Oakland voters will get their say on stricter rent control

Citing escalating rents that tenant advocates call a threat to Oakland’s character, the City Council threw its support Wednesday behind a November ballot measure that would limit property owners’ ability to charge more and carry out evictions.

Soaring rents have become a raw topic in Oakland, a traditionally working-class city that is seeing the first inklings of an economic boom as commercial projects sprout up and Uber prepares to open its new headquarters downtown.

At the same meeting, the council voted 7-0 to pass a companion ordinance to the ballot measure that will take effect immediately.

Both the ballot measure and the new ordinance require property owners to petition the city for approval of certain rent increases.

“I’ve seen people put in situations where families had to double or triple up in apartments just to afford to live in the cities that they work in,” said Mia Carbajal, a housing activist who grew up in San Francisco’s Mission District, where she said her family faced many of the insecurities now being felt by lower-income Oakland residents.

Some opponents such as Doug Sager, president of the Oakland-Berkeley Association of Realtors, said stronger rent protections could have an adverse effect on Oakland’s rental market by driving small landlords out of business.

“My small property owner clients are hard-working folks that have built sweat equity into retiring on a rental income,” Sager said.

In addition to the landlord petitioning requirement, the ballot measure and new ordinance each include several tenant protections.

The Renters Protection Act ballot measure would expand the city’s just-cause eviction law to multiunit buildings constructed after 1995, meaning that owners of those buildings could evict tenants only for violating the terms of a lease, or by virtue of the state Ellis Act, which allows landlords to leave the rental business.