Urge the Daly City City Council to Prioritize Allocating City Resources into Protecting its Renter Community by Stabilizing the City's Rental Market.

As a result of the Bay Area Housing Crisis, the cost of living in Daly City is painfully high. The middle class and working households that make up the backbone of Daly City’s vibrant and diverse community are at a critical crossroads, as we watch our rents go up with no end in sight. Too many Daly City’s working people and families are now forced to spend 50% or more of their income on housing. We often struggle to make it work despite taking on multiple jobs, doubling-up with family, downsizing to smaller homes, and even living in vehicles or turning to emergency shelters for a time to stay near work and in the community we've long called Home. This affects Daly City’s residents broadly. We're talking about teachers, nurses, the elderly and disabled on fixed incomes, veterans, recent graduates, grocers, artists, dry cleaners, bank tellers, civil servants, young families, and beyond. In escalating numbers, Daly City’s residents are being displaced.

Daly City is no longer affordable and City Hall needs to offer its renter community some form of protection by stabilizing out of control rental prices as soon as possible. This has already been done in other Bay Area cities like Berkeley, East Palo Alto, Hayward, Oakland, and San Jose, and it’s time that Daly City joins the other Peninsula communities in Pacifica, Burlingame, San Mateo, and Mountain View who are currently calling for forms of rent stabilization.

Protecting households’ ability to have some stability and control over their housing costs just makes sense. This is why homeowners and rental property owners are protected by fixed-rate mortgage options, Proposition 13 property tax mitigation, and increased equity as property values return to pre-recession levels. Such protections are meant to prevent the sort of economic chaos that currently looms over Daly City. Renters, however, simply cannot predict their housing expenses, which, in this market, can increase very quickly and very dramatically. Once leases end, landlords can increase rents by any amount as often as desired. Unfortunately, pay increases come far too slowly, if at all, making it nearly impossible to keep up. Furthermore, the current lack of renters’ rights in our city means that landlords are free to evict any tenant for any reason, or no reason at all, with only 60 days notice.

We urge City Council to make an immediate, public commitment to addressing this problem. Make it City Hall’s priority to support this effort and begin the necessary research into possible solutions to be presented in public session.