Funcheap is all about sharing voices and stories about San Francisco. Here’s Broke Ass Stuart‘s passionate plea to pass Prop G.

Make Life Harder for Real Estate Speculators in SF

by Broke-Ass Stuart

Originally published by The Bold Italic

It’s been a tough year, San Francisco. It feels like all this change is happening, and there’s nothing you can do about it but say,“Damn!” Economic pressures are causing cultural institutions to fall like dominos only so they can be replaced by trendy bars and restaurants. But what has always made San Francisco wonderful has little to do with burrito joints or queer bars. What has always made San Francisco San Francisco is the variety of people who inhabit it.

It’s the diversity that makes this place special

It’s the neighbor who holds his daughter’s quinceañera in the garage next door. It’s the old lady with the caged chicken under her seat on Muni. It’s the cyclist who cruises by you blasting “Thriller” while bubbles spout from a machine attached to his bike seat. San Francisco has beautiful Victorians, splendiferous hills, cute cable cars, and a natural beauty that is stunning beyond words. But none of those things “makes” San Francisco. It’s the diversity of people who live here that makes this place special, and if we lose that diversity, then we lose San Francisco.

Did your heart break when you read that Matthew Miller evicted an elderly couple with a mentally disabled adult daughter from their Polk Street home? Were you enraged when David McCloskey attempted to evict a 98-year-old woman from her home of 50 years? How many friends or friends of friends have moved to Oakland or Portland or LA in the past couple of years because they’ve gotten evicted? Do you keep thinking, when will this stop?

Ellis Act evictions have risen 170%

That’s why I’m asking you to vote yes on Prop G on November 4. Whether you moved to San Francisco last year or 20 years ago, you have to admit that the housing situation is untenable and that greed is ruining San Francisco. Between 2010 and 2013, Ellis Act evictions rose by an incredible 170%. The Ellis Act was set up in 1985 to help protect landlords trying to get out of the rental game, but in recent years lawyers and realty groups have been showing landlords how to exploit it so that all parties (minus the renters, of course) make monumental profits. If you vote yes on Prop G, you’ll help make it much more expensive for greedy fucks and serial evictors to get rid of your neighbors and, possibly, you.

Prop G establishes a steep tax that applies only to corporations, LLCs, and investors who are rapaciously abusing the Ellis Act. It’s meant to target people who are evicting San Franciscans, flipping their apartments, and then making obscene amounts of money. You’ll read plenty of propaganda saying things along lines of “Prop G hurts mom-and-pop homeowners,” but this is grossly untrue. Prop G targets only owners of multiunit properties who bought and resold in under five years, and any property containing an owner-occupied unit is exempt.

Of course, the realty groups who stand to make fortunes off of evictions are spreading plenty of anti-Prop G propaganda. Local and national realty groups are pumping millions of dollars into this campaign, while not a single housing-rights group has done anything other than to endorse yes on G. Just look at this list of endorsements. Who are you gonna believe, the nonprofit groups that are telling you what’s good for San Francisco or the wealthy real estate groups telling you what’s good for their clients?

A deterrent to those looking to make a quick buck

If Prop G passes, apartments bought and sold in less than a year would be taxed at 24% of the sales price. That’s an amazing deterrent to those who’re just looking to make a quick buck off the craziness happening in San Francisco. Will it fix the housing crisis? No, but it will keep some San Franciscans in their homes while new housing is built to help alleviate the pressure caused by the lack of housing stock. This goes for people who’ve been in their places for a long time and those who may have just moved here to work for a tech company. Yes, Prop G is good for recent transplants too. Just look at this article titled “12 Reasons SF Tech Workers Should Vote Yes on Prop G.”

No matter what industry you work in, San Francisco is your community. And the most important component of being part of a community is looking out for each other. Just because you aren’t getting evicted now and just because you can currently afford your rent doesn’t mean that that will always be the case. As we saw with the burst of the first dot-com bubble and with the economic crash of 2008, things change very quickly, and those with money don’t always stay well-off. So while voting yes on Prop G might be saving your neighbor from eviction today, it might be saving you from it in the future.

Vote yes on Prop G. Help Save San Francisco.