San Mateo, Burlingame and Alameda are wise, but Richmond, Oakland and even Mountain View are proved to be dumb.
Here’s a full list of the rent control measures and the results from the election at publication time.
Alameda’s Measure M1 was voted down by voters.
Burlingame’s Measure R was voted down by voters.
San Mateo’s Measure Q was voted down by voters.
Mountain View’s Measure V was up, but was too close to call at publication time
Richmond’s Measure L was approved by voters.
Oakland’s Measure JJ was approved by voters.
Buying and owning multi-family is too risky in California. I think rent control will eventually cover the entire CA, at least the major metropolitan areas. I don’t mind rent control as much as the “Just Cause Eviction” laws. That means you cannot NOT renew a tenant’s lease, but tenants themselves are free to come and go. That’s just not how contracts should work.
SF landlords have been using the Ellis Act illegally to evict tenants. NBC 11 has done an investigation that reveals 24% of the time the ellis act has been used when the landlord had no intention of moving himself or a relative in or hasn’t done it for the required length of time. Good news for tenants. They can get compensation for being wrongly evicted and the current tenants can get a rent reduction to the previous rent control price. They even have a map you can check for all the evictions in the past few years to see if you qualify. Another reason to love San Francisco.
It seems to me like the multi-unit apts in MV tend to be clustered together and are quite segregated from the neighborhoods w/ SFH’s or even the complexes with town-homes.
Mountain view is an exception since it has many apartments. 60% population is tenants.
Mountain View median income is high due to high tech business and a lack of rent control. With the rent control, the median income will start the decline. In the beginning, the decline will be very slow since current tenants are mostly young tech worker and many will move due to marriage and home buying.