property and make loss it doesn't apply to combrou. also doesn't apply to sales to create permanent affordable housing and doesn't apply to two unit buildings where each of the following conditions are met, a building permit or approval from planning or dbi has been applied for before july 1, 2014 t owner conveying the lands tenements or other realty sold and the total construction cost is $500,000 or more and the last [inaudible] within one year preceding the date of conveyance. so it's an extremely, i believe, well crafted measure that will help address the housing affordability crisis before us and maintain diversity, balance and fairness in our neighborhoods. colleagues, with my three other coauthors of this measure, i strongly urge your support to

join us with the housing movement that's here today in the chambers. >> supervisor campos. >> thank you very much. thank you supervisor mar and i'm 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 we're going after are giving landlords in san francisco property owners, property owners in san francisco a bad name. i think there's every incentive for property owners to come forward and support this measure because the speculators that we're trying to target with this measure are

speculators that fol loel a different set of rules. many of them don't live in san francisco and quite frankly don't care about the impact that their speculation has on this city. i'm 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 that's why we have to go after speculators so i'm 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 it's 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 -- doesn't catch some of the other folks in it that we don't 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. >> i'd 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 didn't 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 isn't considered to be retroactive under the law. >> okay. so even if it's technically not retroactive but still people who didn't anticipate this measure coming along will be impacted. >> yes. >> supervisor campos. >> i think it really depends on who you're trying to protect. you know, i think the point of this here is that we're trying to protect tenants of san francisco against speculators and i want to be very clear because we know that there's 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 it's clear there is

no retroactivety here. i just want to be very clear to the city attorney's 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 attorney's office is concerned, notwithstanding what's 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 won't be covered so those folks [inaudible] before january 1 #20shgs 15 wouldn't be covered. >> i want to be very clear here because i know there's a lat of ulterior motives here in terms of who we're trying to protect and this measure is going to be challenged in court and i want to make sure we're 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, it's about people who have entered into sales, and have a second transaction. that is my concern. i don't want folks to be insinuating that i'm 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 they're 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 don't 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, i'd 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 didn't anticipate any of these issues coming up. >> i'll say it's narrowed tailored to to kwus on speculators on making hyper profits by flipping them over a short period of time. i think excluding anyone that's selling at a loss as well so that's another key factor and as scott said, it's excluding the small home owners and really going after the larger ones that are flipping and leading to the unstable market. i think it's 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 it's understandable it's 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 it's 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 i'm hoping many people and voters believe in, or a city that's 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 it's been narrowly crafted. it's a reasonable measure that helps address this speculator's market that many of our communities are really fearing right now. >> i mean, i'd 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 that's what i'm 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 don't think it's been crafted for those individuals. it's not about the bigger folks who are able to account for

some of these situations that occur. i don't know if there's 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 they're not even impacted by this. it's going after people flipping properties and making a super profit off those. >> i will just say one more point, which is that i'm talking about unforeseen circumstances. say you fully intended to hold on to it for a longer period of time but you didn't know that you lost your job, you didn't have the financial means, you had an illness occur and you couldn't 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. it's just saying that we as a

government have every right to make sure that there's 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 that's 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 we've 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 there's a reason for that. and that's 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 that's taking place out there. and in the process of going

through this legislative prooufl, we're 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 they're going to vote the right way and the right way is to say there's a price to be paid for speculation in san francisco. that's 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 it's okay for -- if i were to ask and be concerned about unintended consequences and that's 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 it's 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 you're providing some flexibility so we don't 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 don't 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 they're 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 we'd 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 that's being conveyed because if there are tic multiunits, they're fractional units and we'd need people involved in the transaction to provide that

information. we probably would need information about whether the owner of record has died, there's an exemption for death. when the assessor recorders office often don't 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 we'd have information is through this affidavit that we would be request inging. so in sum, we're probably going to have to develop -- and we'd 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 who's 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 don't have any ability to enforce this legislation. and so we'd be receiving information, people would be signing under penalty of perjury, but we don't 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 we'd 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 don't have -- you know, we have a hard time keeping up with reassessment of properties in order to support our city's 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 that's it? like, nothing else happens after that? >> we would require that affidavit to be presented at record dags of the transfer so there's 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. they'll 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 there's something deficient there. once we've 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 we're 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 there's any for this item so i don't have any [inaudible]. is any public comments on this item? okay. could you line up on the side of the room? you have two minutes. >> hello, copresident of the

harvey milk lgtb democratic club here. as you know, he started our club 40 years ago and since that time we've worked tirelessly to carry on his political legacy. that's why standing before you today is such an honor. he was elected to the boss in 1977 when he saw lgtb, people of color, elderly people and sick people falling pray to an epidemic of skyrocketing rents and unaffordable housing. he was assassinated before it came to pru wigs. the parallels between that time and today are striking. rents are again skyrocketing and low and middle income people are being priced out of our city. the need for the anti speculation tax is even more

obvious today. i urge you to see those parallels between today and the late 1970s and honor the legacy of harvey milk bypassing this piece of legislation. today we begin to finish the work that harvey milk started. the clear community in our community is afraid. around the world are leave anything droves because they cannot afford to stay. and as you'll hear from the many community members who will follow me, the lgtb community is not alone. the harvey milk help san francisco remain affordable for those of us here to appreciate it and it will make it accessible to those who want to move here and enjoy our riches. it will bring sanity back to our city and eliminate the

overwhelming anxiety fell by so many people here. i urge you to support this measure that's been 40 years in the making. >> thank you. >> hi. can we get this up on the screen please? >> a $900 rent increase on his cam tra store forced harvey himming to move. >> [inaudible]

>> you pay so much for your rents or you own a home and your mortgage payments are so high you have a piece of the pie. it takes our economy [inaudible]

>> thank you. >> wow, it's hard to follow supervisor harvey milk and it is certainly auspicious to have his voice here today speak to us about this important issue for our present. my name's [inaudible]. i'm here on behalf of a coalition, san francisco