Join us with the Housing Movement thats here today in the chambers. Supervisor campos. Thank you very much. Thank you supervisor mar and im very proud to be a cosponsor of this effort. You can only imagine how better off San Francisco would be if instead of listening back 1978. You can imagine the thousands and thousands of San Francisco citizens who would still be in this city today and as an openly gay man, i am especially proutd ly proud of the very Important Role that lbgt has played against for the very important value of helping middle income people, hoer income people stay in San Francisco. I think that this is a measure that is a Long Time Coming and i think that for not only the lgtb community, but every community in San Francisco, this is something that is welcome news. And i also think that for the landlords and Property Owners in the city, i think that this is an opportunity for them to come forward and join this effort because the speculators were going after are giving landlords in San FranciscoProperty Owners, Property Owners in San Francisco a bad name. I think theres every incentive for Property Owners to come forward and support this measure because the speculators that were trying to target with this measure are speculators that fol loel a different set of rules. Many of them dont live in San Francisco and quite frankly dont care about the impact that their speculation has on this city. Im very proud to be associated with this measure. You know, today was a very interesting and very difficult day in city hall and we heard about dozens of elderly men and women in their 80s and 90s who are facing displacement. Rosie is being evicted. In that case this measure is about protecting the very soul of this city and thats why we have to go after speculators so im very proud to be supportive and thank you to all the Community Members who have worked on this and what i appreciate thabt measure besides the fact that its connected to harvey milk is the fact that it also comes from the grass roots, from dozens of meetings throughout neighborhoods in San Francisco where we hear directly from the people that it was time to address speculation. Thank you. Supervisor tang. Thank you. I definitely want to acknowledge how difficult a lot of our housing challenges are here in San Francisco, especially. I think that i mean, i am one of those who struggled here in San Francisco as well so i want to make sure this measure is doing what doesnt catch some of the other folks in it that we dont intend to and so with that, i do have a couple of questions and i am trying to figure out if it might be directed towards supervisor mar or perhaps the City Attorney who worked on drafting this, but given that the structure of this measure is such that, you know, between one three five years there are Different Levels of tiers and percentages that the tax would apply towards, i wanted see in terms of the Effective Date of this ordinance and when voters vote on this, how would this impact people who may have purchased property in recent years. Id like to defer to the City Attorney. Good afternoon, deputy City Attorney. It would apply to people who have recently purchased homes within the last three or four years and subsequently sold them after the effect tiff date of the ordinance, january 1 20shgs 15. Okay. So even after january 2015, even if they sold it prior to that it would still apply to them . Well, it would apply to second sales. The way the tax works is it looks at the first and second sale. If the first sale occurred before january 1 20shgs 15 and the second one occurred after january 1, 2015 would be covered, but if both sales occurred after january 2015 it would be covered. There are folks who have potentially maybe entered into a sale recently, maybe anticipated, maybe didnt anticipate selling the property and then not knowing that this measure is coming into effect. I want to make sure that, you know, well aware of that potentially there are people who may have engaged in kind of a transaction may be impacted by this passed by voters. Sure. Because the takts is on the second transfer, it isnt considered to be retroactive under the law. Okay. So even if its technically not retroactive but still people who didnt anticipate this measure coming along will be impacted. Yes. Supervisor campos. I think it really depends on who youre trying to protect. You know, i think the point of this here is that were trying to protect tenants of San Francisco against speculators and i want to be very clear because we know that theres going to be a legal challenge to Something Like that and i want to record to be very clear that contrary to what has been implied, there is a form of retroactivety here because those are the words of the people trying to undermine this effort that its clear there is no retroactivety here. I just want to be very clear to the City Attorneys office because we know that every word that it said here is going to be used in litigation down the road. As far as the City Attorneys office is concerned, notwithstanding whats been implied here by my colleague, is there any retroactivety here legally with respect to this measure . No. Thank you. Sorry, just to follow up a little bit. This is only applying to Larger Properties so Single Family homes, Owner Occupied pics wont be covered so those folks [inaudible] before january 1 20shgs 15 wouldnt be covered. I want to be very clear here because i know theres a lat of ulterior motives here in terms of who were trying to protect and this measure is going to be challenged in court and i want to make sure were not making the case for the speculators who want to under mind this measure. Thank you for your clear response on that point. Follow up, supervisor tang. Thank you. And i