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How Long Does an Ellis Act Eviction Take?

The short answer is that it takes 120 days to terminate a tenancy, unless the tenant is at least 62 years old or is “disabled” (as defined by the Ellis Act and housing discrimination law), in which case, it takes a year.

The longer answer:
In general, month-to-month tenancies in California can be terminated on thirty days’ notice. Residential tenancies older than a year require sixty days instead. This is still true for any non-fault-based eviction in a city with eviction control. However, in 1999, the Ellis Act was amended so that tenants receive at least 120 days notice, with the option to extend. And, if at least one tenant claims an extension, the landlord can extend the withdrawal date of every other unit to match. (In other words, the landlord can “go out of business” as to the entire building at the same time.)

Of course, this just answers the question of how much notice your tenant receives before their tenancy is terminated. In San Francisco, the Ellis Act has become more of a political issue than a legal one. (Ellis-displaced tenants receive priority affordable housing, and they have received city-funded legal defense long before the passing of Proposition F.) More often than not, tenants hold over after their tenancies are terminated, aiming to defeat the eviction lawsuit and preserve their tenancy. Sometimes they are successful.
Even when the landlord is successful, they should expect to add five months of intense litigation to their timeline to recover possession.

Preparing for an Ellis Act eviction may require a review of the history of the tenancy (including changes in occupancy), clarification of the form of record ownership, changes in insurance coverage, and even refinancing, if the lender won’t allow Ellis evictions. In other words, the best time to start this process was yesterday. The second best time is right now.

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Will a “Protected Tenant” Prevent Me from Using the Ellis Act in San Francisco?

No, it will only delay your efforts by about eight months. The concept of a “protected tenant” has nothing to do with the Ellis Act. The term comes from one of San Francisco’s other just causes for eviction – the “owner/relative move-in eviction”. Cities may regulate the substantive grounds for eviction of residential tenants, but for constitutional reasons, they must allow at least some mechanism for an owner to live in their own home (or else the tenant’s permanent physical occupation is a “taking” in violation of the Fifth Amendment).

However, San Francisco has been given significant leeway in preventing certain kinds of tenants from being the subject of owner move-in evictions (the most recent being the expanded eviction protection for “educators”, who may not be evicted during a school term). The OMI/RMI statute has evergreen protections as well. For instance, if a tenant is elderly (60+) or disabled, and has lived there for ten years, they cannot generally be the subject of an OMI/RMI. (A tenant also earns this protection if they are “catastrophically ill” and have lived there for only five.)

Now, these provisions do not apply if the landlord only owns one unit in the building (e.g., a condominium) or where the landlord already lives in the building, and each other unit is occupied by a “protected tenant”, and the landlord wants to relative move-in their 60+ relative. (The landlord (or their listing broker) will commonly serve a special form of estoppel certificate asking about a tenant’s protected status. Failure to respond will actually prevent the tenant from raising the defense.)

The Ellis Act, on the other hand, is the only substantive ground for eviction regulated at the state level, and it provides landlords the “unfettered right” to go out of business. Tenants who are at least 62 or are disabled and who have lived in their rental units for at least a year may make a one time claim of extension of the termination date of their tenancy (from 120 days to a full year from the initial filling of paperwork).

While there are no absolute defenses to the Ellis Act, the road to going out of business remains perilous. Especially where it may take a full year to test your paperwork, there is no substitute for qualified counsel.

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Small Property Owners of San Francisco v. City and County of San Francisco (2018) – Cities May Not Impose Land Use Penalties on Property Owners Who Have Invoked the Ellis Act

“By imposing a 10-year waiting period on alterations to non-conforming units where property owners have exercised their Ellis Act rights, the ordinance penalizes property owners who leave the rental market. The ordinance does not regulate the particulars of the remodeling of a nonconforming unit, but rather prohibits any such changes for a period of 10 years after the property owner exits the rental business. By imposing such a prohibition on property owners who have left the rental market, the ordinance challenged here improperly enters the field of substantive eviction controls over such property owners.”

In SPOSFI v. CCSF (2018), the Small Property Owners of San Francisco challenged San Francisco Ordinance 286-13. Prior to that ordinance, Section 181 of the Planning Code prohibited the “enlargement, alteration or reconstruction” of nonconforming units. (These are legally constructed units in buildings that were “down-zoned” after the fact. As this is essentially a “math” problem, a property owner would designate the particular unit in the property that gets the “nonconforming” designation.)

