupied landlord offices, recruited political allies, and, at the most extreme, waged rent strikes to force landlords to negotiate and make repairs.

In some cases, tenants won more than they bargained for.

At 320 14th Street — a 16-unit building once owned by Veritas — mostly Latinx tenants endured years of mold, cockroach infestations, and broken floors and windows. In 2022, they joined a citywide rent strike against Veritas.

Later that year, Veritas defaulted on $1 billion in loans tied to more than 95 residential properties — including 320 14th Street and Ramírez’s 434 Leavenworth building, which Ballast later bought.

Shortly after acquiring 320 14th Street, Prado Investments met with the tenant association, forgave tenants’ rent debt, made critical repairs, and sold the building to the nonprofit San Francisco Community Land Trust.

Under Land Trust ownership, rents were recalculated based on income. Luis Zenón, a bakery worker, and his partner, Sandra Martinez, a McDonald’s employee, saw their rent drop from $2,100 to $1,650 a month for a one-bedroom — a 21% decrease.

Still, given San Francisco’s soaring real estate prices, it’s unlikely that the Land Trust — which operates similarly to a worker cooperative — will be able to expand much beyond the 16 residential properties it currently owns.

The high cost of fighting back

Despite small victories, the cost of organizing remains high.

At Ramírez’s building, only six of the original 30 rent strikers remain — all of them monolingual immigrants.

“I know they made agreements with the landlord out of stress,” Ramírez said. Her depression has worsened throughout the ordeal, but she says she cannot leave San Francisco because she depends on the city’s LGBTQ health services.

“This has been very difficult for me, but the situation is just not fair,” she said.

Her struggle is coming to a head. The Rent Board ordered Ballast and the 434 Leavenworth tenants to meet before a decision is rendered on Wednesday, April 30. Meanwhile, tenants at 781 O’Farrell are preparing for trial in eviction court on Monday, April 28.

“The stakes for Tenderloin residents are huge,” said Sherburn-Zimmer. “These tenants are fighting for the heart of the city right now, at a point when people need San Francisco like they’ve never needed it before.”

For Ramírez, the fight continues — not just for herself, but for tenants citywide who, like her, refuse to be pushed out quietly.

After years of organizing, tenants in three single-room occupancy hotels in San Francisco’s Chinatown have won a major victory. Their landlords have agreed to pay a collective $810,000 in civil penalties to settle a city lawsuit alleging health and safety violations at the properties.

“Let this be a lesson to all landlords who profit off of the suffering of their tenants. In San Francisco, there are consequences for depriving tenants of a safe and healthy place to live.” -SF City Attorney David Chiu

For years, tenants in three Chinatown SROs have been organizing against attempts by the network of owners to flip the units and displace long-term residents. Tenants worked with Chinatown Community Development Center to address ongoing neglect, reductions in services, and harassment by the landlords. While they worked with Code Enforcement and the City Attorney, tenants continued to organize. Through a rent strike and other tactics, tenants won concessions outside of issues addressed by the housing code, including a stop to harassment via late fees and sham 3-day notices to quit. Today, the same tenants are celebrating the $810,000 settlement agreement.

“In this moment in particular, it is important to highlight the role of immigrants in San Francisco who stand up for their own and their community’s rights. Immigrants have been leaders in the fight for equity. This has been a continuous throughline in Chinatown from Wong Kim Ark in 1893 to Community Tenants Association in 2025.” -Malcolm Yeung, Executive Director of Chinatown Community Development Center

For more, see the following:

• City Attorney secures $810,000 from Chinatown SRO owners who profited off of unsafe units, April 8, 2025
• SRO landlords fined $810K for slum conditions in Chinatown, The Real Deal | April 9, 2025
• Three SRO hotel owners settle city lawsuit for $810K, Patrick Hoge, SF Examiner | Apr 7, 2025
• City Fines Chinatown Landlords Over $800,000 For Leaving Chinese American Tenants In Dangerous Conditions, SF Gate : April 8, 2025

Today the Planning Commission voted 5-2 to reject a permit to allow a landlord to convert 72 residential units to tourist units.  The preservation of these affordable units was another victory for community groups who have been fighting the landlord’s attempts to convert this building for nearly a decade. See below for an article in 48 Hills about the vote:

Planning Commission rejects landlord plan to convert SRO rooms to tourist hotel

5-2 vote sends a clear message that the city won’t reward landlords for keeping affordable housing off the market.

