As San Francisco neared the end of its eviction moratorium in August, local officials warned that the city was bound to tumble down an “eviction cliff.”
Now evidence shows that the slope wasn’t as steep as predicted, with eviction notices dropping significantly towards the end of 2023. Between July 2 and Dec. 1, San Francisco registered a total of 262 eviction notices, according to The Real Deal’s analysis of data from the Rent Arbitration Board. The figure is much lower than the 474 eviction notices between the start of last year and July 1.
The numbers are similarly muted when taken on a full-year basis. From the start of the year to Dec. 1, San Francisco registered a total of 736 eviction notices. While the figure doesn’t cover the entire year, it is still much lower than the 1,299 total filings from 2022.
In general, the evictions are evenly spread across the city except for a dense cluster in the Tenderloin and another running south along Mission Street. The Rent Arbitration Board monitors nearly three-quarters of San Francisco’s stock of rent-controlled units.
The biggest change since the end of the moratorium relates to the reasons for evicting tenants.
The most common type of eviction involves nuisance violations. This was the only type of eviction that was allowed during the early stages of the pandemic, and landlords continue to cite it in filings. Between July and December, San Francisco registered a total of 124 nuisance eviction filings, nearly half of the total filings during the period.
Capital improvement evictions, which was the second-most common type of eviction at the start of the year, has mostly fallen out of favor among landlords. Between July and early December, there were a total of 10 filings, down significantly from the total of 116 in the first half of the year.
Non-payment of rent stood at 29 filings, much lower than the total of 66 from the start of the year. Landlords are not required to register evictions due to non-payment, so this figure may be much lower than the actual number of notices handed out to tenants.
Eviction moratoria were put in place across the country in 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Certain parts of California were the longest holdouts. Berkeley, for instance, extended its moratorium until the end of August last year.
The drop in eviction filings in San Francisco is an anomaly compared to nationwide figures. Just in the first week of January, the Eviction Lab at Princeton University counted more than 9,300 eviction filings in the 32 cities it monitors.