Mayor Lurie Declares a Rent Emergency as San Francisco Rents Jump 26 Percent

Mayor Daniel Lurie declared a rent emergency in San Francisco on Thursday, September 10, and set out a package of measures aimed at keeping tenants in their homes. The city attributes the spike to demand from the artificial intelligence industry.

Median rents in San Francisco have risen 26 percent over the past year and eviction notices are up 44 percent, according to figures cited in the declaration. Average asking rent for a one-bedroom has passed $4,300, more than $1,000 above where it stood a year ago.

What the Package Contains

Two measures come from supervisors. A proposal from Supervisor Jackie Fielder would stop landlords from evicting tenants who owe less than one month’s rent. A proposal from Supervisor Danny Sauter would cap accumulated or “banked” rent increases in rent-controlled apartments at 10 percent a year.

The mayor’s own items are financial. He has called for $3 million toward nonprofit attorneys representing roughly 400 households facing eviction, and for higher relocation payments to tenants displaced through Ellis Act evictions.

The measures from Fielder and Sauter still need to pass the Board of Supervisors. The declaration itself does not freeze rents. The San Francisco Standard has examined whether a freeze of the kind adopted in New York would even be available to the mayor here.

How This Connects to the Empty Homes Tax

The day after the declaration, a state appeals court struck down San Francisco’s Empty Homes Tax, the 2022 measure that would have charged owners for leaving units vacant. That measure was written to push empty apartments back onto the rental market. The proposals attached to the rent emergency all work on the tenant side instead, protecting people already in their units rather than adding to the pool of available ones.

What It Means If You Rent Here

Nothing has changed yet for existing tenancies. The eviction and banked-increase limits take effect only if the board passes them. The funding for tenant attorneys runs through nonprofit legal providers, and eligibility follows their existing intake rules rather than the declaration.

Anyone comparing neighborhoods on price should treat listing averages carefully: the 26 percent figure describes movement in asking rents over a year, not what a rent-controlled tenant is paying.

Sources: The San Francisco Standard, Mission Local, Axios San Francisco.

Photo: Runner1928, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.