By Tim Redmond, March 20, 2025

In a huge victory for tenants, the Planning Commission rejected tonight a permit that would have allowed a residential hotel owner to convert 72 rent-controlled units to tourist use.

The voted sent a clear message to landlords: The city won’t reward you for intentionally keeping low-cost units off the market.

The vote was 5-2, with Commissioners Amy Campbell and Sean McGarry, both appointees of former Mayor London Breed, siding with the landlord.

The owners of the Mosser Hotel, which has both tourist units and SRO units, wanted permission to turn 72 rent-controlled SRO units to tourist use. In exchange, the landlords said, they would pay to keep 72 units at the Minna Hotel for residential use.

John Kevlin, a lawyer representing the landlord, said that Mosser would never rent out the 72 units in the hotel as SRO housing. He in essence admitted that Mosser has kept that housing vacant, and would continue to keep it vacant, during a massive affordable housing crisis. Converting those units to hotel rooms was the only way anyone would ever occupy them.

That alone is a scandal.

A long list of speakers opposed the project, and some focused on a key element of the city’s housing law. Landlords can’t convert SROs to tourist rooms unless those units are replaced, one for one.

The Minna Hotel is currently used as transitional housing for formerly incarcerated people. That’s been the use since 2021.

Everyone agreed that it’s a great program, and someting the city needs.

The landlord argued that only if this permit is approved can it be guaranteed to continue, since technically the current use is unpermitted.

But David Woo, representing SOMA Pilipinas, told the commission that it has the ability to legalize that use anyway.

Gen Fujioka, who works at the Chinatown Community Development Center, presented a letter from Polly Marshall, a longtime tenant lawyer and former member of the Rent Board. She noted that the SRO units at the Mosser are covered under the city’s Rent Ordinance—which includes more than rent control.

The ordinance also includes just-cause eviction, and applies to tenants who have some sort of rental agreement. The people in the Minna have no rental agreements and since they’re part of a transitional housing program, have no eviction protections. They may, for example, be under a rule requiring them to be clean and sober, and can be thrown out at any time.

The planning staff said that they “assumed” the new units would be under rent control, but that’s not the case right now.

“Transitional housing is by definition transitional,” he said.

So the housing that would count as the tradeoff aren’t “comparable.”

“The comparability is unclear,” Commissioner Kathrin Moore said.

Commissioner Amy Campbell asked Kevlin why the 72 units were empty, and whether they would ever be rented out. His response was telling:

“The residential rooms are not even offered on the market,” he said. “Tourist use is not compatible with residential use.”

Moore, and the other hand, said that those combined uses are common in places like Europe. They’ve also been common in San Francisco for decades.

Sue Hestor, a longtime land-use lawyer, noted that Mosser had tried twice before to convert these rooms. “We should not reward them for keeping them off the market.”

San Francisco once again finds itself at a crossroads between corporate interests and the urgent need for affordable housing. The Mosser Hotel, located at 54 4th Street in the South of Market, seeks permission to convert 72 out of 81 residential hotel rooms to tourist hotel rooms, leaving only nine residential rooms, while adding to the existing 78 hotel rooms already operating there. If approved, this move would further deepen the City’s affordable housing crisis, hurt hotel workers, and set a dangerous precedent for other property owners looking to prioritize profits over housing stability.

Despite these concerns, the Mosser claims that lost residential units will be replaced at 509 Minna Street. However, this site has already been in use as supportive housing since 2021, housing people transitioning out of homelessness through a city-supported program run by the Department of Public Health, the Department of Adult Probation, and Westside Community Services. The Planning Department’s draft motion falsely claims that 509 Minna still contains 72 tourist hotel rooms, when in reality, they have been used as transitional housing since the pandemic. Counting these existing rooms as “new” replacement units is misleading at best, and the project at 54 4th St fails to provide one-for-one replacement housing as required by the city’s regulatory codes put in place to prevent the loss of residential hotels. Moreover, the Minna Project serves a specific population in a sober living environment, which is not a direct replacement for general residential housing available to all.