Ordinance 286-13, however, allowed such modifications within the existing building envelop, so long as residential use was principally permitted in the zoning district and the owner had not performed a non-fault eviction at the property. The owner could not make any changes for a period of ten years following a non-fault eviction.
Continue reading “Small Property Owners of San Francisco v. City and County of San Francisco (2018) – Cities May Not Impose Land Use Penalties on Property Owners Who Have Invoked the Ellis Act”

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SocketSite.com Reports on Ten Years of SF Eviction Notice Statistics: Ellis Act Is Up for 2017

SocketSite.com reports the ten-year trend of eviction notices filed with the San Francisco Rent Board. The trend for 2017 is a decrease across the board, with one exception – the Ellis Act.

SocketSite doesn’t express an opinion on the cause for the trend (at least until you get to the comment’s section). However, a recent decline in breach/nuisance evictions may be attributable to the 2015 Jane Kim Amendment (which heightened both the pleading standard and the substantive threshold for a landlord to prevail here). The recent decline in OMI/RMI evictions may be because of the uncertainty of the “educator” amendment or the more stringent enforcement of fraudulent owner move-in evictions. Ellis Act evictions may be up in recent years (compared to 2013) following a dip during the uncertainty created by the “Campos I” and “Campos II” enhanced relocation assistance payment legislation.

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City of West Hollywood v. Kihagi (Unpublished) – Application of Ellis Act Constraints in the Context of Settlement Agreements

[UPDATE: This case was certified for publication on 10/26/17.]

Infamous landlord Anne Kihagi tested the limits of Ellis Act re-rental constraints, as illustrated in the latest appellate decision chronicling her exploits, City of West Hollywood v. Kihagi. While withdrawing an 8-unit, rent controlled property in West Hollywood from the rental market, Kihagi harassed one of the tenants, prompting the City of West Hollywood to prosecute, leading to a settlement agreement governing the application of the Ellis Act.

For purposes of the Ellis Act, the property featured several “classes” of rental units: four were unoccupied, four were occupied, and one of the occupied units claimed an extension of the withdrawal date (as tenants who are disabled or at least 62 are entitled to do). The Ellis Act uses a floating definition for the “date of withdrawal”, which could be as early as the landlord files the notice of intent or as late as the extended termination of tenancy. Further, while the Ellis Act imposes vacancy control constraints for five years and requires a “first right of refusal” for ten, these restrictions do not appear to apply to rental units that are unoccupied at the time of withdrawal. (For those, arguably only a two year re-rental restriction applies – or perhaps even no restrictions at all.)

Despite entering a settlement agreement with potentially more restrictive terms, Kihagi re-rented units after the five-year vacancy control restrictions would have expired under the Ellis Act. The Court of Appeal first noted that landlords’ agreements to waive rights under the Ellis Act are void, citing Embassy LLC v. City of Santa Monica (2010) 185 Cal.App.4th 771, 777, but ultimately determined that Kihagi had re-rented outside of the Ellis Act constraints.

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SF Chronicle: “SF Tenant-Protection Law Dies Quietly”

The San Francisco Chronicle reports on the Campos enhanced relocation payment “law die[d] quietly” last week. The “law” in question was actually a pair of efforts in 2014 and 2015, introduced by then-Supervisor Campos, which would increase the relocation assistance payment owed to tenants to be displaced by the Ellis Act, from an inflation-adjusted payment (roughly equal to first and last month’s rent and deposit for a replacement apartment) to a 24-month rent subsidy, compensating for the difference between the displaced tenant’s former rent-controlled rate and fair market value.

The 2014 ordinance was essentially a blank check, where the rent differential could easily reach six figures per unit. Property owners quickly challenged Ordinance 54-14 in both state court (Jacoby v. CCSF) and federal court (Levin v. CCSF). Each court determined that Ordinance 54-14 was invalid. However, the court in Jacoby found that the payment was not “reasonable” under the existing standard for mitigation payments (set forth in Pieri v. City & Cty. of San Francisco (2006) 137 Cal. App. 4th 886), while the Levin court made a determination on constitutional takings grounds, finding the payment was an “exaction” unrelated to the owner’s choice to exit the residential rental market. (It found that the adverse impacts that the payment sought to alleviate were not caused by the landlord’s choice to use the Ellis Act, but by “market forces unrelated to the impact of the property owner’s use of the property”.)

San Francisco tried to institute enhanced mitigation payments again in 2015, with Ordinance 68-15. The second ordinance grafted itself onto the first one (creating some confusion about how and when it was to be applied), capping the payment at $50,000 per unit and providing an administrative review process for landlords who could not afford the increased payment. Again, property owners challenged the ordinance as conflicting with the Ellis Act.

