Boommates -- Seniors living together (from Bloomberg)

Call them “boommates.” 

Surging costs for housing and other expenses are prompting baby boomers to take on roommates. A Harvard study estimates that almost a million Americans over age 65 now live with unrelated housemates ("NYC's Rent Surge Drives 86-Year-Old to Move in With a 'Boommate'"). 

To make ends meet, an increasing number of those 65 and older are choosing shared housing arrangements, helping save money in an era when many have fallen behind on retirement savings and there’s increasing concern about a loneliness epidemic.

... Versions of these shared living setups have existed for years, but they’re increasing in popularity as a surge in prices for housing, and pretty much everything else, coincides with the baby boomer generation entering retirement. There were 58 million Americans ages 65 and older in 2022, up from 43 million in 2012, according to Harvard’s JCHS. And a record 4.1 million Americans will turn 65 this year and every year through 2027, data from the Alliance for Lifetime Income shows. 

Even though inflation has cooled, senior adults are struggling to afford costs that have skyrocketed the last few years. In 2021, more than 11 million were cost-burdened, meaning they spent more than 30% of their household income on housing. While many retirees own their homes outright, others are stuck with high mortgage or rent payments. 

... In New York, rent has shot up 33% from pre-pandemic levels, and nationwide that figure is about 30%. For homeowners, increased costs for taxes, insurance and utilities have surged 26% since 2020. 

“We've seen an increase in older adults who are carrying mortgages on their primary homes including among people who are 80 and over,” said Jennifer Molinsky, a project director at Harvard’s JCHS. “And for those folks and for renters the cost burden rate is much higher. There's a much greater struggle with affordability. As we have more and more people in their eighties and over, that's a time when incomes really can't necessarily keep up with housing costs.” 

Royal Bank of Canada report, 26% of Canadian households can't afford to buy a house

 -- High rates and prices make it less affordable to own a home in Canada, Royal Bank of Canada

In some markets, 80% to 102% of median income is required to own and maintain a house.

OTOH, in the US the Wall Street Journal reports on "The Rise of the Forever Renters."  The two reports discuss very different phenomenon.  One group can't afford housing at today's prices.  The other group, younger maybe, prefers access to amenities and programming.  

“We thought this was going to be a transition to owning, but in fact it’s not, it’s become a lifestyle choice,” says Ark Chairman Jordan Kavana.

From the article:

Americans who would traditionally be homeowners have become long-term renters, including some with no plans to ever buy a home. Renters are changing savings patterns, sparking new developments, and inspiring businesses, from contractors that help out with renovations for renters to high-end fixtures that are easily removed from one dwelling to the next.

... Sustained high interest rates in the U.S. have made mortgages unpalatable to many, though the Federal Reserve recently signaled an end to more rate hikes. There has been a dearth of inventory of homes for sale and there are more rentals available with luxuries that make life seem easy. About 64% of people in the U.S. are homeowners compared with about 89% of people in China and 72% in Brazil, according to a Euromonitor analysis.

Real-estate investor GID, which owns and manages about 50,000 apartment units across 30 markets in the U.S., says nearly a quarter of its residents earn over $200,000. 

“Not an income you typically would have associated with a renter versus homeowner, but that is increasingly the case today,” says GID Chief Executive Greg Bates. The influx of higher-income renters has in part led to a decline in the number of lower-priced rental properties available in the U.S.

... Brian Alvarez, the chief executive of a finance consultancy, pays about $3,200 a month including parking and utilities for a one-bedroom apartment in Tampa’s high-end Water Street complex. He appreciates that the building has a rooftop lap pool, dry-cleaning pickup and a concierge service to help residents secure restaurant reservations and event tickets. And he loves being across the street from the Amalie Arena, where he frequently sees concerts and goes to hockey games.  ...“This is a relatively low price to pay for all the things I want,” says Alvarez, 36 years old. 

... There were nearly 103 million people living in rental housing in 2022, according to an analysis by the nonprofit trade organization the National Multifamily Housing Council, a 15% increase from 2007. 

For decades, renting was merely a steppingstone for the upper and middle class before it was time to buy. And a home was considered a key asset that would appreciate over years and help its owner fund retirement. 

New subdivisions full of single-family homes for rent—all but nonexistent a decade ago—are springing up from coast to coast. More rentals are advertising themselves as kid- and pet-friendly and permitting renters to make extensive modifications to their spaces.