This is not the first time the Mosser has attempted to abandon its obligations as a residential hotel, having applied for a similar conversion of units in 2017. For nearly a decade, the property has claimed a “lack of demand” for low-income housing, despite the City’s ongoing affordability and homelessness crisis. During these years, between 53 and 76 low-income residents could have been housed in the Mosser. The Mosser’s residential vacancy rates raise serious concerns about the City’s role in approving the unit conversions. Granting a conversion permit now would send a clear message to landlords that not renting out residential units can ultimately lead to approval for more lucrative tourist accommodations.

In addition to the conversion of units, the Mosser must also apply for a Conditional Use Authorization to expand its tourist operations, a process that requires the Planning Commission to evaluate impacts on housing, transit, and social services. Hotel workers at the Mosser are currently not unionized. Expansion of the Mosser’s hotel services would add jobs that do not pay enough for workers to afford living in San Francisco, pushing more employees into long commutes from cities such as Modesto and Sacramento. This would further strain regional transit systems, increase reliance on public assistance, and place additional pressure on surrounding communities.

The economic argument for this hotel expansion is also weak. The Mosser Hotel’s market study, conducted in 2018 with a brief 2023 update, projected visitor spending would return to pre-pandemic levels by 2024—a forecast that has already proven incorrect. The Mosser’s current occupancy rate of 59 percent mirrors citywide averages. Converting more rooms to tourist use would not create new demand but instead take business from existing hotels, leading to job losses and reduced working hours elsewhere in the City’s hospitality sector.

Given these economic risks, the Planning Commission must carefully weigh whether this project serves the city’s long-term interests. The conversion of residential units into tourist accommodations is not a right in San Francisco—it requires explicit city approval. The Planning Commission has a duty to reject projects that remove housing that is affordable to low-income residents, strain public resources, and fail to offer meaningful economic benefits. San Francisco cannot afford to lose more residential hotels for the sake of yet another tourist hotel. The Commission must deny this application.

Join us at City Hall (Rm 400) this Thursday at 1PM to tell the Planning Commission to STOP THE CONVERSIONS.

Established in 2000, SOMCAN is a multi-issue and multi-strategy organisation that uplifts the lives of youth, families, individuals, and workers. We work on a wide range of issues—from tenant rights to community planning to Filipino language access to workers’ rights—and provide culturally competent direct services ranging from tenant counselling, family support, youth empowerment, employment, and health and wellness activities. SOMCAN believes in uplifting the voices of immigrant, people-of-color, and low-income communities so that they will be heard in local policy-making decisions and so that government officials are accountable to their needs.

As immigrants across the country come under attack, tenants at 781 O’Farrell continue to fight for fair treatment and a safe place to live through their tenant association.

In this video from SFADC member group Asian Law Caucus,  Meet Sandy, who lives in the city with her husband and two daughters in a Veritas-owned building. Her family endured leaks, mold, broken windows, and pests. After joining the Veritas Tenants Association (VTA), a tenant’s union, and going on rent strike, Sandy finally got some repairs, but the problems keep coming back. Sandy is standing up for her family and her neighbors.

Tenants at a 16-unit apartment building in the Mission are celebrating a big win after the San Francisco Community Land Trust has purchased their building to convert it into permanently affordable housing. For years, residents of the building have been organizing together to demand basic repairs, eventually leading to a rent strike against two successive corporate landlords.  Today, they celebrate the removal of two corporate landlords, the promise of long-term stability and affordability, and even rent reductions for some tenants in the building.

“We all risked so much and we didn’t know what would happen, but in the end, we got what we wanted after six years of fighting. This is a victory for us.” Luis Zeron, 14th street tenant association member

The tenant association is made up of long-term residents, many who have been in the building for decades, families, artists, trades people, service workers, and immigrants.  They formed during a period when their building was owned and managed by Veritas Investments. Veritas became San Francisco’s largest residential landlord after buying up the infamous CitiApartments portfolio as they went bankrupt following sustained citywide organizing by tenants resisting their aggressive and predatory business model.  Veritas did not last long as the dominant player in the city’s residential real estate market, defaulting on loans across their portfolio in the wake of even more tenant organizing.

