Foreclosures

A new New Deal

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I like Obama’s call for a moratorium on foreclosures, although it doesn’t go far enough. But The Nation has been running some great stuff on what a real plan to overhaul the U.S. economy and get us out of this crisis would look like.

William Greider has a clear, coherent explanation of what went wrong and a prescription for how to fix it here. Howard Zinn talks about how to spend the money on the middle class, not Wall Street.

Paul Krugman talks about partial nationaization of the banks here. Funny how even the mad privatizers of the Bush Administration are being forced to accept at some level that idea that the public ought to own part of the financial institutions that we’re bailing out.

Sandoval, Dufty, Daly attack MOH

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The Mayor’s Office of Housing has come under attack for failing to construct enough inclusionary affordable housing units and for not doing enough financially to help folks facing foreclosures.

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Map of SF foreclosures, as of December 2007.

The charges come as D 11 Sup. Geraldo Sandoval and D 6 Sup. Chris Daly seek to amend off-site inclusionary affordable housing requirements.

The amendments would allow that twenty-five percent off off-site units may be built outside the currently required one-mile radius from a developer’s market rate project.

They would also provide that off-site units cannot be located in industrially-zoned areas, or within one-quarter of a mile of developments containing 200 or more publicly-owned and operated affordable housing developments.

“The fact that not one affordable housing development has been promoted by the Mayor’s Office of Housing or the non-profit sector, in District 11 tells me that something is wrong,” said Sandoval, whose district includes the Outer Mission and the Excelsior and is home to the highest foreclosure rate in the City.

Sandoval noted that when he proposed an emergency fund last year to fight foreclosures, MOH opposed the idea.

“That program went nowhere,” Sandoval observed.
“And every time I have tried to get a non-profit housing developer into District 11, they do not and have not got any help from the Mayor’s Office of Housing,” he added.

Noting that the proposed amendment also amounts to a small program (Twenty-five percent of a 25 percent mandate is a small subset,) Sandoval said, “I can’t understand why the Mayor’s Office of Housing is so eager to oppose it. This is about fairness.”

MOH’s Doug Shoemaker countered that the amendments are “a solution in search of a problem.”

Shoemaker reminded the Board why the supervisors updated inclusionary affordable housing legislation a few years ago to make sure that offsite units were built within a one- mile of developers’ market rate sites.

“It was because affordable units were being built where no one wanted it, under freeways, the far end of city, and remote from retail, services and transportation,” Shoemaker recalled.

“Our main concern,” he said, “is that development will end up being built under the cloverleaf of 101 and 280. Developers seek lowest land prices. They are rational. They seek cost savings.”

Sup. Maxwell sided with Shoemaker, noting that the legislation that Daly and Sandoval seek to amend was put together less than 18 months ago.

“The poorest people need to be where the infrastructure and schools are,” Maxwell said.

Sup. Tom Ammiano also opposed the amendments.
“It takes away a lot of the choices we have,” he said

But Sup. Bevan Dufty supported Daly and Sandoval’s efforts, noting that he’s been seeking more affordable housing in his district in the last years, with almost no success.

“To me this is not a mandate that 25 percent [of these affordable units] has to be a mile away.” Dufty said.

Claiming that if developers proposed inaccessible offsite units, the Board would not support it, Dufty added, “But a little bit of flexibility isn’t a bad thing.”

“This is such a modest proposal. I can’t believe we’re denying it,” Sandoval lashed out.

Sandoval observed that thanks to the MOH opposition to the Board’s proposed $2 million revolving foreclosure fund, all the City has, on the foreclosure front, is a task force and a comprehensive report.
“That’s not the same thing as helping people, “ he said. “If this passes, we might be able to.”

MOH contends it’s been busy trying to put infrastructure in place, so it can help people access the federal foreclosure package that President Bush just signed into law.

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Nationwide foreclosure rate “heat” map.