... Couch says her daughter, Mikayla, loves that the development they live in is filled with other children and offers two swimming pools, a packed calendar of social events and a clubhouse. Couch and her husband appreciate that it is located in a great school district—and that they don’t have to mow their own lawn.

The Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority outbids Wall Street to buy houses in Cincinnati

Arts and retail focused community development corporations.  In "Revisiting stories: cultural planning and the need for arts-based community development corporations as real estate operators" I argue that to best buy, hold, develop, and maintain arts-related uses you need an arts and culture focused community development corporation (or the city or county government) to act at the city-wide/county scale.  

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, the Playhouse Square Development Corporation, and Jubilee Housing of Baltimore (focused on live work housing) are particularly good examples.

In "The SEMAEST Vital Quartier program remains the best model for helping independent retail," I state that SEMAEST in Paris is probably the best example of a city-chartered authority doing this.  Their focus is on maintaining independent retail.

Transit and real estate appreciation.  Transit focused community development corporations.  Similarly, in the face of real estate price increases in response to new transit infrastructure, I've suggested that a CDC could operate similarly, wrt both commercial and residential property, specifically for the Purple Line in Suburban Maryland ("Purple Line Corridor Coalition study: Same Old, Same Old | Gentrification will result from investment in transit infrastructure"). 

Sadly, wrt the Purple Line I first suggested this in 2007.  Fifteen years later, still no action.

Historic preservation.  Same for historic preservation.  The best way to arrest the possible demolition of a property is to buy it.  Having revolving funds and other mechanisms to be able to respond quickly to do so solves the problem ("Saving urban corner stores needs public assistance: Mott's Market on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC ").  

In Cleveland, not so much lately, the Cleveland Restoration Society was a leader in buying properties, sometimes using receivership statutes to cure notorious nuisances, rehabilitating them, and selling them at a loss if necessary, as a stabilization measure. Other preservation groups have done this similarly in places like Macon, Georgia, and Galveston, Texas. 

Serendipity and opportunity. And in my writings on "transformational projects action planning," one of the points about successful wide-scale revitalization programs is that there needs to be serendipity and the ability to seize opportunities as long as they fit within the outline of the master plan ("Why can't the "Bilbao Effect" be reproduced? | Bilbao as an example of Transformational Projects Action Planning").  

1. A commitment to the development and production of a broad, comprehensive, visionary, and detailed revitalization plan/s (Bilbao, Hamburg, Liverpool);
2. the creation of innovative and successful implementation organizations (Bilbao, Hamburg, Liverpool, Helsinki);
3. strong accountability mechanisms that ensure that the critical distance provided by semi-independent implementation organizations isn't taken advantage of in terms of deleterious action;
4. funding to realize the plan;
5. integrated branding and marketing programs to support the realization of the plan (Hamburg, Vienna, Liverpool, Bilbao, Dublin);
6. flexibility and a willingness to take advantage of serendipitous events and opportunities and integrate new projects into the overall planning and implementation framework (Bilbao, Liverpool, Helsinki).
   

Two examples of serendipity come from Bilbao.  First, in getting the Guggenheim Museum to open there, after Graz, Austria rejected their proposal.  Second, once the Museum opened recognizing that in addition to the subway, they need better surface rail transit (tram/streetcar) to serve the Museum District, and they got it running within a few years--one-third of the time it took DC to open a streetcar line.

Bias for action.  I guess this presupposes that the agency is predisposed to act instead of sit around.  I've written "bias for government inaction" is a problem, that government agencies aren't always that proactive, and tend to not have much of "a sense of urgency" when it comes for a need to act.  

Winston Churchill is famous for the quote:

You can always trust America to do the right thing... after she has exhausted all other alternatives.

Now, the bias is to not act, often because of ideological grounds, and an unwillingness to come up with the money for the change, even if the cost of not acting is much more expensive.

Housing market, venture capital and single family housing as rentals.  Since the 2008 Recession, Wall Street venture capital firms have developed large portfolios of single family housing, converting the properties to rental from owner occupied.  This was facilitated by banks wanting to simplify their REO (real estate owned) portfolios created by rampant foreclosures.

Because financiers have quick access to large amounts of capital, they can generally offer better terms than any individual or small company.  This has changed the nature of the real estate market in many communities, especially weaker markets.

A home recently purchased by The Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority.Jeff Dean for NPR.