The building on 14th street was among 20 properties bought up by Prado Group when Veritas defaulted on their loans. Tenants remained united and sought to negotiate with their new landlord over repair issues and rent levels. Ultimately, Prado agreed to sell the building to the San Francisco Community Land Trust, who will ensure that the property remains out of the profit-driven speculative market forever. Today, tenants are celebrating this powerful message to predatory investors: attacking tenants is a bad business model in a city where we know how to organize!

Check out today’s article in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle

For years, Sandra Martinez and Luis Zeron have woken up every day with the feeling of impending doom. Would the next knock on the front door be an eviction from their Mission District apartment?

The San Francisco couple worried about getting kicked out after they couldn’t pay rent because they lost their jobs during the pandemic. Then they decided in 2022 to stop paying rent after they said they spent years complaining to the landlord about substandard conditions to no avail.

After they moved into the one-bedroom where they live with their two children at 320 14th St. in 2018, they said they soon found black mold, excess moisture and cockroaches. They contacted Veritas Investments — which owned the building — to fix the issues. But they said that the company, then the largest landlord in San Francisco, ignored them, so the family took the matter into their own hands and started knocking on neighbors’ doors.

“We found out we all had the same problems,” Martinez said. “So we united.”

Over two years, Martinez and Zeron led efforts to pressure Veritas to make repairs on their dilapidated 100-year-old, 14-unit building across from the old Armory. The group formed a tenants’ union and eventually called a rent strike.

Veritas did not immediately return a request for comment.

But this week the group is celebrating: The building will be made permanently affordable after a nonprofit housing organization, the San Francisco Community Land Trust, bought the property. The land trust owns 16 buildings in the city.

The purchase ensures that residents can remain in their homes for as long as they choose and opens up the opportunity for residents to eventually buy their apartments if they choose to.

Sitting beside their kitchen and a set of bunk beds set up in their living room, Zeron and Martinez told the Chronicle they were still in shock. The Land Trust told them their rent will likely go down by about 15% — hugely helpful since they rely on two low-wage jobs to get by: Zeron works at a bakery and Martinez works at McDonald’s.

“We all risked so much and we didn’t know what would happen, but in the end, we got what we wanted after six years of fighting,” Zeron said. “This is a victory for us.”

Success didn’t come easy.

Zeron, Martinez and other tenants who spoke to the Chronicle said they lived in fear for years that they would be evicted.

“We were so desperate,” Martinez said. “I started looking to get a new apartment but couldn’t find anything. I knew we had to win this.”

The building was part of a larger Veritas portfolio that went into default. Eventually, the mortgage was bought by developer Prado Group in November 2023.

The land trust said the Prado Group worked with the residents and the city to address the property’s deferred maintenance and ultimately to sell the building. Kyle Smeallie, policy director for the land trust, said the tenants’ victory is a “testament to the power of tenant organizing” to stop displacement and bring homes into community ownership.

Brad Hirn, a member of the Housing Rights Committee who helped the tenants organize, said the land trust purchase is a victory for the largely Spanish-speaking working-class artists, musicians, service workers and tradespeople who call the place home.

The purchase is a relief for Matthew Souzis, an 18-year resident who lives in a former storefront in the building. Souzis’ apartment is extraordinary: he has stacks and stacks of books lining the walls, found objects covering every inch from floor to ceiling and East-Asian art scattered throughout. Just the thought of moving any of it was enough to send Souzis into a panic during the rent strike.

He told the Chronicle the outcome was unbelievable. He once thought pushing for a community land trust to purchase the property was a fool’s errand.

“None of this would’ve happened if we hadn’t been strong in our organizing,” Souzis said.

