A new law has been introduced to San Jose Legislation that mirrors a Law that has been successful in San Francisco. COPA was created to prevent tenant displacement and promote the creation and preservation of affordable rental housing.
The Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA) is a policy that would require the owners of multifamily housing (2+ units) to first contact the City and inform the Corporate Non-Profits of their desire to sell and wait a period of time between 15 days and 40 days to allow the Corporate Non-Profits to make an offer prior to placing their property on the market or engaging in any type of advertising or conversation about their property. There are several other waiting periods written into the ordinance, including a 120-day waiting period for these Corporate Non-Profits to see if they can pull together financing.
San Jose's COPA ordinance is modeled after the San Francisco COPA policy. There are significant differences between the two policies currently, but if history has any indication of how the policy will develop, one would suspect that the policy will eventually mature into San Francisco's version. For example, the 1st fine for violating San Francisco COPA is 10% of the value of the property, a 2nd offense is a fine of 20% of the value of the property, and so on. Those penalties are not in the current version of San Jose COPA, but if it passes, they could easily be added.