Cincinnati.  The Port Authority in Cincinnati, recognizing that it is chartered as a community development corporation, realized it could step in and compete against venture capital and acquire REO portfolios ("It's harder to buy a house. This city fought back by outbidding corporate landlords," NPR).  From the article:

So when that California company, Raineth Housing, went under, the Port moved to buy up its properties scattered around Cincinnati. It's a first — she doesn't know of any other public agency like hers in the U.S. that's done it — and it's risky.

Brunner says the agency outbid 12 other investors, taking on $14.5 million in debt for those 194 homes. It has since paid $2 million more toward fixing them up.

Because large institutional owners are not usually committed to local communities, they may run the properties poorly (some do, others don't), so local ownership can also be an opportunity to improve the house and stabilize the neighborhood. ...

It's a challenge to fix up homes and keep sales prices low

The Port's purchase price per home averages out to roughly $78,000. But the amount it will sell them for depends on how much it has to spend to fix them up. And once the agency was able to look inside all 194 homes, it was clear many needed a lot more work than expected.

Their intent is to keep the properties as affordable, and that ideally they can sell them to tenants.  But this is complicated by the poor condition of many of the properties.

Conclusion.  The Port Authority in Cincinnati illustrates my points about having a (1) community development corporation or similar entity already created (2) that is ADEQUATELY CAPITALIZED, (3) with the wherewithal to act when important, transformational opportunities are presented.

Two words: vacancy tax | NYC: More than 60,000 Rent-Stabilized Apartments Are Now Vacant

The City news website in NYC reports that "More than 60,000 Rent-Stabilized Apartments Are Now Vacant — and Tenant Advocates Say Landlords Are Holding Them for ‘Ransom’."  From the article:

During a worsening housing affordability crisis, New York City landlords are keeping tens of thousands of rent-stabilized units off the market — a phenomenon tenant activists call “warehousing.” 

An internal state housing agency memo obtained by THE CITY shows that the number of rent-stabilized homes reported vacant on annual apartment registrations rose to over 61,000 in 2021 — nearly doubling from less than 34,000 in just a year as the city emerged from COVID lockdown.  ...

The Coalition to End Apartment Warehousing, a collective of tenants and 15 community organizations, has been calling attention to the trend, claiming that landlords are fabricating housing scarcity to manipulate legislative changes in Albany. “Creating fake scarcity to raise prices is not a fair way to run the housing market, and it deprives New Yorkers of needed housing,” coalition members wrote in a recent op-ed.  ...

The Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 (HSTPA) repealed both vacancy bonuses and vacancy decontrol. It also sharply limited how much landlords could pass along the costs of renovations to tenants through rent increases, practices that housing advocates and lawmakers criticized for spiking rents and fueling displacement. 

Prior to 2019, landlords could make a lot of money by emptying out rent-stabilized apartments. HSTPA essentially revoked any financial incentive to do so. ...

But landlords are still legally permitted to keep their rent-stabilized apartments empty indefinitely.

It still has loopholes ("D.C.’s problems with vacant, blighted properties haven’t gone away, residents and officials say," Washington Post), but DC's vacant residential property tax is 5x the regular rate.  It does move properties back into the market. 

And they aren't a universal solution ("Cities Now Use Taxes to Fight Blight. Is It Working?," Governing).  They work better in strong markets, where the demand to develop and the demand to rent are both high.  

In weak markets, vacancy taxes encourage demolition, because of low demand, and demolition generally isn't the best way to move revitalization forward ("Demolition isn't always a solution").

=======

-- "Rents are rising everywhere: with continued supply-demand mismatch, shouldn't renter protections be universal?," 2022

No more housing filtration? (at least in big cities)

Filtration is an old concept in urban planning (also called "ecological succession," "invasion-succession theory," or "concentric zone theory").

I thought from the University of Chicago sociologists in the 1920s, but it actually was first posited in the UK.  

It presumes that people with more money move outward from the core.  As they do so they are replaced by people who on a relative basis, have improved their circumstances compared to lower income deciles.

The Toronto Star reports ("Curse of the renter: In some neighbourhoods, not owning a home now costs more than owning one") that renters there are paying more for housing than housing owners in some parts of the city.  From the article:

Homeowners have long outspent renters in Toronto’s census metropolitan area; a decade ago, their average bills were $1,516 per month versus tenants’ $1,043. That trend is still visible in areas like Toronto’s Little Italy, or a large swath of southwest Brampton.

