The tenant-paid Rent Board Fee will be increased to $16 a year (from $10) as part of the city's 1999 budget, with the increase pegged to increase staffing at the now-overburdened Rent Board. Landlords can pass this annual fee on to tenants, but, if tenants do not pay it the only recourse the landlord has is to deduct it from the Security Deposit interest payment.
 Historically, the Tenants Union and other tenant groups have supported this fee, even though it's paid for by tenants, because it maintains the Rent Board as a self-funded agency and makes it immune from annual budget politics, especially in years of budget deficits.
 The $6 increase, though, was originally balked at by the TU because the staffing increases was heavy on hearing officers and minimal on counselors and—most importantly—contained nothing for any eviction investigation. Most Rent Board hearings are on landlord petitions and expediting the hearing process via more officers was not seen as being worth the hike. Counselors, on the other hand, tend to see more tenants and are especially overburdened these days. And, even after two years of an eviction epidemic, there's no staff at the Rent Board to monitor and investigate evictions.
 To win TU support, the Board added two more counselors to its proposal and agreed to hire a full time eviction investigator (via a contract with the City Attorney's Office which has investigators already and will devote one to the Rent Board). The Eviction Investigator will be especially important as all OMI and Ellis evictions now have vacancy control attached to the units following the eviction and both contain post-eviction provisions which landlords have to follow for years. Without an investigator, landlords would be virtually free to ignore the legal requirements. The investigator will also monitor evictions and identify trends and abuses and, hopefully, stop many evictions before they happen.