In the end, the Board kicked Sandoval and Daly’s amendments back to committee.

“Perhaps some massaging is in order,” Daly acknowledged.

Lennar asks feds for help–Republican senator blocks bill

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Are we worried, yet? With San Francisco having climbed deeper into bed with Lennar thanks to Prop. G’s passage, the bad news coming from Wall Street and beyond can’t exactly be music to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s ears.

As Lennar reported bigger-than-expected quarterly losses today, Lennar’s Chief Executive Officer Stuart Miller expressed hope that the federal government would soon belly up and help bail out the beleagured housing industry.

Miller cited increased foreclosures, higher unemployment rates and diminished consumer confidence as reasons why the Florida-based mega developer experienced a 61 percent loss in revenues this quarter.

“With the U.S. housing inventory growing in excess of absorption and limited credit available, the prospect of further deterioration in the homebuilding industry will likely become reality absent Federal government action,” said Miller, who is apparently hedging his political bets by making the maximum campaign contribution to both presidential candidates.

“To that end, we are hopeful that the Federal government will acknowledge the need for further reform and will institute programs designed to stabilize and facilitate the recovery of the housing market.”

But a government plan to address the nationwide foreclosure crisis hit a roadblock in the Senate yesterday in the shape of a Republican from Nevada, Sen. John Ensign.

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Sen. John Ensign (Nevada) wants $7 billion for renewable energy tax credits before he’ll support foreclosure bill.

This isn’t the first time that Ensign has played the role of lone obstructionist.

In September 2007, the Senate discovered that Ensign was using the “secret hold” to obstruct a bill that requires senators to file fund-raising reports electronically, rather than bury the identity of their benefactors in paper filings.

And for a short period in March 2006, Ensign blocked the nomination of Vice Admiral Thad Allen (who replaced FEMA director Mike Brown in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina) to become the next Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard.

But now Ensign, who reportedly has been tasked with assembling a staff to win back the U.S. Senate for Republicans in November 2008, is blocking a foreclosure rescue plan that has broad bipartisan support until he gets a vote on his amendment to provide almost $7 billion in renewable energy tax credits.

As a result, passage of the housing bill to create a multi-billion fund to aid thousands of homeowners refinance costly mortgages into more affordable government-backed loans, will likely be delayed until after July 4.

“In an election year, very few things are actually going to make it into law,” Ensign told reporters, “So if you actually want to get something done, you need to be on that train that is basically going to be leaving the station.”

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While Lennar spent $5 million to defeat a grassroots coalition that wanted 50 percent affordable housing in the Bayview, the City applied for $25 million in grants to bail out Lennar’s Shipyard development.

Here in San Francisco, Lennar Corp. has assured elected officials that there is no relationship between LandSource, a land and development company that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sunday, June 8, and Lennar’s Bayview Hunter’s Point project.

In a June 9 letter to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Lennar Corporation’s Chief Investment Officer Emile Haddad wrote, “We anticipate that there may be some effort to link LandSource to other Lennar ventures, including Hunters Point Shipyard. Let me be clear: There is no relationship between the two entities. Hunters Point has its own capital structure and financial partners.”

Haddad does not however explicitly mention that LandSource, which owns properties in California, Arizona, Florida, Texas and New Jersey, does have a relationship with Lennar Mare Island, which also filed bankruptcy June 8, leaving city officials in the already bankrupt Vallejo doubly stressed.

And nowhere does Haddad guarantee San Francisco a smooth, obstacle-free redevelopment of Bayview Hunters Point, which apparently is already facing a potentially fatal $25 million funding gap, according to City officials.

“Lennar is committed to continuing to work closely with our community partners and the City and County of San Francisco to overcome any obstacles and to work toward a successful venture,” Haddad writes. “You have my personal reassurance that we will keep you fully informed of any and all significant developments that may impact the project.”

