San Francisco supervisors hear tenants and agencies on rise in alleged fraudulent owner move‑in evictions

Supervisor Jane Kim opened a special Government Accountability and Oversight Committee hearing on April 28, 2017, saying the city had seen “more than 8,000 people in San Francisco evicted from their homes over the last 4 years” and that investigative reporting suggested as many as one in four owner move‑in (OMI) eviction filings may be fraudulent. The hearing brought together the Rent Board, the District Attorney’s Office, the City Attorney’s Office and more than 40 public speakers, many of them tenants who described buyouts, repeat OMIs and difficulty mounting legal challenges.

The Rent Board’s executive director, Robert Collins, told supervisors the board collects eviction notices and tracks trends for roughly 173,000 regulated units. Collins said the board receives roughly 400–500 reports per year alleging wrongful eviction and can investigate informally and, rarely, hold investigatory hearings; in the last five years the Rent Board scheduled two investigatory…