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2 A History of Rent Control in San Francisco <br />Rent Control in San Francisco began in 1979, when acting Mayor Dianne Feinstein signed <br />San Francisco's first rent -control law. Pressure to pass rent control measures was mounting <br />due to high inflation rates nationwide, strong housing demand in San Francisco, and recently <br />passed Proposition 13.2 This law capped annual nominal rent increases to 7% and covered all <br />rental units built before June 13th, 1979 with one key exemption: owner occupied buildings <br />containing 4 units or less.s These "mom and pop" landlords were cast as less profit driven <br />than the large scale, corporate landlords, and more similar to the tenants who were the <br />ones being protected. These small multi -family structures made up about 30% of the rental <br />housing stock in 1990, making this a large exemption to the rent control law. <br />While this exemption was intended to target "mom and pop" landlords, small multi - <br />families were increasingly purchased by larger businesses who would sell a small share of <br />the building to a live-in owner, to satisfy the rent control law exemption. This became fuel <br />for a new ballot initiative in 1994 to remove the small multi -family rent control exemption. <br />This ballot initiative barely passed in November 1994. Beginning in 1995, all multi -family <br />structures with four units or less built in 1979 or earlier were now subject to rent control. <br />These small multi -family structures built prior to 1980 remain rent controlled today, while <br />all of those built from 1980 or later are still not subject to rent control. <br />3 Data <br />We bring together data from multiple sources to enable us to observe property characteristics, <br />determine treatment and control groups, track migration decisions of tenants, and observe <br />the property decisions of landlords. Our first dataset is frorn Infutor, which provides the <br />'Proposition 13, passed in 1978, limited annual property tax increases for owners. Tenants felt they were <br />entitled to similar benefits by limiting their annual rent increases. <br />aAnnual allowable rent increase was cut to 4% in 1944 and later to 60% of the CPI in 1992, where is <br />remains today. <br />7 <br />