think regardless of the language used, my concern is not about retroactivety or not, its about people who have entered into sales, and have a second transaction. That is my concern. I dont want folks to be insinuating that im looking out for speck hey tors. I think my concern with any piece of legislation is that people come into a situation fell well aware of what theyre entering into. And i do understand that there have been a number of exemptions that were put into this measure and i know you mentioned the very exemptions that is are here, but there are situations where there may be people who dont anticipate that transfer that may be occurring. If you get laid off from a job but are in possession of a multiunit building, maybe you have to relocate, maybe there was an unanticipated illness that has occurred, id like to ask the sponsor, you know, there have been so many exemptions that have been included in this measure, why were nose not . That is my concern. The people who may be small time investors who, you know, acquired a 29 unit building and didnt anticipate any of these issues coming up. Ill say its narrowed tailored to to kwus on speculators on making hyper profits by flipping them over a short period of time. I think excluding anyone thats selling at a loss as well so thats another key factor and as scott said, its excluding the small home owners and really going after the larger ones that are flipping and leading to the unstable market. I think its difficult to track if somebody loses their job, but i think we tried to craft something as clear as possible so as it goes to the ballot its understandable its going after a small number of entities and individuals that are purchasing property and not there for the long term for neighborhood stability, but making a superer profit off a piece of property and i think its been crafted with enough exemptions to protect the small guy and go after the profiteers who have been causing havoc in our community. Really as supervisor campos said, leading to this question of whether the city will remain with its values with diversity of everyone that harvey milk believed in and im hoping many people and voters believe in, or a city thats hands off leading allowing profiteers and greedy speculators to drive everything up so it disrupts and tears our communities apart. That would be my response is its been narrowly crafted. Its a reasonable measure that helps address this speculators market that many of our communities are really fearing right now. I mean, id just say that, again, this measure does cover between units ranging from 2 through 29 so there are small Property Owners that own buildings that are three, four units. Those are small time investors so thats what im getting at here is some of them there may be unforeseen circumstances that will arise and so how do we account for that . That is really not part of any of the examinations exemptions and i dont think its been crafted for those individuals. Its not about the bigger folks who are able to account for some of these situations that occur. I dont know if theres a way to fix that, but i wanted to make sure that concern is brought out. If a small home enholds on to the property for five years theyre not even impacted by this. Its going after people flipping properties and making a super profit off those. I will just say one more point, which is that im talking about unforeseen circumstances. Say you fully intended to hold on to it for a longer period of time but you didnt know that you lost your job, you didnt have the financial means, you had an illness occur and you couldnt hold on to it for five years, yo would be hit with this tax. That is where my concern lies. Supervisor campos. Just going to be very clear about three things. One is that this tax this is no prohibiting sales, it is not in fact even prohibiting speck haitian. Its just saying that we as a government have every right to make sure that theres proper taxation when speculation occurs, especially when it runs rampant as it is hang right now. The second thing is i will tell you that every time a measure my experience has been every time a measure that is aimed at protecting against speculation, especially in the real estate market, comes forwards, the opposition always tries to make the argument against it by putting forward the case for the small property own, when reality is that the speculation thats happening out there, the people that are doing this, are not small Property Owners, they are big entities by in large that are making a huge profit and yet they always trying to hide the small Property Owner every single time and weve seen it here time and time again. And then the last thing is that when it comes to unintended consequences it is always interesting to me that that argument is always raised in the context of protecting regular people in San Francisco, working people in San Francisco. I never hear about unintended circumstances when it comes to passing a Major Development project, passing major tax breaks, supporting corporate interests. Those words are never uttered and theres a reason for that. And thats why the reason this is going to the ballot is because we know that this building unfortunately has proven ineffective in protecting against the speculation thats taking place out there. And in the process of going through this legislative prooufl, were going to hear the same arguments over and over again from the same players is that we always hear those arguments from, but at the end of the day, the reason why those arguments will be made is because they know that if this gets to the ballot and the voters of San Francisco have a say, that theyre going to vote the right way and the right way is to say theres a price to be paid for