SF moves to block evictions over less than one month's unpaid rent

The notices file at 25 Van Ness Avenue, in the building where the Rent Board keeps the city's eviction paper. Each one is a landlord's notice that a tenant must leave. The file behind that address has been telling a quiet story all year: the reason printed on the notice is changing.

On Tuesday, Supervisor Jackie Fielder introduced legislation to bar eviction for unpaid rent below one month's fair market rent. Today the city allows eviction for any nonpayment, whatever the amount. The bill sets the line at the federal fair market rent HUD assigns San Francisco: $2,485 for a studio, $2,977 for a one bedroom, $3,604 for a two bedroom. Mission Local first reported the legislation.

Five supervisors co-sponsor it: Myrna Melgar, Shamann Walton, Connie Chan, Bilal Mahmood and Chyanne Chen. The mayor says he backs it. The board votes no earlier than October. Los Angeles, Oakland and Berkeley already run on the same one-month rule.

The record behind the debate: landlords filed 1,097 eviction notices in the first eight months of 2026, through the file's August 27 tail. That is 4 percent above the 1,051 filed in the same window of 2025. Notices jumped 62 percent from 2024 to 2025, so the city is still running above the pre-surge pace.

The sharper move is inside the total. Notices citing unpaid rent fell from 395 in the first eight months of 2025 to 278 this year, down 30 percent. Notices citing a lease breach rose from 179 to 307 and now outnumber nonpayment, a reversal of last year's mix. Nuisance notices rose from 243 to 295. Owner move-in notices rose from 68 to 81.

The file cannot say why the mix flipped. The drop is not one data quirk: nonpayment notices ran below 2025 in seven of the eight months. The law's backers argue small-dollar filings are exactly the abuse the ordinance should stop. Tuesday Rose Thornton, an attorney at the Eviction Defense Collaborative, told Mission Local that about a quarter of a sample of the group's evictions last year were for nonpayment under the fair market amount, and that the change could stop hundreds a year.

What the ordinance will not do, in Fielder's words: erase the debt, or let anyone live rent free. Past one month's fair market rent, the current rules stand. Fielder said she expects landlord groups to fight it.

If you are holding a notice, keep the paper and the case number. The Rent Board at 25 Van Ness and the Eviction Defense Collaborative both publish intake hours. The board vote lands no earlier than October; agendas and public comment windows post on the Board of Supervisors site at sf.gov. The file says the boom is back. This bill is the city trying to decide who carries it.