“Likewise, we will continue to utilize the development’s partnership experience and qualifications to leverage all state and federal funding sources to enhance the project and ensure its timely completion.”

As for Lennar’s CEO Stuart Miller, he told investors that “notwithstanding the bleak operating environment, Lennar made significant progress during our second quarter.”

This progress included reducing unsold completed inventory. “We now have on average less than one completed unsold home per community.”
Lennar also reduced selling, general and administrative expenses by 60 percent.

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“Given our success with asset reduction, we have shifted our primary focus to the execution of an efficient homebuilding model through the repositioning of our product to meet today’s consumer demand and by aggressively reducing our construction costs.”

Sounds like a potential Triple Uhoh.

‘we are very pleased to end our second quarter with approx $880 million in cash and no outstanding borrowings under our credit facility. We have reduced our maximum joint venture recourse debt by approximately $1 billion from its peak level in 2006, which reflects a decrease of over 50 percent.”

“We recognize that the remainder of 2008 will likely see further deterioration in overall market conditions; however, we are confident that we will remain well positioned with a strong balance sheet and properly scaled operations to navigate the current market downturn as a leaner and more efficient homebuilder.”

Meanwhile, following a posting of a video showing some community members less than positive take on Lennar, someone replied with a video about Lennar’s homebuilding operations in Texas.

Seems like some folks in the Bayview aren’t the only ones, er, frustrated with Lennar.

Rising rents in San Francisco

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I’ve accomplished a difficult feat that may become impossible in coming years: I rented a room in a decent neighborhood in San Francisco for $550. It wasn’t easy. Searching Craigslist, spamming my friends, and looking at about 20 apartments over the last couple weeks has been like having another part-time job. And my success story was only the result of finding a tiny room in a rent-controlled four-bedroom apartment where some good friends live.
Rents and the number of apartment-seekers are both on the rise and the number of rental units is falling, a perfect storm hitting low-income San Franciscans who hope to stay in The City.

“The rents are definitely going up on the vacant units, and for various reasons, the supply is declining,” says Ted Gullicksen, executive director of the San Francisco Tenants Union. Some of those reasons include condo conversions (which number 2500 since 2003, according to the latest Planning Department figures), demolitions, temporarily rented SoMa condos taken off the rental market, and would-be home owners driven to rent by foreclosures, still-high prices, and fear that they bottom still hasn’t been reached (check here for some interesting rental data compiled from Craigslist listings).

Why did Rev. Wright do this?

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Bob Herbert, the Afro-American op ed columnist for the New York Times, had the most sensible answer I’ve seen in his Monday (April 29) column.

He waded right in with his lead:

“The Rev. Jeremiah Wright went to Washington on Monday not to praise Barack Obama, but to bury him.

“Smiling, cracking corny jokes, mugging it up for the big time news media,–this reverend is never going away. He’s found himself a national platform, and he’s loving it.”

Then: “So there he was lecturing an audience at the National Press Club about everything from the black slave experience to the differences in sentencing for possession of crack and powdered cocaine.

“All but swooning over the wonderfulness of himself, the reverend acts like he is the first person to come with the idea that blacks too often get the short end of the stick in America, that the malignant influences of slavery and the long dark night of racial discrimination are still being felt today, that in many ways this is a profoundly inequitable society.”

Herbert then gets to the question. “This is hardly new ground. The question that cries out for an answer from Mr. Wright is why–if he is passionately committed to liberating and empowering blacks–does he seem so insistent
on wrecking the campaign of the only Afican-American ever to have had a legitimate shot at the presidency.”

Herbert says that “my guess is that Mr. Wright felt he’d been thrown under a bus by an ungrateful congregant
who had benefited mightily from his association with the church and who should have rallied to the former pastor’s defense. What we’re witnessing now is Rev. Wright’s “I’ll show you!” tour.”

