For Council President Sean Elo-Rivera, motivation to strengthen renter protections comes from personal experience

With rents high, housing in short supply and pandemic tenant protections gone, a movement is underway to increase renters’ rights in San Diego.

The San Diego City Council is considering new proposals to protect renters from losing their homes through no-fault evictions. Some of the proposals would require landlords to pay tenants for displacement or no-fault evictions. But many rental property owners say they are not the problem, and shouldn’t have to bear the burden of San Diego’s housing crisis.

San Diego City Council President Sean Elo-Rivera has championed stronger protections for renters. He joined KPBS Midday Edition to talk about his priorities. The conversation below has been lightly edited for clarity.

What does “Housing as a Human Right” really mean? Is this an aspirational slogan, or is the city prepared to put some teeth into this?

Elo-Rivera: I think that it’s both aspirational and something that can have teeth applied to it. When a city council goes on the record by way of a resolution, we are inviting accountability. We’re inviting accountability as the individuals who vote in support of that resolution. We’re inviting accountability as the legislative body for the city to do our best to adhere to the commitments made in that resolution. It means we should not be doing things that undermine the ability to create housing. We should not be doing things that create unnecessary vulnerabilities for those who are currently housed. That means that we should be taking active measures to ensure that folks have every opportunity to live in San Diego in decent, stable housing.

What are some of the most pressing problems that San Diego renters are facing now?

Elo-Rivera: The number one issue that folks are facing, and I include myself in this conversation because I am a renter along with a number of my colleagues on the council — It stems from the lack of availability of apartments and rental housing in general here in San Diego. There’s comments made sometimes that maybe you just can’t afford to live in San Diego. Maybe too many people want to live here. And I don’t think that that’s the city that we want to be, where we are dependent upon folks to do certain jobs during the day or in the evening, but we don’t want to create a situation where they can actually live here. The rent is too high. People are consistently struggling to find a place that they can afford. But even if they do find that place, far too many people are receiving notices that they have to leave their apartment despite paying the rent, abiding by the terms of their lease, as a result of no-fault evictions. And San Diego has lagged behind in updating our tenant protections. And we have a nearly 20-year-old ordinance that is simply not getting the job done anymore.

You’ve been speaking out about your own experience as a renter, and a crisis that involved your parents several years ago. Will you share that with us? 

Elo-Rivera: Yeah, for most of my life, my family and I have been renters. And that means that we are subject to the various conditions that renters face. Increases in rent sometimes when they’re unaffordable, the whims of a landlord, the power imbalances that sometimes exist, that do exist between the landlord and their tenant. And then evictions are part of the experience for many renters. And that’s been part of our experiences as well. There are memories from when I was younger of this hurried move during my 8th grade year and that was certainly somewhat traumatic. And then more recently, my family faced a situation when they were forced out of their place in Orange County, and me trying to do the best that I could. This was back in 2015, I wasn’t making much money and couldn’t provide a lot of financial assistance. But I found a different apartment to move into myself and move them into my apartment in Golden Hill. And unfortunately, that apartment changed ownership and their rent increased significantly to the point where they could no longer keep up with the payments that led to them needing to find another place to live. And me having an eviction on my record and the impact that has on my credit. That’s part of the experience of renting for a lot of people. And certainly knowing the long term effects that eviction can have — both tangible and intangible effects — certainly motivates me to want to make that experience as few and far between as possible for other folks here in San Diego.

So this whole issue is really personal for you. I’m wondering what kind of lasting impressions did you take from that experience that’s influencing your work now?

Elo-Rivera: Yeah, it’s certainly personal. And I know that evictions have serious consequences. They can be the ones that I felt, they can be the consequences that those feel who end up on the streets because they’re evicted. And that motivates me to want to build a housing system here in San Diego where folks can keep a roof over their heads, where they know their rights, have the opportunity to have their rights enforced and the support that they need to get by when they’re in a momentary point of crisis. And I think that the end result of that would be a San Diego where more people have housing stability, where fewer people are on the streets and we’re all better off for it.

During the council’s recent tenant protection ordinance workshop, what kinds of stories did you hear from renters?

