Last week, Supervisor Aaron Peskin announced plans to strengthen San Francisco’s landmark SRO hotel conversion and demolition ordinance (Chapter 41 of the SF Administrative Code, hereafter “the HCO”). This law, which originally passed in 1981 and was then significantly strengthened in 1990, is second only to the city’s Rent Ordinance in protecting low and working class tenants from displacement. It has also been the city’s primary strategy for preserving a type of housing whose lack of private kitchens and frequent lack of private bathrooms makes it less attractive to upscale residents.

The HCO has proved a tremendous success. As I recently described (“Stopping SF’s Illegal Tourist Rentals,” March 17), after the 1990 revision gave certain nonprofit groups standing to directly sue to stop illegal conversions dozens of longtime illegally operated SROs were returned to residential use. The new law also doubled the replacement housing fee, creating a financial disincentive for conversions or demolitions. Senator Leno’s passage of AB 1217 in 2003, which exempted SRO’s from the state Ellis Act, plugged the only potential threat to SRO’s, The measure’s enactment has proven particularly vital in protecting SRO tenants from the post 2011 increase in Ellis speculator evictions.

But as Peskin pointed out in his press release, the challenges of the current San Francisco housing market require some tinkering of the law. Most important is to ensure that permanent tenants, not transients, occupy the rooms that were supposed to be set aside for them under the law....

Peskin is also proposing a moratorium on SRO conversions. This is apparently motivated by pending applications by five hotels to convert, though none of the applications qualify for conversion on the face of their applications. All are pending before the Department of Building Inspection.