Obama rightly and firmly rejected Wright and his attacks. Now he should change the subject, get back to the real campaign and the real issues, and let his Afro-American and white surrogates carry on the dialog if necessary. Wright will be a killer swift boat issue only if Obama and his campaign allow it to become one.

I think he should take Clinton on in a Lincoln and Douglas style debate. I think he would win, given his oratorical skills, and it would help change the subject. But most important, Obama needs to reenergize his campaign
by injecting a strong populist appeal to his campaign theme of unifying and transformation. He needs to present the case that he has the grit and the intellect to beat the Republicans on foreclosures, the economy, the war, Iran, universal health care, the rising inequality in American life, and everything else that our despised president and his sucking up successor represents. He must offer leadership and offer real solutions and programs with passion and stick to the issues that really matter to the growing tide of Americans who are desperately angry and frustrated with Bush. That is the best way for Obama to deal with Wright and the Wright attacks to come. B3

Click here to read today’s Bob Herbert column, The Pastor Casts a Shadow.

Hot like Neu Wave Feminism

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At the Femina Potens gallery, oil painter Alicia DeBrincat, photographer Rocksusto, and paper cut artist Lex McQuilkin take a fresh look at gender, sexuality, societal expectations and ethics in Neu Wave Feminism, a group show that opened April 5.

DeBrincat’s “Cultural Corset” series examines how women’s identities and societal expectations play out on the terrain of the body. She is interested in how American culture is simultaneously obsessed with the female body and repulsed by its natural form.

Her huge oil paintings portray female nudes with a stunning realism – breasts small and large, thighs puckered with cellulite, rounded bellies.

“The paint is applied with an attention to anatomical detail that both celebrates women’s bodies and references the leering voyeurism and minutely critical gaze that the female body encounters,” she writes in her artist statement.

Photographer Rocksuto has also taken a thematic approach to her work. In 2007, she embarked on A Photo a Day project, which explored a range of themes, such as population, foreclosures, sexual ethics, trust fund nihilism, and chickens.

This year, she’s embarked on A Photo a Month project, where she’s limited her thematic exploration to gender roles, sexual ethics, and religion.

Lex McQuilkin’s swirling, delicate paper cuts explore gender and masculinity from queer perspective. Her latest series, Good Old Boys, explores the precariousness of masculinity and its portrayal.

Gender and sexuality — not tired!

Neu Wave Feminism
April 5 – 27, 2008
Gallery hours: Thurs-Sun, 12-6 p.m.
Femina Potens Gallery
2199 Market, SF
415-864-1558

Beyond beds

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› news@sfbg.com

What do army barracks, prisons, hospitals, and dog pounds have in common? They all have minimum and legally enforceable standards of care, something absent in San Francisco’s homeless shelters. Legislation to fix that problem now appears to be shaping up as the latest political skirmish pitting fiscally conservative Mayor Gavin Newsom against progressives on the Board of Supervisors.

The Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Finance Committee met Feb. 20 to hear testimony and discuss proposed legislation that seeks to impose basic requirements on city-funded shelters, improve complaint procedures, and allow fines for noncompliance (see "Setting Standards," 1/30/07).

Prior to the hearing, dozens of activists, city officials, and homeless people rallied on the steps of City Hall in support of the legislation, holding colorfully painted signs with references to some of the proposed requirements, including "nutritious meals," "clean sheets," and "8-hour-a-day sleep."

Marlon Mendieta, program director at the Dolores Street shelter, took to the podium to make his case for supporting the legislation: "It may seem strange that a service provider would be here to support legislation that will cost money and more time and more work — it’s easy though. It’s an issue of human rights."

The scene was just as lively inside as demonstrators and officials packed the board’s chambers. The committee — composed of Sups. Aaron Peskin, Bevan Dufty, and Tom Ammiano (sponsor of the ordinance) — took testimony, almost all of it urging the committee to pass the legislation on to the full Board of Supervisors for approval.

