Fascinating. I was just thinking that this would be incredibly risky to do in SF. If you rented to them for very cheap for more than 30 days, they'd have the right to live there forever for that much (plus 7% / year which will be nothing).

I think in SF you'd still be able to operate an annual lease. Considering the lowest I've gone on rent is $0, I'm not worried if a tenant stays till the end of their year.

When I explain how I operate, people tend to understand pretty quickly that it's special. If someone was, say, a Google engineer and trying to pay $0, I'd just not renew or whatever.

In general, poor folks aren't going to cheat. If money's tight, they should pay less, that's not cheating it's just sliding the scale to meet them where they are.

Whether you are cleaning toilets, flipping burgers, staffing a call center, or any other thankless job out there, you still deserve your dignity. We as a society have decided we think the job you do is important enough to pay someone to do it. You should be able to live your life on that pay. Or even if you are unpaid because you are a refugee, stay at home mom, student, or anything else, you are still a member of my community. You are still my neighbor. And therefore it's worth making sure you are surviving with dignity.

Oh no, in SF, tenants get automatic lease extensions month-to-month at the original rate (adjusted downward for free weeks etc.) with annual increases capped at 7% (by the state). I've never sign a lease past the initial one. So if they were doing poorly, and this let them go to a bootcamp or whatever, they'd likely just want to stay and I can't do anything about that.

Interesting, I was under the impression that month to month leases were automatically continued and rent increases were sharply limited, but a landlord could indicate they would not be renewing the lease with 60 days notice.

Ah no. You have to do the move-in / rebuild / demolish no-fault thing or you have to do the with-fault thing for which the tenant has to have fucked up.