Elo-Rivera: Yeah, we’ve been hearing stories since I was running for office and throughout our time in office. But obviously as we’ve worked on this more and more with the community, we’ve heard more and more stories. A couple that stand out to me involve one, an entire apartment building where the folks in that community were served no-fault eviction notices just weeks before the holidays. 100 families just weeks before the holidays who were all paying the rent, who were all abiding by the terms of their lease, being told that they needed to get out. Now only two of the families who were there remain. They’ve done their best to try to stay, despite being— trying to be forced out of their homes. And then the other stories that really stand out to me are about seniors. Seniors who, again, are following the rules. They’re paying the rent, they’re not violating the lease. They’re living on fixed incomes. And some of their landlords have been pretty brazen and sharing with them that, you know, yes, you haven’t done anything wrong, but I can make a lot more money with somebody else. And so you need to go. I’m going to make some upgrades here, and then I’m going to be able to charge twice as much for this apartment. We are in a housing and homelessness crisis here in San Diego, and we can’t simply watch situations like this occur and not take action.

What are some of the protections the city is considering extending to renters?

Elo-Rivera: The first thing I think is important to note is that San Diego is again lagging behind other cities when it comes to tenant protections. We have a nearly 20-year-old ordinance on the books. The state policy was updated in the last couple of years, but San Diego was exempted from that because of our old ordinance. And we want to make sure that we at a minimum come up to the state standard, but also provide a few additional protections. We want folks who are following the rules, who are paying their rent, to have ample notice that they’re going to have to move if that situation does arise, and given a real opportunity to keep their families here in San Diego and to not fall into homelessness. We want to ensure that that family that’s doing everything we’re supposed to do. If they’re served a no-fault eviction notice, they’re not simply forced out and have to come up with $8,000, $10,000 to move in and to pay for moving expenses. And again, as a result of that, find themselves living in their car or having to move from San Diego. One of the, I think, very important changes that we want to make, and I think we’re making progress on in our conversations with some of the folks from the rental industry, is ensuring that our protections kick in on the first day of someone’s tenancy. Right now, believe it or not, San Diegans have to wait two years before their protections kick in. And that means that someone can go through all the expenses of moving the thousands that it costs to pay for a moving truck and pay for movers, or to bring your family over to help you move, upfront money that you need to pay when you move in. All of those costs, and then two months later, despite having broken no rules, be told that they have to move again. And I think most of us would agree, almost everyone would agree that that’s not right and that people should have their protections on the first day that they move in. And we want to make sure that that is the case here in San Diego. And then the last thing is providing a little bit of additional security and stability to seniors and people with disabilities, the folks who are most vulnerable of not only falling into homelessness, but of the consequences of falling into homelessness. We are making progress on that front as well.

The flip side to renters rights is that owning property is not free. Landlords have bills to pay too. How do you balance the needs of renters with the rights of property owners?

Elo-Rivera: I think the first thing to point out here is in the proposal that we’ve brought forward. We are not talking about folks who are not paying their rent on time. I understand that the folks need to recover their costs when they’re running a business and they should have an opportunity to make some profit. But there’s also responsibilities that come with running certain businesses. And when your business involves something that has a huge impact on the health and safety of those who are interacting with your business, and in this case, housing, there should be an understanding that there will be some rules applied. And I certainly want to be empathetic to the challenges of running a business. We want there to be clarity because landlords also do deserve to know what the rules are and that they’re not going to be changed on a whim. It’s important to note as well that we’ve had folks with property management and apartment ownership experience as part of the working group that helped create the framework. So we are certainly not ignoring the voices of property owners. But right now, there’s not only a huge power imbalance between a renter and their landlord, but some very, very outdated rules that bad actors are exploiting. And here’s the problem: When bad actors exploit rules with something as important as housing, this isn’t like someone’s just out a few bucks. It can be the difference between life and death, between a family having a roof over their head and not. And we can’t simply accept that bad actors exploiting too lax rules is a part of everyday life here in San Diego when we have the opportunity to create better policy that will ensure that more folks have housing stability without being overly onerous on those who are renting their homes.

What needs to happen now to move these tenant protections forward?

Elo-Rivera: Yes, we had an important conversation at council, and that conversation centered around a framework that our office put together with a variety of advocates and experts. The next step is continuing those conversations and bringing back an action item for the council to consider and we immediately got to work in having those follow up conversations. We listened closely to what our colleagues had to say. We listened closely to what the advocates for both tenants and the landlords had to say. And we are acting with real urgency. And that urgency stems from knowing that we cannot solve the homelessness crisis here in San Diego without providing more protections for renters.

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