City Emergency Rental Assistance Funding Plummets as SF’s Escalating Eviction Crisis puts Families at Risk of Eviction and Homelessness

Today, housing advocates and community leaders with the People’s Budget Coalition are sounding the alarm as the lack of funding for the City’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) continues to worsen San Francisco’s eviction crisis. We are deeply concerned by the City’s failure to release promised funds for vital services like eviction prevention, workforce development, emergency housing vouchers, and rental assistance. This inaction is placing thousands of San Francisco families at immediate risk of homelessness and financial devastation. We are now over two months into the new fiscal year, and the promised funding addbacks remain undelivered. The organizations that serve these residents are already struggling to deliver critical services without the funding they were promised, and many are now facing staff layoffs and program closures

The ERA program’s funding dropped dramatically this year due to expiring COVID funds. But the need remains the same – rental assistance is required to settle most eviction cases – and without it, tenants will lose their housing and face potential homelessness. Without sufficient funding for SF ERAP, thousands of families are being pushed to the brink of eviction, unable to access the support they desperately need.

SF ERAP was designed to provide crucial assistance to tenants struggling to make rent in the wake of the pandemic, but advocates say the city’s slow and ineffective distribution of funds is failing to meet the urgency of the crisis. Applications for rental assistance continue to flood in as families face escalating eviction threats. Funding this program must be a priority in order to prevent a tsunami of evictions.

“The money is there. The need is there. The only thing missing is action.”

Daniel Casanova, Executive Director of the Eviction Defense Collaborative (EDC) explains the dire impact the lack of rental assistance will have on tenants: “Evictions have returned to pre-pandemic levels with approximately 250 new evictions filed each month. There are over 3000 open eviction cases in SF right now–and the majority require rental assistance to repay the back rent owed. The City’s homelessness prevention strategy relies on the success of the Tenant Right to Counsel program (TRC) – which EDC implements. This program ensures tenants in SF are paired with an attorney when facing eviction. But without rental assistance, no matter their efforts. This is putting thousands of families at immediate risk of losing their homes and will create a homelessness crisis like we have never seen before”

“This is an unacceptable dilemma. The city has invested millions in the Tenant Right to Counsel Program and it’s been a tremendous success – in fact 92% of tenants represented by TRC avoid eviction. But without rental assistance funding, the program’s effectiveness will be sabotaged. Every day that passes without action is another day that families face the threat of eviction and homelessness. We’re calling on Mayor Breed to allocate critical funding to make the SF ERAP program whole
and viable once again.”

With the city’s eviction moratorium expired and legal protections for renters dwindling, the need for an increase in funding for emergency rental assistance is critical. Advocates warn that the lack of funding is putting countless families, particularly low-income renters and people of color, at imminent risk of displacement.

“The SF ERAP funding dropped by more than 50% this year, with no plan in place to solve for the back rent that thousands of tenants still owe due to COVID related loss of wages” said Casanova. “The tenants served by EDC and our partners are extremely low income, from communities of color, and shockingly over 30% are disabled. These tenants and their families are choosing between paying rent or feeding their children, they are elders at risk of being displaced from the communities where they’ve lived for decades. The funding needed to restore the rental assistance program to last year’s funding level, close to $22 million, is not just a number—it’s the difference between security and catastrophe for thousands of San Franciscans.”

Community groups and tenants’ rights organizations are ramping up pressure on City Hall, with planned actions to demand that Mayor Breed immediately allocate funds to restore the ERAP program and get them to those who need them.

“The money is there. The need is there. The only thing missing is action. We trust that Mayor Breed will do the right thing and find the funds to restore this critical program and keep families housed” said Casanova. “We need these funds to be released immediately to prevent further harm to our communities.”

—

The People’s Budget Coalition is a powerful alliance of 150+ community organizations and unions including the Budget Justice Coalition, Homeless Emergency Service Providers Association (HESPA), the Latino Parity and Equity Coalition, SF Rising, HOMEY, Supportive Housing Providers Network (SHPN), Council of Community Housing Organizations (CCHO), and Jobs with Justice San Francisco. These organizations serve impoverished people working towards a City budget that prioritizes working families and poor communities in San Francisco. We believe that the City’s budget should increase resources to address the unmet needs of the City’s most disenfranchised populations, and reflect these values by fully funding programs that ensure everyone has safe and affordable housing, stable employment with fair wages, sufficient healthy food, essential health care, quality early care and education and other investments including those that empower and develop communities. The City can afford these services by redirecting existing funds away from systems of oppression such as the police and sheriff and wasteful spending that does not invest in our frontline city workers.

