Evictorbook Press Release
Contact: Erin McElroy, 302-379-2120, antievictionmap@riseup.net
Evictorbook Helps Communities Fight Back Against the Corporate Landlords Driving the Bay Area’s Housing Crisis
San Francisco, CA [October 11, 2022] Today, Evictorbook launched in the cities of San Francisco and Oakland. This web-based tool provides key data about properties, landlords, and the complicated webs of corporate ownership behind them. Evictorbook was developed by the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (AEMP), in partnership with the San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition and the Oakland Preservation Table. Evictorbook will increase transparency around corporate ownership of housing by revealing the shell companies that corporate landlords often hide behind. This transparency in turn will help: 1) keep people in their homes by giving tenants and organizers key information about properties and landlords, and 2) preserve affordable housing by helping community organizations proactively identify and evaluate properties to purchase and stabilize.
The Bay Area’s housing crisis, which stems from decades of discriminatory lending practices, racist housing policies, and structural inequities, has acutely impacted communities of color across the region and state. Compounding matters is the continued consolidation of corporate housing ownership, which exacerbates housing insecurity, unaffordability, and displacement. As they did after the 2008 housing crash, investors and corporate landlords have taken advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to buy up housing across the country. This disproportionately harms communities of color and limits opportunities for homeownership. Evictorbook is a tool communities can use to combat the systemic racial and economic inequities within our housing system and ensure that housing is for people, not corporate profit.
Evictorbook increases transparency around who owns which properties by untangling complex corporate networks and shell companies. A recent Chronicle feature showed the increasingly large role these companies play in the Bay Area’s rental markets. Many corporate landlords create and own dozens of shell companies - including limited liability companies (LLC) and limited partnerships (LP). For example, a tenant looking up 1125 Broadway in San Francisco would see that the building is owned by 1125 Broadway I7 LP; however, digging deeper reveals that this LP is actually part of Veritas Investments, one of the city’s largest landlords. LLCs and LPs help investment companies avoid bankruptcy, reduce tax liability, and increase their anonymity.
“We are excited about the launch of Evictorbook and the implications of the tool statewide,” said Jyotswaroop Bawa with the California Reinvestment Coalition. “CRC has been advocating for anti-speculation policies and the need for transparency in ownership of LLCs and trusts as fundamental information for smart housing policy. Evictorbook is a treasure trove of information and we hope it will guide legislators and that the tool itself will be a model for the rest of the state.”
Evictorbook protects tenants by giving tenants and organizers key information about properties and landlords. Evictorbook provides easy access to three decades of hard-to-find data, including past evictions, code violations, and building permits. By relating eviction data to properties and their historical owners, the site helps tenants and organizers identify serial evictors, their shell companies, other properties in their portfolio, and suspicious (possibly illegal!) eviction patterns. With this data, a family might learn that their habitability issue is actually part of a pattern of neglect by their landlord. This data can help community organizers connect people with similar housing struggles and build tenant power across the region.
“Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco is already using Evictorbook to help tenants understand who owns their home and, in many cases, the homes of many other tenants,” says Brad Hirn, Lead Organizer at HRCSF. “When the Veritas Tenants Association, the citywide union for renters under SF’s biggest landlord, needs to know how one LLC connects to another, they can use Evictorbook.”
Data from Evictorbook highlight the disproportionate role that corporate landlords play in evictions and housing instability. For example,
In San Francisco, corporate owners were responsible for 33% of evictions over the last 5 years in San Francisco despite owning 12.5% of multi-family buildings.
In Oakland, corporate owners were responsible for 25% of evictions over the last 5 years while owning 8.9% of multi-family buildings.
Evictorbook helps preserve affordable housing by helping community organizations identify potential properties to buy and make permanently affordable. Affordable housing preservation is especially necessary now, as tenants and communities deal with the pandemic’s continued impacts and corporations are increasingly buying up small properties. Evictorbook will support community organizations - including co-ops, community development corporations and land trusts - proactively identify and evaluate properties to purchase, rehabilitate, and make permanently affordable. These organizations can even use Evictorbook to view pre-foreclosure and mortgage delinquency data to determine a property’s eligibility for new state funds like the Foreclosure Intervention Housing Preservation Program.
“People deserve to know who owns their community,” said Alex Acuña with the Oakland Community Land Trust. “Evictorbook will help communities most impacted by speculation to organize, fight to help us acquire properties, and keep people rooted in Oakland by bringing homes into permanently affordable community ownership.”
The SF Evictorbook tool can be found here, and the Oakland one here.