Residential Rent and Eviction Control Resources
The San Jose Mercury News reports that the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors took steps away from considering instituting rent control in unincorporated San Mateo county, by deciding not to have county staff research how to go about creating a rent ordinance.
The Bold Italic reports that the Bernal Heights tenant, whose 415% rent increase notice has been doing laps around the internet, has been using her home to host Airbnb guests.
In a series of steps toward legitimizing the practice, Airbnb recently “volunteered” a 25 million dollar tax payment to San Francisco, and the City recently enacted new “hosting platform” legislation, where tenants who comply with its procedures would not be subject to the “just cause for eviction” provisions of the Rent Ordinance for a first violation of the residential unit conversion ordinance.
Sam Levin at the East Bay Express explores the effects on tenants of 901 Jefferson Street in Oakland – a post-Costa-Hawkins “new construction” apartment building – following a volley of market-rate rent increases by its new owner.
The San Francisco Apartment Association filed a lawsuit last Thursday challenging the City’s new buyout legislation. Among other things, that legislation would impose requirements for landlords to provide disclosures to tenants prior to discussing offers to pay tenants to leave their (rent-controlled) tenancies.
The lawsuit alleges violations of free speech, equal protection and privacy rights. It notes that the regulations treat tenants differently than landlords (e.g., providing rights to rescind executed agreements only to the former and imposing penalties only to the latter), and it urges that the regulations inhibit free speech. The Court of Appeal struck down an earlier amendment to the Rent Ordinance, which prevented landlords from discussing efforts to recover possession of a rental unit from a tenant, unless they had a “good faith” intent to evoke a “just cause” for eviction, in Baba v. Board of Supervisors of CCSF.
The City does have an interest in knowing what’s going on with its rental housing supply. Prior to this legislation, the City has had to obtain most of its data on buyout figures from the San Francisco Tenants Union.
It is unknown at this time whether the lawsuit will be successful in knocking out some, or even all, of the provisions of the new legislation. In the meantime, landlords, make sure you comply with all of the current requirements!
You can read the San Francisco Apartment Association’s media release here.
San Francisco’s new tenancy buyout legislation became effective today. The Rent Ordinance now requires that landlords provide a disclosure form to tenants prior to opening buyout negotiations with them. (Landlords must retain a copy of the signed disclosure forms for five years.)
Landlords must also file a declaration form with the Rent Board, stating that they’ve provided tenants with the required disclosures prior to commencing buyout negotiations.
“Buyout Negotiations” are broadly defined as “any discussion or bargaining, whether oral or written, between a landlord and tenant regarding the possibility of entering into a Buyout Agreement”, with “Buyout Agreement” defined as “an agreement wherein the landlord pays the tenant money or other consideration to vacate the rental unit”.
Landlords are also required to file the executed Buyout Agreement with the Rent Board, which has begun keeping records of these agreements and will be providing access to a searchable database of buyout values by neighborhood. The Rent Ordinance now provides specific requirements for what must be in a Buyout Agreement and imposes two important deadlines: a tenant may rescind the Buyout Agreement for up to 45 days from execution, and the landlord must file the Buyout Agreement with the Rent Board within two weeks after it becomes binding.
The Rent Ordinance also provides for civil penalties for non-compliance (including for failing to include all required information in the Buyout Agreement). And, the execution of Buyout Agreements will now restrict the ability to convert buildings into condominiums for up to ten years, in a manner similar to the existing restrictions based on a landlord’s use of “non-fault” evictions (i.e., the City won’t sell residential condominium conversion lottery tickets, won’t accept residential condominium conversion subdivision application forms and won’t accept a tentative or final subdivision or parcel map, if the landlord entered either two Buyout Agreements or entered one Buyout Agreement with an elderly, disabled or catastrophically ill tenant in a single building.)
Zumper.com reports that San Francisco continued its nine-month upward trend in rental housing prices as of February 2015, “reaching an all-time high of $3,460 for a 1-bedroom apartment”. MUNI fare holds firm at $2.25 with a transfer.
California State Senator Mark Leno introduced legislation last week to impose a five-year restriction on new owners invoking the Ellis Act to withdraw residential units from the rental market.
Leno’s SB 364 mirrors last year’s SB 1439, which was approved by the Senate last year but fell one vote short in the Assembly Housing Committee.
On February 19th, the San Francisco Superior Court concurred with the recent Federal District Court decision, Levin v. CCSF, in invalidating the Campos Amendment to the San Francisco Rent Ordinance, in the case Jacoby, et al. v. CCSF. The Campos Amendment required additional relocation assistance to residents displaced by Ellis Act evictions in San Francisco.