Dariush Kayhan, who has been on the job for six weeks as the mayor’s appointed homeless policy director, gave the only testimony urging the committee not to pass the legislation.

"This is the part where we have some concerns, the fiscal part," Kayhan said. "Give us more time, maybe we can plow some of these items — the ones we can agree on — into the existing contracts," he said, referring to the contracts awarded to nonprofit organizations who manage the city’s shelters.

While the city’s contracts with shelter providers do spell out many standards, a recent Guardian investigation (see "Shelter Shuffle," 2/12/08) and work by the Shelter Monitoring Committee, which developed the recommendations embodied in Ammiano’s legislation, found they are often ignored with no consequences. The Guardian also found that people are being turned away from the shelters every night despite vacancies.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, in a letter to supervisors obtained by the Guardian, voiced his concern with the fiscal impact of the legislation, citing a $2.4 million price tag, the high end of costs developed by the Budget Analyst’s Office, which said the legislation could cost $1.7 million or even less. Advocates of the legislation are confident they can bring its price down.

The $2.4 million estimate assumes a new security guard will be hired at each shelter to meet safety requirements. The legislation does not specifically mandate new personnel and many argue increased staff training and facility improvements could provide cheaper alternatives.

The Shelter Monitoring Committee, composed of mayoral and board appointees, estimates the cost will be closer to $1 million, which amounts to less than half of 1 percent of the city’s total projected deficit of $225 million.

"This is an investment in a population that has not been invested in in a long time," committee chair Quintin Mecke said at the hearing. "I don’t think there is any reason to wait to make sure people have access to toilet paper, have access to clean conditions, have access to ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] -compatible beds."

At Ammiano’s request, the committee decided to postpone the vote for two more weeks to try to work out differences with the Mayor’s Office, and set the next hearing for March 5. If the supervisors proceed without Newsom’s support and he ends up vetoing the legislation, it would take the vote of eight supervisors to override and implement the standards anyway.

Newsom and the board have been at odds over homelessness and other budget priorities. Buster’s Place, the city’s only 24-hour drop-in shelter, is now caught in the middle of the political tug-of-war between budget cuts and shelter improvements. There is a provision within the standards of care legislation that mandates a 24-hour emergency drop-in center. At the time it was drafted, Buster’s Place filled this requirement.

However, due to the timing of the midyear budget cuts ordered by Newsom, the Department of Public Health cut off funding for Buster’s, effectively closing the center at the end of March (see "No Shelter from the Budget Storm," 2/20/08). It is now unclear how the requirement will be met if the legislation passes.

"We’re tired of having centers like Buster’s Place on the chopping block," Mecke told the Guardian. "It’s ludicrous to keep going in this cycle over and over again." Buster’s was slated to close six months ago but was rescued by a Board of Supervisors’ budget add-back, and a year before that, McMillan’s (another 24-hour center) was forced shut its doors.

The ordinance seems to challenge Newsom’s recent efforts to whittle back shelter services. It would allocate more funds to a department Newsom is trying to cut and assure the existence of an emergency 24-hour center, a clear departure from Newsom’s recent announcement that he wants to ultimately "get San Francisco out of the shelter business."

The most controversial requirement within the standards of care legislation seems to be its enforcement mechanism, calling for fines of $2,500 levied against the nonprofit service providers for noncompliance. While Kayhan voiced reservations about creating new staff positions to carry out enforcement, the SMC has insisted the fines are crucial and will only be used as a last resort.

"In 2004, the supervisors [created the] Shelter Monitoring Committee because contract compliance was not working," Mecke said. "If there are policies in theory, they should be legalized and should become mandates and be enforced."

Barbra Wismer, the medical director of Tom Waddell’s clinic, which frequently serves homeless men and women, urged attendees at the budget meeting to put politics aside and remember the importance of shelter standards, not just for the current homeless population, but for all San Francisco residents.

