By Lisa Awbrey, HANC Board

While working San Franciscans struggle daily to afford necessities like rent, healthy food and healthcare, billionaires and corporations are enjoying record breaking profits.  Why then are some of our local electeds permitting Greystar Real Estate Partners, the nation‘s largest corporate landlord and property manager, to conduct business in San Francisco? Greystar has a decades-long history of defrauding tenants, of rent fixing and gouging and of violating federal and state housing laws. 

D5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood recently announced that Greystar will build and manage construction of an eight-story multi-unit luxury building with ground floor retail, beginning on October 19, at 400 Divisadero, the former Touchless car wash site; only 20 units of the currently planned 203 units will be for permanent affordable housing. 

Some might remember during Mahmood’s 2024 campaign, GROWSF paid for and installed a billboard across from the site promising that then candidate Mahmood “would fix” the stalled project. Former D5 Supervisor Dean Preston had been working on a deal for the nonprofit Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation/TNDC to buy the parcel outright and build fully subsidized homes. The choice was never housing versus no housing (as YIMBYs falsely stated). But rather, the challenge was to build an affordable project with increased levels of affordable homes using affordable housing funds (which then Mayor Breed and the city refused to do), versus building a multi storied tower to be constructed (and managed) by market rate developers. 

GREYSTAR’S CRIMINAL HISTORY

For decades, Greystar has flouted tenant laws and housing regulations. Greystar’s serial criminality includes civil rights complaints involving antitrust violations, rent fixing and rent gouging on a massive scale, discrimination, charging exorbitant junk fees and deceptive advertising. Greystar became a central focus of ProPublica's 2022 investigative reporting on RealPage (https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent) , a software company whose algorithmic pricing tool was accused of illegal price-fixing and cartel-like behavior in the national rental housing market. To date, Greystar owns more than 119,000 apartment buildings in multiple states and manages over 1 million rental units. 

ProPublica investigated and exposed how RealPage’s software aggregated sensitive, nonpublic pricing and occupancy data from competing landlords to generate coordinated rent pricing, thereby artificially inflating rents across major U.S. metropolitan housing markets. Greystar has faced subsequent federal class-action antitrust lawsuits filed by tenants and was investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The Federal Trade Commission/FTC and seven state Attorneys General have also investigated, charged and ultimately fined Greystar.

SPENDING MILLIONS TO DEFEAT LOCAL  BALLOT MEASURES

In California’s recent statewide elections, Greystar has consistently contributed millions of dollars to kill multiple ballot measures aimed at strengthening tenant protections and expanding rent control.

• Proposition 33 (2024):Greystar, with a coalition of corporate landlords donated millions to defeat the measure, which sought to repeal the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act and allow local governments to expand rent control.
• Proposition 21 (2020):Greystar was a major financial contributor to the No on Prop 21 The initiative, which would have allowed cities to pass rent control on buildings over 15 years old, was defeated following tens of millions in real estate industry spending. 
• Proposition 10 (2018):Greystar and its industry peers collectively shelled out millions to fund a massive misinformation campaign to defeat this initial attempt to repeal statewide rent control restrictions.

MASS EVICTIONS IN SAN JOSE

In July 2016, Greystar carried out what local advocates called the largest mass eviction in Silicon Valley history, displacing roughly 670 residents from a rent-controlled complex in San Jose to make way for a luxury development.

“We have never encountered a landlord that operates with such brazen contempt and hostility toward the rule of law as Greystar,”  Aaron Carr, Executive director of the Housing Rights Initiative, said in a statement. “As the largest landlord in America, Greystar should be setting the standard of best practices for the nation, not systematically rejecting or evicting legitimate, prospective tenants.”

With evictions at a 10 year high and climbing, and with San Francisco’s  rents being the highest in all of the nation, why is City Hall unleashing a predatory and criminal corporate landlord into our communities?  The evidence consistently shows that Greystar has discriminated against, harmed, defrauded and evicted thousands of tenants across the nation. Why are they allowed to do business in San Francisco?