Levin v. City & County of San Francisco

71 F. Supp. 3d 1072, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 149646, 2014 WL 5355088
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. California
DecidedOctober 21, 2014
DocketNo. 3:14-cv-03352-CRB
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 71 F. Supp. 3d 1072 (Levin v. City & County of San Francisco) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. California primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Levin v. City & County of San Francisco, 71 F. Supp. 3d 1072, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 149646, 2014 WL 5355088 (N.D. Cal. 2014).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OF FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW

CHARLES R. BREYER, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

In July 2014, the City and County of San Francisco enacted an Ordinance that requires property owners wishing to withdraw their rent-controlled property from the rental market to pay a lump sum to displaced tenants. The 2014 Ordinance requires that property owners pay the greáter of a relocation payment due under a 2005 Ordinance or the new, “enhanced” amount: twenty-four times the difference between the units’ current monthly rate and an amount that purports to be the fair market value of a comparable unit in San Francisco, as calculated by a schedule developed by the Controller’s Office. Plaintiffs, who are property owners now obligated to pay amounts that range to hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit, allege that the Ordinance on its face is an unconstitutional taking in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

On October 6, 2014, the Court held a bench trial on the merits in which the parties stipulated to all relevant facts. Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52, this Court now makes findings of fact and conclusions of law. The Court holds that the Ordinance effects an unconstitutional taking by conditioning property owners’ right to withdraw their property on a monetary exaction not sufficiently related to the impact of the withdrawal. See Nollan v. California Coastal Comm’n, 483 U.S. 825, 837, 107 S.Ct. 3141, 97 L.Ed.2d 677 (1987); Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374, 395, 114 S.Ct. 2309, 129 L.Ed.2d 304 (1994); Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Mgmt. Dist., — U.S. -, 133 S.Ct. 2586, 2599, 186 L.Ed.2d 697 (2013). Accordingly, the Court GRANTS declaratory and injunctive relief to Plaintiffs. The Court also STAYS this decision until October 24, 2014, the date payment must be made under the Ordinance to Plaintiff Park Lane’s tenants, to allow the City to seek further relief in the Ninth Circuit.

In so doing, the Court does not pass judgment on the wisdom of the Ordinance, nor doubt either the severity of the housing crisis or the sincerity of the City legislature’s attempts to ameliorate that crisis’ effects on some San Franciscans. Nor does the Court consider whether different drafting decisions on the part of the City’s commissioners would have been wiser, or more effective, or more finely tuned to the City’s stated ends. A monetary exactions taking “does not implicate normative con[1075]*1075siderations about the wisdom of government decisions,” nor posit whether the exaction is “arbitrary or unfair.” Koontz, 133 S.Ct. at 2600. This Court’s task is to determine whether the exaction demanded by the City in exchange for an Ellis Act withdrawal bears the “required degree of connection between the exactions imposed by the city and the projected impacts” of the property owner’s proposed change in land use. See Dolan, 512 U.S. at 377, 114 S.Ct. 2309. This is because, “[w]hatever the wisdom of such a policy, it would transfer an interest in property from the landowner to the government” and thus “amount[s] to a per se taking similar to the taking of an easement or a lien.” Koontz, 133 S.Ct. at 2600. This Court’s role, then, is to determine whether the taking, without just compensation, passes constitutional muster by “satisfy[ing] the nexus and rough proportionality requirements of Nol-lan and Dolan.” See id. at 2599. It does not.

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

A. The San Francisco Housing Crisis

San Francisco faces an affordable housing crisis of remarkable proportions. There are “deep structural problems in the housing market,” in which increasing demand has met a supply limited by a City that has. “not produc[ed] housing as [its] population has grown.” Tr. Ex. 16 (dkt. 60-22) at 12. “Increased employment and population” has clashed with “minimal increases in new housing” to put “upward pressure on rental rates” and downward pressure on the citywide rental vacancy rate, which hovered at just 2.8% in 2012. Tr. Ex. 13 (dkt. 60-19) at 4.

The City’s housing stock consists of approximately 372,830 dwelling units, of which 64% are occupied by renters. Tr. Ex. 13 at 6-7. Against this backdrop, property owners annually withdraw only a very small number of units from the rental market each year. The number of petitions for withdrawal that the City received fluctuated each year leading up to the passage of the Ordinance challenged here, but affected a tiny percentage of the City’s housing stock overall. See Tr. Ex. 13 at 2, 14. The Rent Board processed 43 Ellis Act evictions in its fiscal year 2010, for example, and 116 in 2013. Tr. Ex. 13 at 2, 14.

B. San Francisco Housing Measures

The City government has instituted a number of measures to combat unaffordable rental rates in San Francisco. The most significant of these is a comprehensive rent control plan that covers nearly all rental property in buildings constructed before June 1979, thereby affecting most rental property in San Francisco. See Tr. Ex. 13 at 8; Stip. Facts (dkt. 50-1) ¶ 19. Rent increases are strictly limited to a rate lower than inflation under the guidelines published by the San Francisco Rent Control Board — specifically, to sixty percent of the Bay Area Cost of Living Index, resulting in an ever-diminishing return on investment on the property. See Tr. Ex. 13 at 8; Stip. Facts ¶ 19; see generally S.F., Cal., Admin. Code §§ 37.2(r)(5), 37.3(a), and 37.9. Under this rubric, rent increases generally hover around one or two percent per year. See Tr. Ex. 13 at 8. Once a tenant voluntarily departs a unit, landlords are unrestricted in the new initial rent they may set for a new tenant, but the unit remains rent-controlled and thereby subject to limits on year-to-year increases. Tr. Ex. 13 at 8. Tenants in rent-controlled units also enjoy protection from eviction, which must be for one of sixteen enumerated “just causes;” otherwise, tenants are entitled to certain procedures for a no-fault eviction. Tr. Ex. 13 at 8.

Pursuant to a variety of San Francisco Ordinances, landlords are required to pay [1076]*1076relocation expenses to tenants undergoing a no-fault eviction. Tr. Ex. 13 at 10. Under the Ellis Act of 1985, Cal. Gov’t Code §§ 7060-7060.7, government entities are restricted from “compel[ling] the owner of any residential real property to offer, or to continue to offer, accommodations in the property for rent or lease, except for guestrooms or efficiency units within a residential hotel.... ” Cal. Gov’t Code § 7060(a); Stip. Facts ¶¶ 7-8; Tr. Ex. 1 (dkt. 60-1). But sections 7060.1-7060.1(c) go on to explain that “[notwithstanding Section 7060, nothing in this chapter” ... “[diminishes or enhances any power in any public entity to mitigate any adverse impact on persons displaced by reason of the withdrawal from rent or lease of any accommodations.” Stip. Facts ¶ 9. San Francisco Administrative Code (“S.F. Admin Code”) implements this power in part by establishing procedures that rental property owners must follow to withdraw their unit from the rental market. Stip. Facts ¶¶ 10-11.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
71 F. Supp. 3d 1072, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 149646, 2014 WL 5355088, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/levin-v-city-county-of-san-francisco-cand-2014.