SF Rent Ordinance Protections for Disabled and Ill Tenants

The San Francisco Rent Ordinance protections for disabled tenants are among the strongest in the country. If you meet the ordinance’s disability definition and have lived in your unit long enough, your landlord generally cannot evict you for an owner or relative move-in, you get a full year (not 120 days) before an Ellis Act withdrawal takes effect, you receive larger relocation payments, and you can seek a hardship waiver from capital improvement rent increases. The catch is that every one of these protections depends on specific definitions, residency thresholds, and short deadlines, and missing any of them can cost you the protection entirely.

Who Counts as Disabled or Catastrophically Ill

The ordinance does not use the Americans with Disabilities Act standard. It ties the definition to the federal Supplemental Security Income/California State Supplemental Program (SSI/SSP). You qualify as disabled if you meet the SSI/SSP definition of disabled or blind and either receive those benefits or can demonstrate eligibility through another method the Rent Board approves.¹ An SSI or SSP award letter is the cleanest proof, though the ordinance leaves room for alternative documentation.

Catastrophic illness is narrower. You must first meet the disability definition above and also be suffering from a life-threatening illness certified by your primary care physician.² Catastrophic illness is not a separate track from disability; it is disability plus a terminal or life-threatening diagnosis. That matters because the residency requirement for owner move-in protection is shorter for catastrophically ill tenants.

For Ellis Act purposes, the disability definition is different again: it uses California Government Code Section 12955.3.³ Age thresholds also differ between the two contexts, as noted below.

Owner and Relative Move-In Evictions

A landlord can normally recover a unit to live in personally or to house a spouse, domestic partner, child, parent, or grandparent. If you qualify as a protected tenant, that route is closed. A landlord cannot evict you under an owner move-in if you are disabled and have lived in the unit for at least 10 years, or if you are catastrophically ill and have lived there for at least five years.¹

That five-year threshold is easy to miss. If you have been in your unit for six years and receive a terminal diagnosis, you may already be protected even though you have not reached the ten-year mark. Outside a narrow exception where the landlord or the incoming relative is also disabled or catastrophically ill and no comparable unit is available in the building, the protection lasts as long as you remain in the unit.

The 30-Day Response Deadline

When a landlord serves you with either an owner move-in eviction notice or a written request asking whether you claim protected status, you have 30 days to respond in writing with supporting evidence.² Missing the deadline is treated as an admission that you are not protected. This is where most claims break down. A tenant who qualifies on every count but fails to respond in writing within 30 days can lose the protection entirely. Treat any status inquiry from your landlord as urgent.

After you submit your statement, the landlord can challenge your claim by requesting a Rent Board hearing or by proceeding with eviction in court.² If your documentation holds up, the Board confirms your protected status, and that administrative record becomes your shield in any later court proceeding.

Relocation Payments When an OMI Is Allowed

Even if an owner move-in is legally permitted (because you do not meet the residency threshold, for example), you are still entitled to relocation assistance. For notices served between March 1, 2025, and February 28, 2026, each displaced tenant receives $8,062, capped at $24,184 per unit. Disabled tenants and tenants aged 60 or older receive an additional $5,375. For notices served between March 1, 2026, and February 28, 2027, the base rises to $8,245 per tenant (capped at $24,733 per unit), with the extra payment for disabled or elderly tenants rising to $5,497.⁴ These figures adjust annually with consumer price index data.

Ellis Act Withdrawals

California’s Ellis Act lets a landlord exit the rental business by withdrawing all units in a building from the market. San Francisco cannot block that right, but Administrative Code Section 37.9A adds conditions that meaningfully help disabled tenants.

The Year-Long Extension

For most tenants, an Ellis Act withdrawal takes effect 120 days after the landlord files a Notice of Intent with the Rent Board. If you are disabled under California Government Code Section 12955.3 or at least 62 years old, and you have lived in the unit for at least one year before the Notice of Intent was filed, you can extend that withdrawal date to a full year.³ The extra eight months can be decisive for arranging accessible housing and continuing medical care.

To claim the extension, give your landlord written notice within 60 days of the date the Notice of Intent was delivered to the Rent Board.³ Your landlord is required to inform you of this right within 15 days of filing the Notice of Intent.⁵ If the landlord skips that step, assert the right anyway within the 60-day window.

Ellis Act Relocation Payments

Ellis Act payments are substantially larger than owner move-in payments. For notices filed between March 1, 2025, and February 28, 2026, each displaced tenant receives $10,863.45, capped at $32,590.33 per unit. Disabled tenants and tenants aged 62 or older receive an additional $7,278.67.⁴ For the March 2026 through February 2027 period, the base rises to $11,110.05 per tenant (capped at $33,330.13 per unit), with the additional disabled or elderly payment adjusted upward.

Watch the age thresholds. Ellis Act protections use 62; owner move-in relocation payments use 60. The two are not interchangeable.

Right of Return and Re-Rental Limits

If your landlord later puts units back on the market, you have further protection. The landlord cannot re-rent any withdrawn unit for two years after the withdrawal date. If any unit is offered for rent again within 10 years, the landlord must give displaced tenants a right of first refusal. For the first five years, rent on any re-offered unit is capped at what you were paying when the Notice of Intent was filed, plus any increases the Rent Ordinance would have allowed.³ Landlords who violate these rules owe actual damages plus a penalty of six months’ rent.

