By Bryan Goebel, KQED News Fix
San Francisco supervisors have begun considering a proposal that would allow landlords to voluntarily legalize in-law units, or secondary apartments, that make up a shadow housing market where some of the city’s most vulnerable tenants live, sometimes in substandard conditions.
The measure by Supervisor David Chiu is an effort to preserve one of the city’s largest stocks of affordable housing. City officials estimate there are up to 40,000 in-laws, often in the garages or basements of single-family homes, which make up about 10 percent of the housing supply.
A public hearing on the proposal Monday before the supervisors’ Land Use and Economic Committee was dominated by questions about how it would affect property owners, who would pay for potentially expensive upgrades to bring the units up to code, and complaints from residents in the city’s western neighborhoods who fear increased density.
Read the complete story at KQED News Fix.
