Bad news for San Francisco tenants: Last week, Judge Quidachay of the San Francisco Superior Court struck down the newly passed eviction protections that prohibited certain evictions of teachers and minors during the school year. The judge ruled that the new protections were an impermissible procedural limitation on evictions because the protections extended the notice period for the eviction beyond the state-mandated 60 days.
This ruling is particularly disappointing because the reasoning applies equally to the protections that existed before the San Francisco Rent Ordinance was amended to extend the eviction protections to teachers. Prior to the amendment, landlords could not do an owner move-in eviction if the tenant resided in the unit with a minor child. After the judge’s ruling, even that protection is likely gone. This means that families with school-age children can now be evicted during the school year.
The one silver lining is that the judge provided a road map for how the law can be fixed. Judge Quidachay suggested that a “complete moratorium” on certain evictions of units occupied by students or teachers would not be subject to this particular judicial challenge. That is, if the eviction protections are not limited to the school year, but are instead essentially permanent, then the eviction protections would likely survive a court challenge because they would be a substantive limitation on eviction instead of a procedural limitation. This type of eviction protection already exists for disabled and elderly tenants who have resided in their units for 10 years or more. The Board of Supervisors should extend it to families with minor children, students, and teachers.