Letters to the Editor
S.F. Ordinance Pre-Empted by Ellis Act

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Timothy J. Lee’s criticism of two recent Court of Appeal decisions is understandable (“Bringing Down the House,” Forum, Dec. 7) The courts’ broad reading of the legislative intent of the Ellis Act means that the gravy train of attorney fees that Mr. Lee and his associates have enjoyed over the past several years may have come to an end.

Mr. Lee’s concerns over these recent cases relate primarily to his own role, and that of his supposed “nonprofit organization” the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, in the enforcement of San Francisco’s Residential Hotel Unit Conversion and Demolition Ordinance (HCO).

In 1990, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors amended the HCO to allow nonprofits to file their own lawsuits against San Francisco’s small hotel owners. The Tenderloin Housing Clinic is the only nonprofit to ever file such a lawsuit, and since 1990, Mr. Lee and his clinic have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars shaking down small hotel owners over the dastardly practice of renting affordable hotel rooms by the night to visitors to San Francisco.

The Court of Appeal decisions in Los Angeles Lincoln Properties v Los Angeles 54 Cal.App.4th 53 (1997) and First Presbyterian Church v. Berkeley, 97 Daily Journal D.A.R. 14925 (Dec. 12, 1997) are entirely correct in holding that the Ellis Act precludes cities from enforcing laws designed to compel property owners to rent to residential tenants. These decisions properly follow virtually every appellate decision interpreting the Ellis Act.

According to Mr. Lee, a property owner who has invoked the Ellis Act should be stuck with an empty building that can be put to no other use. In the words of an earlier decision, “ a landlord who is thereby left with a vacant apartment building is merely paying the price of choosing to go out of business! Appellants’ strained reading of the act would result in an absurdity. Denying a removal permit to a landlord who has gone out of the rental housing business imposes a prohibitive price on the exercise of the right under the act. Appellants’ continued adherence to the removal permit requirement after the Legislature has spoken flouts the will of that body in adopting the Act.” Javidzad v. Santa Monica, 204 Cal.App.3d 524 (1988).

Mr. Lee and his organization are currently appealing an adverse trial court judgment from the San Francisco Superior Court holding that the HCO is entirely pre-empted by the Ellis Act. In light of the recent holdings from both the 1st and 2nd District courts of appeal, there is no reason to believe that the appellate courts will be any more receptive to the confiscatory and unfair scheme of San Francisco than they have been to the schemes adopted in Santa Monica, Los Angeles or Berkeley.

Andrew M. Zacks
Paul F. Utrecht
San Francisco