Cheap San Francisco 1 Bedroom Apartments
San Francisco is both the twelfth most populous city in the United States and one of the country’s most famous, making it a very desirable place to live. As is always the case with popular destinations, the more popular it is the more expensive it is and this obviously applies to San Francisco as well. However, when it comes to rent, San Francisco tenants are lucky because it is one of the few major cities in the United States to still have an active rent control law, which restricts landlords from dramatically increasing rents regardless of the market value of the rental property in question. Initiated in 1979, most rental units in San Francisco are covered by rent control which is administered by the municipal government through the Rent Board and defended by the tenants through the Rent Board (www.sfrb.org) and defended by tenants through the Tenants Union (www.sftu.org).
The primary benefit of rent control in San Francisco is that landlords are restricted at how much they are allowed to raise the rents each year and the number is tied to the inflation rate. The basic rents can also be increased for capital improvements to the property or for increased maintenance fees, but the resulting rate is still well below what it would be if there was no rent control. Further, if the landlord fails to meat their obligations – such as maintenance or taking away amenities – then the tenants have the right to petition for a rent decrease in order to offset this. Finally the rent control legislation ensures that a tenant con only be evicted under certain conditions and allows the tenant to appeal an eviction decision in most (though not all) instances.
There are a number of exceptions to San Francisco’s rent control, which usually result in much more expensive rents. The primary exemption is for any rental unit constructed after June 1979; any rental unit newer than this is not covered by rent control. The rent control protection also does not apply to rental housing units that are subsidized, for example it does not apply to Section 8 housing. There are also smaller exemptions for people living in dormitory style arrangements or people living in residential hotels for less than 28 days. There are also some housing units – especially single-family houses or condominiums – that only have partial coverage under the rent control legislation.
The result of this rent control policy is that rents are considerably lower in San Francisco than would be the case otherwise and the tenants have considerably more rights than is common in many other American cities. However, San Francisco serves as the primary anchor of the much larger San Francisco Bay Area Metropolitan area (the thirteenth largest metropolitan area in the United States and home to some 4.3 million people) and this means there is always a long line of the people trying to get into a San Francisco apartment. Therefore, unless you know someone or get very lucky, it can take some time to actually find an apartment covered by rent control and to actually move into it.
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