Supervisor Connie Chan has announced a package of policies that could make it easier for small businesses to negotiate with landlords and for workers to purchase a business after an owner decides to sell.
Speaking Friday at a news conference in Japantown, Chan said the measures are intended to help protect small businesses along San Francisco’s commercial corridors from rent hikes and rising costs.
“We want a lot of small businesses to continue to stay in our corridors, because that is really the backbone of our local economy and really helping our community thrive,” said Chan, who is running in a tight congressional race against state Sen. Scott Wiener to replace Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi.
The first of Chan’s measures would create a framework for business owners and their employees to form tenants unions, borrowing a model already in place for residential tenants.
Small business owner Christin Evans, shown in 2018, said San Francisco must find ways “that small businesses can continue to serve their communities for years to come.” (Amy Osborne/For the S.F. Chronicle)
Christin Evans, a small business owner and co-founder of the advocacy group Small Business Forward, said the measure could provide “another tool to fight off the corporate takeover of commercial corridors” by giving business owners the means to pool resources and legal expertise to negotiate effectively with building owners.
“It’s critical that we recognize the threat of the rise of the corporate landlord to our neighborhood, commercial corridors and small businesses and identify that small businesses find those ways that small businesses can continue to serve their communities for years to come,” Evans said at the news conference.
Speaking at a lectern in the middle of Japantown Plaza in front of a group of small business advocates and union representatives, Chan said the proposal had been partially inspired by merchants in the area who banded together when business dipped during the pandemic. Now, Chan said, the area is thriving “because of work the Japantown community leaders have done together collectively.”
The second part of the package is designed to facilitate worker takeovers of local businesses when their owners decide to sell. The Workers Opportunity to Purchase Act, or WOPA as Chan has labeled the measure, would require business owners to give advance notices to their employees that they are interested in selling the business.
That warning could give employees time to organize a co-op to buy the business and secure the necessary financing, according to Paola Eisner, a lawyer who specializes in cooperatives.
“When our clients have advanced notice and accurate financial information, they’re much more successful at accessing financing and buying their businesses,” Eisner said at the news conference.
Often, Eisner added, business owners might be reticent to provide their workers with financial information when they’re hoping to sell their business and workers interested in forming a co-op come together too late to succeed.
“Workers should have a right to that information and should have a right to have it soon enough to get financing,” Eisner said. “WOPA would give them these rights.”
Chan announced WOPA for the first time last summer but did not formally introduce the measure.
Advocates and lawmakers in San Francisco have sparred over the best ways to support the city’s small businesses as costs rise. Mayor Daniel Lurie and his moderate allies on the Board of Supervisors have emphasized measures to cut red tape and revitalize downtown. Chan and other progressives have floated solutions of their own, including her proposal to create extra administrative requirements for landlords looking to lease out shops that had previously been occupied by legacy businesses, which are considered cultural pillars of a community.
In November, supervisors killed a proposal from Chan that would have created extra administrative requirements for some landlords looking to lease out shops that had been previously occupied by a legacy business. Chan said the measure would have discouraged landlords from pushing out longtime businesses, but the board killed it after some supervisors expressed concern that it would have added unnecessary red tape and slowed the city’s economic recovery.
Chan’s newest proposals are backed by some labor unions. Kim Tavaglione, the executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, spoke in support of the measures Friday.
“When a small business closes, jobs are lost, community is lost,” Tavaglione said. “This legislation will also give those workers an opportunity to stabilize economically and keep their beloved business going.”
Chan said she plans to introduce both measures to the Board of Supervisors in September, after lawmakers return from their August recess.
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This article originally published at Supervisor rolls out proposals to protect San Francisco’s small businesses.