San Francisco Tenant Right to Counsel attorneys representing residents in the Potrero Hill Terrace-Annex today demanded the San Francisco Housing Authority (SFHA) stop mass evictions at the complex as the first cases involving the mass evictions appear for trial. The first cases appeared for trial last Monday and the next case appears for trial today.

“Our clients are asylum seekers, working families, elderly people, and disabled children. They have lived in Potrero Hill Terrace-Annex for years and paid rent to disgraced San Francisco Housing Authority property managers who promised safe and affordable housing and instead engaged in a conspiracy to defraud our clients,” wrote Tenant Right to Counsel nonprofits whose attorneys represent the Potrero Hill Terrace-Annex residents in a letter to the San Francisco Housing Authority today. “Already, residents have left under duress, been forcibly removed by the Sheriff, and evicted to street homelessness. This must stop.”

The San Francisco Housing Authority has filed approximately 40 eviction lawsuits against residents in the complex in the past few months. The complex is slated to be redeveloped into mixed-use housing.

Residents facing eviction from the Potrero Hill Terrace-Annex have lived in the complex for years, and many paid rent to a property manager working there.
So far, the SFHA has not offered to relocate residents to transitional or permanent housing. Residents who lose their eviction cases risk having an eviction on their record, which can make it difficult for them to live in government-subsidized housing going forward. While some residents have lost their
eviction cases by not responding to the lawsuit in time, none have been decided on the merits.

That began to change last Monday when two of the Potrero Hill Terrace-Annex cases appeared for trial but were taken off calendar because the San Francisco Housing Authority failed to appear. The next case is slated to appear for trial in San Francisco Superior Court today. These cases could reach
a jury in the coming weeks.

Below is a letter sent today to the San Francisco Housing Authority from all of the Right to Counsel organizations in San Francisco. For more, see today’s SF Chronicle article “S.F. calls them ‘squatters’ but they paid rent. Now they’re being evicted” or the 8/22/24 Mission Local article “Squatters evicted after years in vacant Potrero Hill public housing units.”

San Francisco Housing Authority

ATTN: Dr. Tonia Lediju, Chief Executive Officer
Kendra Krawford, Director of Housing Operations
c/o Law Office of Todd B. Rothbard
100 Saratoga Avenue, Suite 200
Santa Clara, CA 05051

Email: office@toddrothbardlaw.com

September 3, 2024

Re: Stop mass evictions of Potrero Hill Terrace-Annex residents to street homelessness.

Dr. Lediju,
We write to implore the San Francisco Housing Authority to relocate, rather than continue to evict to street homelessness, residents in the Potrero Hill Terrace-Annex. We represent longtime residents living in Potrero Hill who are being forcibly displaced by the San Francisco Housing Authority (SFHA) with nowhere to go so that the property can be turned into a mixed-income community.

The San Francisco Housing Authority, through its inaction and blind eye, allowed your property management company’s criminal ring to flourish unabated for years, enriching staff working at the complex at the expense of San Francisco’s most vulnerable residents. Even worse, when SFHA could no longer deny the problem, you sued our clients to evict them rather than rehouse them. In the past few months alone, you have filed about 40 eviction lawsuits. Already, residents have left under duress, been forcibly removed by the Sheriff, and evicted to street homelessness. This must stop.

We therefore request the following:

1. Dismiss all eviction lawsuits filed against tenants in the Potrero Hill Terrace-Annex within 14 days;
2. Vacate eviction judgments already entered against any Potrero Hill Terrace-Annex residents so that residents have a fair shot at renting again;
3. Meet with each Potrero Hill Terrace-Annex resident you seek to evict to assess their eligibility for transfer to a viable SFHA-subsidized unit;
4. Place all eligible Potrero Hill Terrace-Annex residents on the waitlist for portable Tenant-Based Housing Choice Vouchers;
5. Allow residents to remain in place until new subsidized housing is available;
6. Meet with all residents and attorneys to draft a mutually agreeable plan, in accordance with the requests outlined in this letter.

We look forward to discussing a path forward.

Sincerely,
Tenant Right To Counsel organizations representing Potrero Terrace-Annex residents:
Eviction Defense Collaborative
Bay Area Legal Aid
AIDS Legal Referral Panel
Open Door Legal