Although San Francisco's recent tech boom has been blamed for increased housing demand and a lack of affordable rental housing in the city, the reality is that the shortage of affordable rentals the number of housing units has increased steadily over the last 35 years. Rent control is often at the center of controversy surrounding the shortage of affordable housing. In response to high inflation and rising rents, the San Francisco Residential Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Ordinance was passed in 1979 (Forbes, Sheridan, 1999). Rent control imposes restrictions on landlords regarding rent increases and evictions. It is estimated that seventy percent of San Francisco rental units are under rent control (Marti, Shortt, 2013). Due to the limited rent increases allowed, tenants living in these rent-controlled apartments rarely leave, which has a serious impact on the city's vacancy rate. While the vacancy rate among rent-controlled units is extremely low, there are occasions when a tenant may vacate a rent-controlled unit (a job out of the area, a decision to purchase a home, etc.). When a rent-controlled unit is voluntarily vacated, the owner is allowed to raise the rent to market rates (this is called vacancy de-control); then the annual increase in rent control affects the new rent. A landlord will often raise the new rent to the highest possible price the market will allow, in an attempt to recoup the financial loss he or she is taking on units still under rent control. Due to the new higher rent, the previously affordable unit is no longer considered affordable; which then impacts the inventory of affordable homes in San Francisco. income it produces. The bottom line is that owning a rental property is a business, a way of making a living for most property owners and should be viewed as such. My idea is to develop a policy that requires all multi-unit residential buildings to provide a percentage of rental units to serve the following populations: economically disadvantaged, veterans, and middle-income people. Resources such as low-interest capital improvement loans, government subsidies to offset low income rates, permitted rent increases based on tenants' lease length and change in income, will be made available to property owners that offer more than the required number of units at affordable rents. Funding for these would come from San Francisco's new program, Housing Opportunities Promoting Equality, known as the HOPE Program.