SF condo owners' suit rejected by appeals court
Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle
A state appeals court has refused to let dozens of San Francisco property owners drop out of a program that required them to set some units aside for low- and moderate-income housing when they converted their apartment houses to condominiums.
The so-called Below Market Rate program dates from 1979 and was the first of several efforts by the city to maintain a supply of affordable housing during condo conversions. Separate ordinances, not affected by the court ruling, require similar set-asides for conversion of newer apartment units and for construction of new condominiums.
About 550 units are still covered by the 1979 program, which required building owners to make certain percentages of their apartments available at below-market rates after conversion.
After some owners claimed that the set-aside rules had expired, and that they were entitled to resell their units at market prices, city supervisors passed an ordinance in 2008 declaring the restrictions permanent, but giving owners a chance to buy their way out within two years by paying a fee that would be used to subsidize low-cost housing.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/19/BA181MEIDT.DTL
I've read views of rent control from the libertarian economist Thomas Sowell, a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Inst. Sowell claims that rent control interferes with market prices and keeps rents high. Does anyone have any evidence supporting rent control?
