Rent Board asks for staff to handle seismic retrofit petitions and rising buyout filings

Robert Collins, acting executive director of the San Francisco Rent Board, told the Budget & Finance Committee the office is facing substantial new workload driven by recent legislation. Collins said buyout agreements and required declarations (a law effective March 7, 2015) have surged and that the soft‑story seismic retrofit ordinance will affect roughly 5,000 buildings (about 50,000 units), producing capital‑improvement pass‑through petitions.

Collins said the Rent Board has received a growing number of buyout agreements and declarations — the presentation projected 282 buyout agreements and 740 declarations in the current year — and that soft‑story retrofit petitions are likely to ramp to about 400–450 filings per year over the next seven years. To handle the projected workload, the Rent Board requested five new positions over two years, technology upgrades including a website redesign and automated processing improvements, and roughly $2.5 million in the first year and $2.5 million in the second year of requested funding to support those steps.

The board emphasized that the office is primarily fee‑funded (the rent board fee was cited at $37 per year, half for SRO units) and that surcharges collected by departments issuing permits account for most revenue. Collins said the Rent Board is seeking capacity to redact and publish buyout documents per the ordinance and to process seismic retrofit petitions more efficiently.

Why it matters: The scale of seismic retrofit work and rising buyout filings has operational and fiscal implications for the Rent Board’s ability to process petitions and for tenants facing capital pass‑throughs. Supervisors will weigh the Rent Board’s staffing request against other competing budget priorities.

Next steps: The committee will review the Rent Board’s budget as part of the larger budget cycle; controller and budget staff will evaluate funding and fee recommendations.