If you are a tenant in San Francisco, a lot of people have got your back.

Here's a short guide to the basics of your rights as a tenant.

Quick links:

• Tenant advocates

• City and County of San Francisco resources

  • Departments

• Housing policy

• Gentrification

Tenant advocates

If you're a tenant who needs help or advice with a housing or landlord issue, the San Francisco Tenants Union is a good place to go for help.

The San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition is a network of community organizations that advocate for the rights of tenants. Some of them do direct outreach work, such as the San Francisco Tenants Union. Others, like the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, raise awareness about systemic displacement by bad actors through visualizations of data and community storytelling.

City and County Resources

Departments

Here is a list of city and county departments that do housing stuff.

• Office of the Assessor-Recorder (maintains public records, including records on taxable property and ownership)

• Department of Building Inspection (completes building inspections, provides building permits)

• SF Housing Authority (public housing and section 8)

• Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development (finances development, rehabilitation and purchase of affordable housing; informs city housing policy; homebuyer education; responsible for monitoring and maintaining affordability and modernization of affordable housing stock)

• SF Planning Department (works under the Planning Commission to create the General Plan and neighborhood plans, and enforce the Planning Code)

• SF Public Utilities Commission (provides drinking water, wastewater services, and hydroelectric and solar power to municipal departments)

• Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure (formerly known as the SF Redevelopment Agency, this agency works on the Major Approved Development Projects: Mission Bay North and South Redevelopment Project Areas, Hunters Point Shipyard Redevelopment Project Area and Zone 1 of the Bayview Redevelopment Project Area, and the Transbay Redevelopment Project Area. Also manages the former Yerba Buena Center Redevelopment Project Area (“YBC”).)

• Relocation Appeals Board (a resource for folks displaced by public projects)

• SF Rent Board (enforces the San Francisco Rent Ordinance, which was signed in 1979 as emergency legislation to alleviate the city's housing crisis and created the Residential Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Board (which safeguards tenants from excessive rent increases while also making sure that landlords recieve rents consistent with Federal Anti-Inflation Guidelines). Conducts hearings, investigations and mediations on allegedly wrongful evictions.)

Housing policy

Below is a list with some policy resources. Your help is needed to contribute to these articles! The best place on the Internet by far to find these things is probably the San Francisco Tenants Union website.

Gentrification and displacement

Below is a growing list of articles on gentrification and the displacement of San Francisco residents. A lot of these talk about what's going on now, and others about past examples of gentrification. Some of these articles come from a historical angle, giving insight into major decisions made by the city, urban planners, business, and other powerful actors. You can also find more information in the Gentrification Portal.