"If there was a natural disaster like an earthquake, or a fiscal disaster like increased foreclosures, and 1 to 2 percent of people — 14,000 in San Francisco — had to be put in emergency shelters," Wismer said, "we do not have any standards to protect them."

For rent sale

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› news@sfbg.com

Luz Moran, 75, fingers through a shoebox full of certified envelopes from her landlord’s attorney, squinting at the English words. She’s sitting on a red couch in the living room of her modest Mission District apartment, her feet barely touching the floor.

"This is another check he sent me, look," she mutters in Spanish, pointing out two checks amounting to $3,752.85. The money was sent along with an Ellis Act eviction notice, the first half of the $7,500 in relocation benefits city law requires be given to elderly or disabled tenants who are removed through the state law (if the tenant is not elderly or disabled, the landlord only needs to provide them with $4,500).

"I don’t know what we will do. Other apartments are expensive, and we can’t afford them," Moran says. The money is barely enough to cover moving costs and the first month’s rent at another place, she says, adding, "I don’t think this landlord is dying because of lack of money."

The eviction was not her landlord’s first attempt to move Moran, along with her 92-year-old mother and her son, from their two-bedroom apartment. In May 2006 he offered to sell them the unit for a discounted rate of $310,000, which was out of the family’s price range. Then he suggested a buyout agreement so they would leave voluntarily, but said he couldn’t offer much more than the Ellis Act’s required compensation. After the initial attempt to subdivide the building and all other negotiations failed, the landlord finally issued the eviction. He now wants to sell the units as tenancy in common apartments. But the Morans — and some other tenants in the building — are refusing to cash his checks.

"Because if we accept the money, it says that we are willing to leave here," Moran says.

The word eviction brings back bad memories for many residents of San Francisco, where the number of people thrown out of their homes numbered 2,878 in 1999. Then, at the height of the dot-com era, long-term renters were booted to make room for higher-paying tenants and out-of-towners prepared to buy six-figure homes.

But Moran’s story highlights two new additions to the renter woes that fill the San Francisco Tenants Union these days: landlord buyouts and a surge in TIC homeownership. With San Francisco’s housing prices on a seemingly perpetual upswing, it’s no wonder TIC ownership has increased twelvefold in the past decade. In 1996, 55 TIC units were sold through the San Francisco Multiple Listing Service, and in 2006 that number rose to 650, according to Realtor groups.

At first glance, it looks as if this trend should answer the prayers of middle-class families while avoiding an increase in no-fault tenant evictions. The city’s total evictions have been going down since 2001, hovering around 1,500 since 2003. But over the past five years Ellis Act petitions have slowly picked up, then petered off again, according to Rent Board data. And Ted Gullicksen, office coordinator at the Tenants Union, says these numbers don’t take into account relocation as a result of unregistered buyouts and threats, which can often lead to TIC ownership.

Each weekday at the Tenants Union dozens of renters shuffle through the doors, plop into mismatched chairs, and wait for hours to spill their complaints and legal paperwork onto the desk of a volunteer counselor.

"We’re pretty busy here at the Tenants Union," Gullicksen says on a Friday afternoon during counseling hours. "It’s pretty close to what it was during the worst of the dot-com years."

Gullicksen reports an increase in the number of threats and buyouts of tenants in the past year. He attributes that to 2006 legislation passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors prohibiting the conversion of buildings after the eviction of elderly or disabled tenants or multiple units. By avoiding putting an Ellis Act or other no-fault eviction on the record, the landlord can eventually convert the building into a condominium because its history hasn’t been tainted.

A building with no eviction history goes for more on the MLS, according to Gullicksen, which explains why landlords are willing to pay up to $60,000 for a "voluntary" tenant relocation. The private landlord-tenant agreement may be lucrative to the individuals involved, but it results in an almost undetectable loss of an affordable rental unit.

