Sacramento --

California lawmakers rejected a bill Wednesday to curtail the number of Ellis Act evictions in San Francisco, but kept the door open for the proposal to be reconsidered next week.

The bill requested by Mayor Ed Lee fell one vote short in the Assembly housing committee in a 3-4 vote. SB1439, which is authored by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, would force buyers to own a building for at least five years before they could evict tenants using the Ellis Act. The bill does not apply to "mom-and-pop landlords," Leno said.

"There is a lot of misinformation about what we are trying to do," Leno said as he urged lawmakers to pass his Ellis Act reform bill.

Leno now has just over a week to lock up one more yes vote in the housing committee and pass the Judiciary Committee before a June 27 deadline. If he fails to do that, the Ellis Act changes could still move forward this year if the bill language gets tucked into another bill.

"I think this is a good bill," said Assemblyman Ed Chau, D-Monterey Park (Los Angeles County), who is chair of the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee. "The objective is to weed out the bad actors - the serial evictors and speculators."

The Ellis Act is a three-decades-old state law intended to help owners who no longer want to be in the rental business, but it has more recently been used by investors as a way to buy affordable properties, evict tenants and flip the rental for profit.

Leno's bill and proposals by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors are among the efforts by city officials to cope with tenant displacement and the loss of rent-control housing in a city that has the highest rent in the nation.

The bill has garnered much interest among property owners and tenant groups in San Francisco, but it was mostly opponents that filled hearing rooms at the state Capitol during each step of the legislative process.

In the Senate, SB1439 was at first rejected, then on reconsideration, squeaked by with the bare minimum votes on the deadline to be passed to the Assembly. The bill also was rejected and then passed in a Senate committee.

Leno made amendments exempting small property owners with up to two properties and four residential units in order to garner enough support in the Senate so that the bill could be passed to the Assembly.

However, the amendments weren't enough to address the concerns of opponents, who said Ellis Act evictions aren't the crisis Leno has portrayed.

"When an owner Ellises the building there are significant protections already in place," said Debra Carlton of the California Apartment Association.

On Wednesday, Assembly Democrats Sharon Quirk-Silva of Fullerton and Cheryl Brown of San Bernardino cast two of the deciding no votes.

Brown said she didn't want to tie the hands of property owners, who have a right to make money.

"I think San Francisco needs to be able to handle this themselves without a state law that governs what they do," Brown said. "San Francisco can take care of their own issues."