San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie declared a rent emergency on Sept. 10 and put forward a package of six proposed ordinances and more than $30 million in spending, including a measure that would cap the annual rent increase a rent-controlled tenant can absorb at 10 percent.
The cap is the piece with the most direct consequence for property owners. Under the city’s rent ordinance, an owner who does not take the full allowable increase in a given year can bank the unused portion and pass it along later. District 3 Supervisor Danny Sauter will introduce legislation limiting the combined annual pass-through from banked increases and capital improvement charges to 10 percent, according to the announcement from the Office of the Mayor. Owners could still accrue the increases; what they could collect in any single year would be capped. The city says the legislation would take effect on the date it is introduced.
“Alongside Mayor Lurie, I am introducing legislation to add important guardrails to the practice of banked rent,” Sauter said in the announcement. “Annual rent increases from banked rent and capital improvement charges will be capped at 10% for rent-controlled tenants, bringing stability and protections to hundreds of thousands of San Franciscans.”
What the city says is driving it
The mayor’s office says the median rent in San Francisco has risen 25.6 percent over the past year and that the city has seen faster rent increases than any other major U.S. city in 2026. It also says more than 1,000 eviction notices have been filed this year, roughly a quarter of them for nonpayment, putting the city on pace for its highest total in nearly a decade.
On the supply side, the city’s own figures put the share of San Francisco multifamily housing vacant and available for rent at 2.2 percent as of June 2026, below Oakland at 4.5 percent, San Jose at 4.1 percent, New York City at 3.4 percent and Chicago at 6.5 percent. The release attributes the squeeze in part to several years of weak production, noting the city authorized fewer new housing units in 2024 than in any year since 2010. RealtyWire reported in August that San Francisco apartment vacancy had fallen to a quarter-century low.
The rent run-up coincides with the city’s artificial intelligence boom, a dynamic visible on the for-sale side as well: San Francisco’s median sale price rose 6 percent over the year in July even as Seattle’s fell 3.6 percent, and Bay Area luxury buyers have been closing well above asking.
The eviction measures
Four of the proposals target evictions. Legislation sponsored by Lurie would add $3 million this year to the city’s Tenant Right to Counsel program, moving about 400 households from partial to full-scope eviction representation; the release cites regional research finding tenants with full representation were 39 percent more likely to stay in their homes. A second Lurie-sponsored measure would raise required Ellis Act relocation payments to displaced tenants by 25 percent, or nearly $3,000 per person.
District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder is sponsoring a measure that would bar eviction for nonpayment unless a tenant owes at least one month of federally set fair market rent. Separately, legislation from the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing would unlock $27 million to keep roughly 650 extremely low-income households housed when federal Emergency Housing Voucher funding lapses at the end of 2026, four years earlier than originally expected.
A sixth measure, from District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey, would require landlords to send tenants an annual notice of rent-increase limits and just-cause eviction rules, including information on whether a building has aged into state rent regulation. New buildings are exempt from those state rules for 15 years after construction.
The Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development will also spend $1 million on a “Know Your Rights” campaign run with private employers, and the City Attorney’s office is steering renters toward its complaint portal.
“Everyday San Franciscans cannot afford to live here, and even those paying astronomical rents are getting evicted,” City Attorney David Chiu said. “This is not sustainable and renters need help.”
The money already committed
Separate from the new proposals, the city has dedicated more than $54 million in fiscal 2026-27 to emergency rental assistance and eviction legal defense. That breaks down as $31.3 million through the housing department for direct financial assistance, including $18.1 million in tenant-based rental subsidies and $13.2 million in emergency rental assistance, plus $23.1 million for legal defense and advocacy, of which $18.2 million funds Tenant Right to Counsel. Lurie raised that combined investment by 15 percent in this year’s budget, adding more than $4 million.
The city’s business establishment is publicly on board, at least with the education piece. “San Francisco’s small businesses and employers across the city depend on a stable, thriving workforce, and housing stability is a critical part of that equation,” said Rodney Fong, president and chief executive of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, whose organization is partnering on the campaign.
Every ordinance in the package still needs Board of Supervisors approval, and none of them adds housing supply. That track is separate: Lurie broke ground the day before on the 7,200-home Candlestick Point redevelopment. For owners of rent-controlled buildings, the nearer question is whether a 10 percent ceiling on banked increases and capital improvement pass-throughs changes the math on capital spending, since those pass-throughs have been the mechanism for recovering it.
