Oakland discusses change Rent Control Laws for small multifamily

[Kell Caro]

While chatting with a friend today they brought my attention to discussions currently happening in the Oakland City Council that would be of interest to all of us with small multi-family properties in Oakland.  Oakland has strict rent control laws, like San Francisco, Berkeley, and many other cities, however there is an exemption for both duplexes and triplexes when the owner lives there as their primary residence.  The exemption is for protecting small multi-family homeowner's from the woes of a bad tenant and creates flexibility in finding suitable tenants, who thus, are living in close proximity to the owner. The new measure would eliminate this exemption and extend regular rent control laws to all multi-family properties. 

Article can be found here

https://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/archives/...

The City Council Minutes from the meeting can typically be found here, though for this particular meeting, on the 17th, have not been made available yet

https://oakland.legistar.com/calendar.aspx

I wanted to help bring some attention to this as house-hacking is such a huge conversation here on BP and was the only way I found that I could feasibly invest here in the Bay Area.  The exemption does not currently apply to 4-plexes either, and I really doubt that that's going to change...  The new measure is aimed for the November ballot and would certainly be worth paying attention to as it develops.