But over the last decade, the gap has been narrowing. Where owners in all areas spent 45.35 per cent more than tenants in 2011, it fell to 38.84 per cent in 2016, and to 30.28 per cent in 2021.

Statistics Canada has noted a countrywide trend, meanwhile, of renters’ bills climbing faster than homeowners. The average tenant in Canada last year paid 17.6 per cent more than they did in 2016. The average homeowner’s bills increased by 9.5 per cent over that period. 

Toronto is home to some more extreme examples, such as the area between Queen Street and Wright Avenue, from Lansdowne to Sorauren avenues. Here, though owners are still paying several hundred dollars more per month — $2,092 to renters’ $1,790 — renters’ bills are growing much faster. From 2016 to 2021, renters’ average bills went up 48.2 per cent, versus just five per cent for owners.

“It’s quite startling,” Majid said. Generally, the area in and around Parkdale has contended with gentrification, she said, and an increase in housing “financialization” as large companies have come in and purchased older rental apartment blocks as investments. In several cases, those companies have applied for above-guideline rent increases, Majid said, requesting Landlord and Tenant Board permission to charge higher rents for reasons such as major repairs.

If older tenants are pushed out by those costs, she said the rents could surge even higher.

The concept of filtration presumes that older properties remain lower cost.

In today's economy properties are being priced as if they are new, regardless of condition, age, etc.  Maybe it's just about the price per square foot, regardless of condition.

This results in part because an increasing share of the rental housing sector is owned and managed by large firms.

And because demand is greater than supply, especially for comparatively lower cost housing.

An urban planner quoted in the article suggests a greater role for the nonprofit social housing sector as a way to counter constant repricing upward.

-- "Rents are rising everywhere: with continued supply-demand mismatch, shouldn't renter protections be universal? ," 2022

Guardian article on Berlin rent control issue

 "Berlin’s rent cap, though defeated in court, shows how to cool overheated markets," has lots of good links, including "Why Rent Control Works" from Jacobin Magazine.

For me, part of the reason I support the concept is it is a kind of "excess profits tax" since housing is expensive in part because of supply restrictions because of zoning and other rules.  (Note I don't think government is heinous as restrictions usually come about because of nimbyism and a very facile understanding of how the housing market works.)

Why should commercial property owners be the sole beneficiaries of these capacity restrictions?

The trick is to balance rent control requirements in a manner that doesn't provide another reason to limit production of more housing.

Financialization of trailer parks and single family houses

Trailer parks.  The New Yorker has an article, "What Happens When Investment Firms Acquire Trailer Parks," about how large property firms and hedge funds are buying trailer parks, typically places of comparatively low cost housing, and significantly raising the cost of living there.

Traditionally, a household owns the trailer but rents the lot.

I've argued that community housing master plans should include trailer parks as a type and aim to put control of these properties into the social housing sector or community land trusts.

But cities, looking for higher revenue streams from property aren't inclined to take much initiative when it comes to this property type, especially when it comes to higher value redevelopment ("Trailer parks moving out of Fayetteville nothing new, officials say," Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette, "Centerville residents facing eviction in the middle of a pandemic, but not without a fight," Salt Lake Tribune).

Single family houses.  After the Great Financial Crisis, when hundreds of thousands of houses went into foreclosure, large portfolios of scattered site single family houses were acquired by Wall Street investment firms.  

Over time they made great profits from renting the houses out and property value appreciation ("When Wall Street Is Your Landlord," Atlantic, "A $60 Billion Housing Grab by Wall Street," New York Times).

This also makes it harder for individuals to become homeowners, thereby reducing the quality of their household wealth portfolio.

New construction single family housing subdivisions for rental.  Investment firms are taking this to a new level, by building new subdivisions from the ground up, but only for rental ("Wall Street’s New Suburban Subdivision Is Full of Renters," Bloomberg).  

They're being pushed to do this, because they like the profits from rentals, but as the housing supply tightens it's harder for them to find good deals.

Housing Eviction

I haven't read the book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City  It won the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction in 2017 and argues that eviction causes poverty more than it is a function of it.

-- NYT Book review by Barbara Ehrenreich

Smoking triggers eviction in Silver Spring, Maryland.  While I have no problem with smoking restrictions in multiunit housing, an article ("She was spotted smoking in ‘smoke-free’ rental housing. Now, she may be kicked out") in the Washington Post describes how a low income tenant in social housing was served an eviction notice for smoking in the common areas of the complex, which has a smoking restriction clause in the lease. 

