Mom and Pop property owners blast city scheme to favor non-profits in housing market
San Jose's activist Housing Department is promoting COPA (Community Opportunity to Purchase Act), an extremist city intrusion into the local housing market that would give non-profits the first right to purchase rental properties and forbid sellers from listing their property on the open market. Small local property owners would be especially disadvantaged by the proposal, as public comment at an October 25 public meeting revealed. Edited versions of comments and letters from that meeting are below.
{Editors' note: Here's a quick summary of how the COPA process would work in San Jose:
* Seller of rental property must notify non-profit housing concerns of intent to sell before placing property on the market;
* If non-profit is interested, the seller must give the non-profit the first right to make an offer and may NOT place property on the market during that time;
* If seller turns down the offer, then the seller can place the property on the open market;
* If the seller receives an acceptable offer, the seller MUST go back to non-profit and give them the opportunity to match the price;
* If non-profit matches the price, then the non-profit has the right to purchase the property for that price; but the timeline doesn’t have to match; non-profit still has several months to obtain financing;
* The negotiations end without the original potential buyer being able to counter-offer.
On disadvantaging small property owners:
I escaped from Vietnam and came to the United States many years ago. The communist government in my home country Vietnam stole our property from us. Now I see the same violation of rights happening in San Jose. This COPA program should not be considered by the City Council. Turning property owners into criminals for advertising their property for sale is not what the United States was ever about. How can you turn your back on long-time residents of San Jose who have put years of hard work into managing their property? In addition, what about other people in San Jose who also have a dream of buying a small investment property to take care of their family in the future? You want to give all rights to special interest groups & give tenants false hope that they will be able to buy the property for themselves. I am already an affordable housing provider and I do a good job. You should leave my rights and my property alone. In addition, by the way, I do not now know how to use Zoom. City has not contacted me for my feedback. You do not have proper outreach. When are the public in-person meetings going to happen? Please take stock of what you are proposing and reverse your direction on COPA!
-----------
Smaller home providers, many of whom are retirees or recent immigrants, worked hard to save up down payment and took the risk to invest, buy and own single family homes, duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes or smaller apartment buildings individually or as a small home provider business or LLC, to supplement their income or save for retirement. These small businesses don’t have the resources to navigate the requirements of COPA/TOPA when they decide to sell in addition to all the normal real estate city, county, state, and federal transfer and sales tax requirements and commissions too.
--------
COPA/TOPA would be better suited for larger, corporate REITS and corporate owned buildings and properties such a mobile home parks and well funded non-profits. There would be bigger benefits to lower income tenants, bigger opportunities to prevent displacement for the non-profits and a much larger pool of units to designate for lower income tenants if it were applied only to larger buildings, properties or mobile home parks. Basically bigger bang for the buck for each big transaction with faster, better outcomes for non-profits and at risk tenants.
--------
Forcing COPA/TOPA on small housing providers would also remove opportunities of home ownership for families looking to buy a former smaller rental property to occupy it, even current renters would be competing with non-profits in the market to buy these Mom and Pop home provider units as they become available for sale. Individual home buyers usually don’t have resources to buy large properties or buildings with tenants. Nonprofits with significant resources do. What we all want is more homeownership in San Jose and less tenant displacement.
Follow Opportunity Now on Twitter @svopportunity.
Photo taken by Vicki.