Buyout Agreements

Some landlords try to avoid the eviction process by offering cash to leave. Section 37.9E regulates these deals, and the safeguards matter especially for disabled tenants who may feel pressured into a lowball offer.

Before your landlord can begin discussing a buyout, they must provide you with a written disclosure on a Rent Board form. That disclosure must tell you that you have no obligation to negotiate or accept, that you can consult an attorney first, and that you can review data on other buyout agreements in your neighborhood through the Rent Board.⁶ It must also include contact information for tenants’ rights organizations and information about how a buyout could affect your eligibility for city affordable housing programs.

If you sign, you have 45 days to change your mind and rescind. The landlord must file the executed agreement with the Rent Board between the 46th and 59th day after both parties sign. If the landlord misses that filing deadline, any clause where you waived rights or released claims becomes void at your option. Landlords who fail to file also face administrative penalties of up to $100 per day, capped at $20,000 per civil action.⁶

Hardship Waivers from Capital Improvement Passthroughs

Eviction is not the only threat. Landlords can petition the Rent Board to pass capital improvement costs through as rent increases, and for a disabled tenant on a fixed income even a modest increase can be devastating. If you receive such a notice, file a Tenant Financial Hardship Application.

You can qualify under any one of three standards:

Public assistance: all adults in your household receive means-tested benefits such as SSI, General Assistance, CalFresh, or CalWORKS.
Income and assets: your rent exceeds 33% of your household’s gross monthly income, your non-retirement assets fall within the limits set by the Mayor’s Office of Housing, and your gross household income is below 80% of the area median income published by HUD for the San Francisco metro area.
Exceptional circumstances: factors like excessive medical bills make paying the increase a genuine hardship.

You can file at any time after receiving a capital improvement rent increase notice or a Rent Board decision granting the passthrough.⁷ For disabled tenants already receiving SSI, the first standard is the simplest path, since the SSI award letter proves both disability and eligibility for the waiver.

If a Landlord Violates These Protections

Under Section 37.9(f), a wrongfully evicted tenant can sue for an injunction (a court order stopping the eviction or restoring the tenancy) plus money damages of at least three times actual losses.¹ Actual damages can include moving costs, the difference between your old and new rent, and other out-of-pocket losses.

Emotional distress damages are recoverable too, but they are only tripled if the court finds the landlord acted knowingly or with reckless disregard for the law. A landlord who made a procedural mistake might owe single emotional distress damages; one who knew you were protected and pushed ahead anyway faces the full treble amount. The prevailing tenant also recovers reasonable attorney’s fees and costs, which removes much of the financial barrier to bringing these cases. Separately, the Rent Board can impose administrative penalties of $250 for a first violation, $500 for a second, and $1,000 for each subsequent violation of the owner move-in procedural requirements.¹

Section 37.10B covers broader tenant harassment. A landlord who harasses a protected tenant into leaving faces the same treble-damages framework, and the court may award punitive damages in egregious cases.⁸

Documents to Gather Before You Need Them

The strength of your claim depends on the paperwork you assemble before any crisis. Assemble these now, while things are calm:

A statement from your primary care physician confirming your disability, on the physician’s letterhead and current. If you are claiming catastrophic illness, the physician must certify a life-threatening condition.
Your SSI or SSP benefit award letter, the most direct proof of disability under the ordinance.
Proof of continuous residency: your original lease, consecutive utility bills, or similar records. You need 10 years for disability-based owner move-in protection, five years for catastrophic illness, and at least one year for the Ellis Act extension.
Household information: names, dates of birth, and move-in dates for everyone in the unit.

Keep the file where you can access it quickly. Once a notice is served, the 30-day clock starts, and chasing medical records under deadline pressure is how tenants lose protections they had earned.

Filing with the Rent Board

You can submit your claim of protected status and supporting documents to the San Francisco Rent Board in person at 25 Van Ness Avenue, Suite 700. Ask staff to date-stamp your copy for proof of timely filing. The Rent Board also accepts submissions by mail and through electronic filing.⁹ If the landlord challenges your status, the Board may schedule a hearing; bring original documents and any updated medical records. A Board confirmation of protected status carries significant weight if the case moves to court. The Rent Board’s counseling line and website provide current versions of every form referenced here, including the hardship application, buyout disclosures, and Ellis Act response forms.

1
American Legal Publishing. San Francisco Administrative Code SEC 37.9 – Evictions
2
San Francisco Rent Board. San Francisco Administrative Code Section 37.9 – Evictions
3
American Legal Publishing. San Francisco Administrative Code SEC 37.9A – Tenant Rights in Certain Displacements
4
San Francisco Rent Board. Current Rates, Including Rent Increase, Relocation, Sec. Deposit
5
SF.gov. Evictions Pursuant to the Ellis Act
6
San Francisco Rent Board. Sec. 37.9E – Tenant Buyout Agreements
7
San Francisco Rent Board. Tenant Financial Hardship Applications
8
San Francisco Rent Board. Sec. 37.10B – Tenant Harassment
9
SF.gov. Evictions Based on Owner or Relative Move-In