One of the commenters made a good point, that the property manager, before taking the extreme action of eviction, could offer smoking cessation classes as a type of warning.

That makes sense to me.

The eviction machine.  In the vein of the book Evicted, the Guardian has an article on "America's eviction epidemic," focusing on Richmond, Virginia, North Carolina, and Atlanta.  In Richmond, the city housing authority is a major proponent of eviction.

Evading tenant protections in Toronto.  The Toronto Star reports ("This Toronto renter fought eviction from a man who bought just 1 per cent of the house. After 7 months, she’s giving up") on a workaround for property owners in markets with tight protections for renters, they can sell as little as 1% of the ownership of the house to a third party, who then can claim they will be moving into the unit. From the article:

... Jacky Bai Jun Liu, a first-time homebuyer in his early 20s, had acquired the landlord title after he was sold just a one per cent stake in the house in midsummer. McKenzie told the Star that Liu had told her during a phone call he was a Ryerson student and intended to move his friends into the house.

Almost immediately after the sale, Liu moved to evict seven tenants from two units, in June serving them with an N12 notice co-signed by one of the primary homeowners, informing them that Liu intended to exercise his legal right to take over the property for personal use.

On a "form versus substance" standpoint, such subterfuges shouldn't be legal because 1% ownership would normally not trigger control, and would qualify as a passive interest.

New York City special eviction protections.  In 2017, New York City passed a "Right to Counsel" law, which provides legal representation in eviction matters for people who are below the federal poverty line.  Currently, the program is limited to certain areas of the city with the highest need, because there isn't enough money and enough lawyers to fully fund and staff the program ("Year One of the NYC Tenant Right to Counsel Program," Next City).

New York State eviction protections.  With the recent progressive turn of the New York State Legislature, other protections were passed at the state level, which have had significant impact in NYC as well ("NYC evictions down almost 20% six months after state tenant protections enacted," New York Daily News). From the article:

In June, Gov. Cuomo signed off on a package of laws that made it more difficult for landlords to take apartments out of rent-regulated status and no longer allowed them to raise rents by as much as 20% when tenants move out of regulated units.

WRT rent control, in the 1950s NYC had over 2 million housing units covered by rent control, now it's less than 25,000 units.

Extending the "Right to Counsel" approach.  Just as issues raised by Moms 4 Housing are leading Bay Area jurisdictions to consider enacting tenant right to purchase laws, the "Right to Counsel" approach, providing additional assistance to impoverished households when facing eviction, in a system that is weighted to favor property owners, ought to be extended, as a way to reduce the overall human and social costs that result.

Slumlording in Akron, Ohio

Lower quality units rent at higher prices when supply is constrained.  Commenter Charlie has pointed out in the past that one problem with demand being greater than supply in housing is that non-premier and substandard units rent for higher prices than they should warrant, because people have little choice.

Lower quality units in weak markets are often rented to desperate tenants, who then are bullied to not complain for fear of eviction.  There is a kind of opposite problem too.  Desperate people will live in terrible quality housing because avaricious landlords will rent it to people below market prices, because they can't afford better housing.

But then tenants are in a bad position, because if they complain about the quality of the unit, even if not up to code, they face the threat of eviction.

OTOH, I do have a wee bit of sympathy for the property owner, because unless they are long time owners, they've bought dilapidated properties, which are expensive to fix, especially when rent revenue is low, and property taxes are comparatively high given the value of the property.  (Weak market cities tend to have high property taxes in a desperate attempt to raise the revenues necessary to pay for municipal services and operations.  E.g., we just spent a lot !! of money to get our house "up to code" to be able to rent it out, and it was in decent condition.)

Renter Anthony Williams gently lifts the hood over the stove as he talks about how it fell while his son was cooking in the dilapidated home he rents on Tuesday Jan. 28, 2020 in Akron.  MIKE CARDEW / AKRON BEACON JOURNAL

An Akron Beacon-Journal article ("Tenant hits 'slumlord' in the pocketbook") goes into great detail on such a slumlord, who also games his property taxes, figuring he can make more money by not paying taxes, although now the County is on to him, and is targeting his properties for code and tax enforcement.

It's worth a read.

One tenant has one upped the landlord through a housing court action, so his rent is being escrowed because the landlord hasn't cured building code violations. 

Interestingly, when the Summit County Land Bank has taken over properties with tenants, as a result of property tax foreclosure actions, they take great pains to sell the property to the tenant.

