• The politically connected San Francisco Tenants Union, which has helped shape the city's housing policy for years, links to a list of properties where people can squat

• Through a closely associated organization (with whom it shares a website) the union offers a how-to guide for 'stealing' other people's homes

• The associated organization in question, Homes Not Jails, recruits homeless people to do organized takeovers of vacant buildings, sometimes permanently

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“There are two basic problems squatters have in gaining tenants’ rights:

They are not paying any rent.

They are living there without the landlord’s permission.

But as impossible as it seems to get past these hurdles, it is do-able.”

So explains Homes Not Jails, a squatting advocacy group, before offering a how-to guide to illegally occupy someone else’s property in San Francisco. The tone is brazen. The group notes that some people squat for “political reasons” because they believe that “paying money for housing (and others making money off housing) is immoral” and brags about how the organization has permanently stolen properties through “adverse possession.” One section even seems to encourage people to lie to authorities and claim they have a verbal agreement with the landlord:

“The landlord’s permission does not necessarily have to be explicit permission or written down. A rental agreement can be written, oral or implied by the conduct of the landlord. Thus many squatters have found themselves in a squat which the landlord has known about and has given up (for whatever reason) trying to get rid of them. Squatters can make an argument that, when discovered by the landlord, they made an oral agreement with him to live there in exchange for maintenance and security of the property. (One Homes Not Jails squat was successful in establishing such tenants’ rights and even successfully fought the landlord’s attempt to demolish the housing to build condos.)”

But Homes Not Jails doesn’t merely advocate for others to squat, it also organizes squatting campaigns, in which it recruits homeless people to break into properties and illegally occupy them. The group even provides a link to a list of vacant properties in San Francisco that are ripe for the taking.

It’s all very radical chic — until you realize that you aren’t on the Homes Not Jails website, because no such thing exists. You are on SFTU.org, the official site of the San Francisco Tenants Union — a highly connected political organization that has helped shape city housing policy for decades.

Homes Not Jails was born out of a collaboration in the early 1990s between SFTU and the anarchist soup kitchen organization Food Not Bombs. Anders Corr, who compiled the history of Homes Not Jails, describes the alliance like this:

Food Not Bombs had street smarts, extensive experience with local jails, and the courage needed for blazing new trails of civil disobedience through a thicket of real estate laws. The Tenants Union had an office, a database on vacant buildings, and lawyers who knew how to defend residents from the city's harshest landlords.

So far as I can tell, the only thing that has changed is that the vacant buildings list is maintained on Food Not Bombs’s website. It tells you where to squat, and the Tenant Union’s website tells you how. Whatever Food Not Bombs might be these days, it seems abundantly clear that Home Not Jails remains a Tenants Union project: If the separation between the two were meaningful Homes Not Jails would have its own website, with its contact information listed. It does not.

SFTU has been shaping housing policy in the city since the 1970s. Early in 1979, the Tenants Union and other advocates successfully collected signatures to put comprehensive rent control on the ballot. This ballot measure ultimately failed on election day, but before it did, Mayor Diane Feinstein, who feared a primary challenge from the left, felt she had to do something about rent control. So in June of that year, Feinstein and the Board of Supervisors passed a modest rent control.

In 2000, the SF Examiner reported that the union was “instrumental” in passing a ballot proposition that strictly limits the rent increases that property owners can pass on to tenants due to capital improvements. In 2006, they authored a ballot measure that increased the minimum payment for no-fault evictions from $1,000 per tenant to $4,500, with an additional $3,000 for elderly tenants or those with children. (No-fault evictions are rare and are only allowed in certain instances, such as when a landlord or close family member of a landlord wants to move into the property, or when a unit has to undergo significant renovations.)

But the union doesn’t just author ballot measures, sometimes they draft legislation and pass it on to their allies in city government. For example, in 2015, the Board of Supervisors passed legislation, which the union claims it drafted, that allows tenants to add roommates up to the legal occupancy limit, regardless of their lease terms, makes it illegal to evict tenants for “nuisance violations,” and prohibits landlords from raising the rent for 5 years following a no-fault eviction, among other things.

In addition to endorsing candidates in both local elections and the Democratic County Central Committee, the union has also actively campaigned for its allies in city hall, such as six of the 11 members on the Board of Supervisors: Rafael Mandleman, Connie Chan, Aaron Peskin, Dean Preston, Hillary Ronen, and Shamann Walton. For those counting, yes, the majority of the board owes a favor to an organization that openly encourages, abets and organizes squatting.

And some of these politicians have returned the favor. For example, in 2021, the union “collaborated” (in its own words) with SFTU-endorsed supervisors like Dean Preston, Hillary Ronen, and others on a bill that expanded eviction controls to non-rent-controlled units. That same year, SF Mayor London Breed, under pressure from SFTU, Preston, and others, agreed to use money from a new real-estate tax to fund public housing and rent relief. The relationship between SFTU and Preston is particularly close: Last year, the two co-hosted a “Tenant Rights Bootcamp” at the Tenderloin Museum.

SFTU has a contentious relationship with Breed, who the group has accused of being “anti-tenant.” However, their criticisms haven’t seemed to limit their influence in her office. In 2019, when Breed appointed Reese Isbel to the rent board without consulting the union first, its leaders threw a fit. The nominee resigned before his confirmation hearing could even be held. In his place, Breed nominated Kent Qian, an Oakland city attorney who was previously on staff at the National Housing Law Project, another tenants' rights nonprofit located in the Mission.

SFTU also has a cozy relationship with the press. Its members are sometimes called in as experts on San Francisco housing, Roisin Isner, its director of activism and operations, was quoted last year in an Axios article about rising rents in the city. Other publications promote their work too. A column in the SF Bay Times mentioned the union as a “resource” for renters and touted their “excellent tenants’ handbook, updated annually.” Curbed SF published an article titled “SF rent laws your landlord probably doesn't want you to know,” with — their words — “the help of our friends at the San Francisco Tenants Union.”

Squatting may be all fun and games in the SF nonprofit world, but in the rest of the country, people aren’t having it. Over the past several weeks, viral videos, such as this one, featuring a woman in Queens who was arrested for changing the locks on her own house, or this one, featuring a Venezuelan illegal immigrant on TikTok who encouraged his fellow migrants to “invade” the country and steal American homes, have led to a national backlash against squatting. Just last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill allowing homeowners to forgo the formal eviction process and remove squatters immediately.

Such a law could help California homeowners like Ben Jiang and Jennifer Sun, a young couple with a baby on the way, who lost their house amid a remodel after squatters moved in and turned the place into a drug den. Something needs to be done, but given the influence of brazen squatting advocates, San Franciscans shouldn’t hold their breath.

–River Page