A landlord can follow the paperwork, weaponize the process and push a vulnerable tenant toward homelessness, all while the law struggles to catch up. I believe this is one of the most indefensible failures in America's housing system.
We have built a framework of tenant protections that looks reassuring on paper but can collapse the moment an ordinary person is forced to defend those rights against someone with deeper pockets.
I see the damage most clearly among elderly tenants. People who have spent decades in their homes are suddenly confronted with eviction notices, allegations of nuisance and demands they may have neither the money nor the legal knowledge to contest.
Their homes become investment opportunities. Their belongings become evidence. Their vulnerability becomes an opening.
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Housing has undergone a fundamental economic transformation. Since the financial crisis of 2008, institutional investors and private equity firms have become increasingly involved in residential real estate, treating properties as assets from which to extract returns. In rent-controlled markets such as San Francisco, a building occupied by tenants paying below-market rents can look like an underperforming investment.
In some cases, replacing those tenants with higher-paying occupants can increase rental income and make a property more valuable.
This is where the economics becomes ugly.
When a property's value can be increased by replacing long-term tenants with higher-paying occupants, the people already living there can be viewed as obstacles to a financial target. Neglected repairs, repeated demands, harassment and nuisance allegations can all place pressure on tenants to leave.
A notice about a box in an apartment may appear trivial. A series of notices, legal threats and unaddressed maintenance problems can create overwhelming pressure on a tenant to leave.
San Francisco's Chinatown illustrates the stakes. I have seen how allegations involving tenants' belongings can become grounds for eviction proceedings targeting multiple long-term residents after a property changes hands. Legitimate nuisance claims deserve scrutiny, but so do the motives behind mass enforcement. If an investor acquires a building and suddenly its longtime occupants become problems to be removed, we should ask who benefits from the outcome and who bears the cost.
Cost of Displacement
The human consequences are severe. Research published in the journal Social Science & Medicine found that renters who received an eviction judgment faced a 40 percent higher mortality risk than comparable renters who did not. Losing a home can sever access to familiar doctors, neighbors, services and the routines that help older people remain independent.
For local governments, homelessness is often discussed in terms of budgets, service delivery and public administration. For displaced residents, however, it can become a health crisis, a financial catastrophe and, in some cases, contribute to life-threatening consequences.
I think about the older tenants who have outlived their families and friends. Some spent their lives looking after other people. By the time they need help themselves, there may be nobody left to provide it. Should their final years be governed by an investor's calculations and a legal system they cannot afford to navigate?
Even cities that promise broad access to eviction defense struggle to deliver it. San Francisco funds legal assistance for eligible tenants, yet legal service providers face growing caseloads and rising demand. As cities face budget deficits, tenant advocates worry that anti-displacement programs can become vulnerable during budget negotiations.
Under that pressure, a frightened tenant may agree to a court stipulation that imposes strict conditions on remaining in their home. A later violation can make removal easier. The tenant has technically received legal assistance, but the outcome may still be a weakened ability to defend their housing. This is the cruel arithmetic of an underfunded system. The landlord can keep applying pressure while the tenant must make life-altering decisions against a deadline.
The public ultimately pays for this failure.
Governments spend enormous sums addressing homelessness, emergency accommodation and the health consequences of housing instability. Yet keeping someone in a home can prevent the crisis before those expenses accumulate. We can fund the legal defense that helps a person stay housed, or we can fund the far more damaging consequences of losing that home.
Making Rights Meaningful Again
The reforms are clear. California needs enforceable statewide anti-harassment protections that cover deliberate neglect of essential repairs, coercive attempts to force tenants out and conduct designed to make housing unsafe or intolerable. Violations should carry meaningful penalties. Eviction defense needs sustained public funding, with tenants able to access qualified attorneys throughout their cases, not just at isolated moments when the damage may already be done.
State lawmakers must also stop tying the hands of local governments. Cities understand their own housing conditions, yet legal limits can prevent them from adopting practical safeguards. California should establish strong statewide standards while giving municipalities the authority to respond to local problems. Other states should examine the same failures before their own patchwork of protections leaves tenants exposed.
I believe civil eviction defense deserves the seriousness we give criminal defense. The legal circumstances differ, but the consequences of losing one's home can be just as devastating to a person's future. A system that gives a well-resourced landlord an army of professionals while leaving a vulnerable tenant to fend for themselves is not delivering equal justice.
Policymakers need to stop congratulating themselves for passing tenant protections that people cannot afford to use. Fund eviction defense as essential public infrastructure. Enact statewide anti-harassment laws. Give cities the authority to stop abusive displacement tactics. Then measure success by how many people remain safely housed, not by how many pages of legislation have been passed.
A housing right that cannot survive a fight against money and power is not meaningful protection. It is a promise the government has failed to keep.
Rahman Popal is a San Francisco tenant-rights attorney and founder of The Law Firm for Tenant Rights, which could benefit professionally from expanded tenant protections and eviction-defense funding.
All opinions are the author’s own.