Receivership.  Ohio has a strong housing receivership statute, which allows nonprofits to take over properties and "cure" notorious nuisances.  When a property is fixed, the housing court can extinguish liens and debts on the property, and award ownership to the nonprofit, which then sells the property.

I wonder why Summit County and/or Akron aren't using this tool.

Moms 4 Housing in Oakland California raise the concept of tenant right to purchase laws

One of the things about "capital" is that well funded operators are situated to take advantage of downturns.

Reproducing at scale single family housing for the rental market.  With the last recession, in a quantum change for the single family housing market, large well funded Wall Street operators like Blackstone bought thousands of foreclosed houses and started renting them out ("Blackstone cashes out on Invitation Homes," HousingWire).

This shouldn't be a surprise.  Large organizations like banks would rather sell chunks of their portfolio in one fell swoop, to other larger operators, rather than one by one to individuals.

While some companies rehabilitate these properties and eventually sell them off, many do not and a significant tranche of this housing has been shifted to the rental market permanently.

Image from The Intercept article "OAKLAND’S MOMS 4 HOUSING WERE EVICTED BY A GIANT CORPORATION THAT RUNS NATIONAL HOME-FLIPPING OPERATION."

But another phenomenon within the national market for real estate property and financing is the creation of firms that flip single family properties--buy properties, fix them up (either well or badly), and sell them--usually contributing to a resetting of the pricing within the subdistrict.

They've also created a system to enable small real estate investors to invest in properties outside of their local area, both in terms of fixing and selling properties, and also in managing properties, which makes it much easier for out-of-market investors to own such properties ("Startups Reshape Home Investing," Wall Street Journal, 1/8/20).

One such firm is Wedgewood Properties ("Examining Wedgewood: A Look at the Home-Flipping Giant in Battle with Homeless Mothers," NBC San Francisco).

Moms 4 Housing.  In Oakland California the activist group Moms 4 Housing shifted the debate ("When Cops Evicted These Moms, the Housing Conversation Changed," Yes Magazine).  A couple of homeless families decided to squat in a house that had been vacant for many years.  From the article:

The house had sat vacant for several years. Walker and a woman named Sameerah Karim and their children moved into the house in November 2019. The two longtime Oaklanders were homeless and thought it made more sense for them and their families to live there than to leave it empty.

They call themselves Moms 4 Housing. During their occupation, they cleaned up the home. Community members donated furniture. They were later joined in the home by two more Black homeless mothers named Tolani King and Misty Cross.

The occupation was always about more than just putting a roof over their heads. It was also a campaign to call attention to the role housing speculation was playing in Oakland’s gentrification, displacement, and homelessness crisis.

The house on Magnolia Street had been bought for $501,000 in August by Wedgewood Properties, one of Oakland’s most prolific home flippers. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Wedgewood had rehabbed and sold about 160 homes there in the past nine years.

While they were evicted, attention brought to the case means that they might get to go back to the house, as the city is negotiating with the property owner to sell to the Oakland Community Land Trust, which would then sell or rent the house to the Moms 4 Housing, with an easement on the property maintaining its affordability.  From the article:

In exchange for the lower-than-market sale price, CLT buyers who later move out agree to also sell the home at a below-market rate to income-qualified buyers. The owners are able to build some wealth off their home’s equity, but less than they likely would if they’d been able to buy a market-price home. Even with less equity, CLT supporters say, the model still gives lower-income residents access to stable housing and wealth generation they likely wouldn’t have otherwise in a high-cost market such as the Bay Area.

AU Professor Carolyn Gallaher authored a book, The Politics of Staying Put: Condo Conversion and Tenant Right-to-Buy in Washington, DC, on the DC Act. (Interview with the author in Washingtonian Magazine.)

Tenant right to purchase on sale clause legislation being considered.  Like how DC has a Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) act to give tenants the right of first refusal to buy a property when its sold, Oakland and other Bay Area communities are now considering passage of similar laws ("Moms 4 Housing-inspired policy could shake up Oakland real estate market," San Jose Mercury News).

Although more recently DC changed the TOPA law, so it no longer pertains to single family dwellings, only multiunit properties.

DC isn't a place where private equity has assembled a large portfolio of single family housing.  In places where that is the case, TOPA-type laws should not except single family housing from the mix, although individually owned properties probably should be exempt, unless a tenant has lived there "for a long time".