The trial court in Coyne v. CCSF found that the changes did not solve the preemption problems, and reached the same conclusion. The First District Court of Appeal later reviewed Jacoby and Coyne together, finding that the enhanced mitigation payment ordinance imposed a “prohibitive price” on a property owner’s ability to exit the residential rental market, in the published opinion Coyne v. City & Cty. of San Francisco (2017) 9 Cal. App. 5th 1215.

The City (as well as amicus curiae) sought a depublication order from the Supreme Court of California, urging that Coyne v. CCSF created a new preemption standard and, by referencing Levin, improperly extended exactions takings jurisprudence. However, in a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court denied the requests to depublish and further declined to review the matter on its own motion.

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San Francisco Legislative Update (2017): Children Now Entitled to Ellis Act Relocation Assistance Payments Following Danger Panda Decision

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The First District Court of Appeal recently vindicated a landlord’s efforts to terminate a tenancy pursuant to the Ellis Act, where both the Trial Court and the Appellate Division found the notice of termination of tenancy invalid, as the landlord paid only the adults and not the child who occupied the unit. That case, Danger Panda v. Launiu interpreted the term “tenant” in the section of the Rent Ordinance requiring relocation payments to “tenants”, determining that this was a term of art with a specific import: “Construing section 37.2(t) according to its plain language, a tenant is a person who is entitled to occupy a residential unit (1) to the exclusion of all others and (2) pursuant to a written agreement; oral agreement; sub tenancy approved by the landlord; or sufferance.” The Court noted, however, that it was only interpreting that term, not considering whether the Board of Supervisors had the authority to confer a relocation benefit on a child.

Supervisor Ronen picked up this cue, introducing Ordinance 123-17, which requires payment to every “Eligible Tenant”, defined as “each authorized occupant of the rental unit regardless of the occupant’s age”. Danger Panda resolved the uncertainty in whether minors were entitled to Ellis Act relocation assistance payments (as they are for other non-fault evictions under the Rent Ordinance). Interestingly, Ordinance 123-17 may resolve further uncertainty about whether a landlord is required to pay persons with whom she has no privity, but who nonetheless occupy a rental unit.

Ordinance 123-17 becomes effective July 22, 2017, and the full text is available here.

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Danger Panda v. Launiu – First District Court of Appeal Defines “Tenant” under the Rent Ordinance To Exclude Minors

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“Insisting that a ‘tenant’s child may be a tenant protected under the Rent Ordinance,’ defendants direct our attention to Mosser Companies v. San Francisco Rent Stabilization & Arbitration Bd. (2015) 233 Cal.App.4th 505 (Mosser Companies) and T & A Drolapas & Sons, LP v. San Francisco Residential Rent Stabilization & Arbitration Bd. (2015) 238 Cal.App.4th 646 (Drolapas) . . . Defendants mistakenly rely on Mosser Companies and Drolapas. The primary issue in both of these cases was how to interpret statutory language in the Costa-Hawkins Act, specifically, the words ‘occupant’ and ‘possession’ in Civil Code section 1954.53(d)(2). (Mosser Companies, supra, 233 Cal.App.4th at pp. 512-513; Drolapas, supra, 238 Cal.App.4th at pp. 652-653.) The present case does not involve a proposed rent increase under the Costa-Hawkins Act. Beyond that, the question we address is not whether David is an occupant or in possession of Unit 308A. The issue here is whether David’s status as a minor precludes him from being a ‘tenant’ for all purposes under section 37.2(t) of the Rent Ordinance.”

Danger Panda, LLC is the owner of a residential property in the Mission District. Over three years ago, it begin the process of invoking the Ellis Act to terminate all residential tenancies in the building. The Ellis Act is a state law that allows property owners to “go out of the rental business” and evict their tenants, so long as they comply with local eviction control ordinances. San Francisco’s ordinance requires property owners to pay “relocation assistance”, to help displaced tenants with moving expenses and deposits for their new home.
Continue reading “Danger Panda v. Launiu – First District Court of Appeal Defines “Tenant” under the Rent Ordinance To Exclude Minors”

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Infamous San Francisco Landlord Anne Kihagi Sent to Jail for Contempt

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WeHoVille.com reports that infamous landlord Anne Kihagi has been ordered to jail for five days for violating an injunction in a case by a former tenant of one of her West Hollywood apartments, who is suing her for violating the Ellis Act. The former tenant’s lawsuit alleges that she violated the Ellis Act by re-renting the property.

The Ellis Act – which allows property owners to terminate tenancies in a building by “going out business” – actually does permit re-renting under certain circumstances (like offering the unit to the displaced tenant at the rent-controlled rental rate). However, re-rental within two years may subject the landlord to prosecution by the city and liability to the tenant.

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