Gullicksen says it’s impossible to determine how many tenants relocate due to buyouts on a citywide level, but about 60 people seek help with one at the Tenants Union every month. Most tell a similar tale: A developer or landlord will offer between $2,000 and $60,000 to tenants to voluntarily vacate. The tenant may ask for a higher sum, and they’ll negotiate back and forth. Eventually, the tenant may be either bought out or evicted.

"It’s a game of chicken, really," Gullicksen says.

The loss of rental units at the hands of TICs or buyouts is not a small matter in a city where two-thirds of residents are renters (on the national level only 34 percent of housing units were rentals in the year 2000), and there is already a shortage of affordable housing.

US Census data show that San Francisco lost 18,474 rental-occupied housing units between 2000 and 2006. And the city isn’t doing much to plug the drain. According to the Planning Department, 13,795 new units have been built and ready for occupancy since 2000, and approximately 12,600 of those are condominiums.

Although the terms "TIC" and "condo" are often used interchangeably, they’re legally different. TICs follow a shared-homeownership model involving one deed and multiple live-in shareholders. They aren’t registered or restricted by the city, whereas condominium conversions are capped at 200 a year. Most notable is the price differential: TICs go for about $200,000 less than a median-priced condominium in San Francisco, which currently runs at $783,000, according to the San Francisco Association of Realtors.

TIC owners typically buy in hoping to raise their property’s value by eventually converting their units to condos through the city’s lottery system. Proponents call TICs one of the city’s only affordable homeownership options. Critics call them a loophole in condo conversion restriction laws.

Radhi Ahern, managing partner and broker at the TIC Group, doesn’t apologize for buyouts to make room for TICs. She acknowledges that TICs are obtained through financial negotiations with tenants.

"It’s the tenant’s choice on whether they get a buyout or don’t take a buyout. And it’s sometimes very lucrative," Ahern says from her spacious Union Street office. "I can honestly say nobody’s given me $25,000 to $50,000 to move into a place…. It’s a win-win situation."

A number of recent changes have increased TICs’ popularity, Ahern says. At first they were financially risky — with multiple people on one mortgage, everyone is affected if one defaults. But in recent years banks have taken on more responsibility through individualized loans to TIC owners. Ahern adds that there are virtually no foreclosures on TICs.

"With the advent of fractional financing, we’re going to see more and more people adopting TICs, just like co-ops were adopted in NYC," Ahern says.

In a city where about 90 percent of residents can’t afford a median-priced home, TICs are lifesavers to people like Scott Ozawa. The recently divorced 31-year-old father of two toddlers makes six figures at a dot-com but says buying into a Western Addition TIC was the only way he could own the home he wanted in San Francisco. Evictions shouldn’t be blamed on TIC owners, he says, but on the city’s faulty housing system and lack of new development.

"The lower-income and the middle-income folks are all vying for the same resources," Ozawa says. "But middle-income folks have more options that are open to them."

Meanwhile, Moran and her family plan to stay in the rent-controlled apartment she has lived in for 35 years and might have to fight an unlawful-detainer order in court this month. She says she likes her place — the neighbors all know one another, she’s close to transit, and her apartment’s thick walls offer protection from earthquakes. The family pays only $507 per month, less than one-fifth the average rate for a two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco, according to the Tenants Union.

In September the Morans and other tenants at their apartment held a support rally outside their building, catering it with sandwiches and juice they prepared. Four elderly female tenants lined up on the front steps, taking turns speaking to the few dozen onlookers. Moran’s upstairs neighbor took out her oxygen tube to speak into a bullhorn. Moran stood beside her, later clapping along to a guitar-strumming activist singing, "Yuppie, yuppie stole my pad! Yuppie, yuppie, bad, bad, bad." As she smiled and mouthed the words in a language she doesn’t speak, a young couple wearing bandannas and carrying what looked like art supplies exited the building next door. They glanced toward the crowd with confused, down-turned brows but didn’t break their stride as they walked off the steps in the opposite direction.