Critics say rent stability talks lack teeth

City Council looks to protect tenants

PALO ALTO >> With longtime tenants facing eviction from a downtown building and rents continuing to rise, the City Council is reconsidering crafting new renter protections.

However, critics say the new proposal doesn’t go far enough.

The City Council failed to approve a similar proposal last October. But last Monday, council members said the situation is more critical, pointing to the Hotel President Apartments, where tenants face eviction in November as the new owner wants to turn the building back into a hotel.

The latest proposal, however, does not mention placing an annual cap on rent increases or protecting tenants against evictions without a just cause, similar to the policies of San Jose and Mountain View.

Councilman Cory Wolbach, who helped craft the memorandum for discussion, called it a “compromise that can get us started on a healthy conversation about rental protections.”

Council members — Lydia Kou, Tom Dubois and Karen Holman, who drafted last year’s memo and assisted Wolbach in crafting the latest proposal — tried to add the protections back in, but Wolbach failed to support them, and their motion failed 4-4. Mayor Liz Kniss was recused from voting because of a family interest in a business that provides rental housing.

Former Mayor Pat Burt said that without the stronger protections, Palo Alto would fall behind Mountain View and San Jose, which continue to be “leaders in new housing construction.”

“The intent should be to have the council and the community consider a full range of renter protections that already exist in neighboring communities,” Burt said.

Jeff Levinsky, whose family owns and manages more than 1,000 rental units in the area, said he is in favor of rent control and protecting the city’s existing rental stock.

“We laugh in our family when we hear these stories about the crime going up, about the tumbleweeds rolling in the streets, about the war zones that are going to be created by rent control,” Levinsky said. “What we know is that rent control leads to stable tenants, it leads to fair prices, it leads to long-term viability of apartments.”

The council voted 7-1, with Councilman Greg Tanaka opposed, to explore a set of modest renter proposals, including relocation assistance for evicted tenants and better enforcement of a law requiring annual leases for tenants.

Even those ideas were too much for some on the landlord side of the debate.

“This version has just cause and rent control in the form of assistance payments,” said Rhory Lyn Antonio of California Apartment Association. “We don’t need to litigate this again. … It’s hard to protect renters in Palo Alto when you are harming the people that are providing the housing to them.”

At Tanaka’s prodding, the council agreed to have staff conduct an economic study on the long-term effects of stronger renter protections and how they affect diversity. The results of the study, which Tanaka speculated would show that rent control harms diversity and housing quality, will not be tied to the council’s discussion of renter protections.

At Councilman Adrian Fine’s suggestion, the council also narrowly approved an amendment stating that the council believes that the best renter protection is more housing. Vice Mayor Eric Filseth, Kou and Holman were opposed.