speculation in San Francisco. Thats the truth. [applause] so let me [inaudible] a little bit first of all, supervisor mar thanks for bringing this piece of legislation to us. I am also concerned with the prices of housing. That could be super official because of speculation. I think its okay for if i were to ask and be concerned about unintended consequences and thats my role that i would do that with any piece of legislation. And however, when i look at the assumptions that you built into this its pretty much answering most of the questions i brought up of who ever heard of when something is going to happen . Is it 100 . Probably not. To me seems like 99 of that. People are protected, the small homeowners especially the Single Family places. Even with that speculation goes on and the home prices are being driven up because i know a lot of people flip those. At the same time youre providing some flexibility so we dont have to police ever single little thing. So i more than willing to support this move forward. So supervisor tang. Sure. So i just want to i had a couple more questions, but in terms of just the administration of this program, i was wondering if perhaps i dont know if supervisor mar or the department whogs going to be administering this would be able to let us know how are we going to be enforcing this . How are we going to be checking to make sure that, you know, all of these different requirements that are in place are checked upon. I wanted to say in my communications with our assessor, that her office has helped tremendously. The Deputy Director is here to talk about the implementation of this measure if it were passed by voters in november. Thank you supervisor mar and tang. Looks like from Deputy Director of the assessors office. Our Recorder Division would be responsible for administering collection of this surtax in the same way theyre currently responsible for collecting the property transfer tax. We have right now when people are transferring property, usually the title company, we have a fairly brief two page transfer tax affidavit that they fill out explaining the transfer tax and listing whether they are exempt in any way from the existing transfer tax ordinance. We would be for implementation of this legislation we anticipate wed be expanding the transfer tax affidavit to include information about whether this is residential property. We would have people self certifying the number of units that are included in the property. We would be having information aball of the exemptions and whether people fall into the various exemptions that are provided in the legislation. We also would be seeking information from them about the percentage of the property thats being conveyed because if there are tic multiunits, theyre fractional units and wed need people involved in the transaction to provide that information. We probably would need information about whether the owner of record has died, theres an exemption for death. When the assessor Recorders Office often dont learn about the death of a property until many years after that death has occurred because it needs to be reported to us so the only way wed have information is through this affidavit that we would be request inging. So in sum, were probably going to have to develop and wed work with the City Attorney to develop a new transfer tax affidavit, but it would be quite a bit longer than the existing two page affidavit. People involved in the transaction would have to sign this under penalty of perjury and pretty much everybody whos transferring land would have to fill out an affidavit testifying to all of the exemptions and requirements of this legislation. In terms of you had asked, supervisor tang, about enforcement. We would not have any with the current resources that we have, we dont have any ability to enforce this legislation. And so wed be receiving information, people would be signing under penalty of perjury, but we dont have the resources to go into our property tax system and check to find out if all these things are true about finding out prior sales price and all of that kind of thing. So, you know, if people were not you know, if there was a belief that people were not providing true and correct information on that affidavit, that wed provide, it would really be up to the mayor and board of supervisors to provide resources for someone in the city, not necessarily our office to be doing investigations and enforcement but we simply dont have you know, we have a hard time keeping up with reassessment of properties in order to support our citys general fund as it is. So essentially then someone would turn in in this kind of se nash owe, someone would turn in affidavit and thats it . Like, nothing else happens after that . We would require that affidavit to be presented at record dags of the transfer so theres a new deed. Without the you know, and our staff will have to be trained to go through and see whether the transfer is exempt. Theyll have to be doing that at the counter or receive quite a few deeds and transfer tax affidavits through a recording system that we return on the day of if theres something deficient there. Once weve made that determination we would record the deed, we would collect, if they are not exempt from this surtax, we would collect the surtax that was do before recordation so everything would have to happen before the actual property transfer would take place. And at that point unless were directed through some other investigation or something, our world would in terms of this transfer tax, would be complete. Thank you. Okay. I think we should take public comment, if theres any for this item so i dont have any [inaudible]. Is any Public Comments on this item . Okay. Could you line up on the side of the room