Members of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club were out yesterday at Castro and Market Street raising awareness for a Castro area tenants convention taking place next Saturday from noon to 2PM at the LGBT Community Center (1800 Market Street). Their goal is to organize Castro area tenants to "brainstorm strategies for fighting the evictions in our neighborhood and defend those who are being evicted, for stopping gentrification of our gayborhoods and the displacement of so many people, and for educating tenants about their rights and how they can fight when threatened with eviction." Similar conventions of tenants are planned for different neighborhoods throughout San Francisco and the Haight/Richmond area had their convention last month with a healthy turnout of citizens and media. Participants in the conventions plan to come up with suggestions for a ballot initiative next November, suggestions that will be presented to a citywide tenants convention on February 8th. What that ballot initiative contains is a more than likely a reform to the Ellis Act, a state law that allows landlords looking to get out of the rental business to evict tenants. I sent an email to organizers earlier this week to get more specifics on their goals and for details on how the Haight/Richmond convention went and if anything concrete was gained, but have not heard back. Organizers of the convention include Housing Rights Committee of SF, AIDS Housing Alliance, Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club and District 8 Democrats. Jessica Wong over at the Examiner wrote that a petition to reform the Ellis Act is gaining traction and that, "Mayor Ed Lee, along with Supervisors David Chiu, David Campos and Malia Cohen, plan to introduce a resolution at Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting supporting amendments to state law to return the Ellis Act to local control." We emailed Supervisor Wiener this morning asking whether or not he would be able to attend and he responded that he would be there.
