“We conclude the prohibitive price standard is the appropriate standard to determine conflict preemption under the Ellis Act. It is the measure appellate courts consistently adopt to determine if a challenged ordinance contradicts the state law.”
Today, Division Five of the First District Court of Appeal affirmed Judge Quidachay of the San Francisco Housing Court, who previously held that San Francisco’s enhanced relocation assistance payment ordinance was not a “reasonable” means of mitigating the impact of tenant displacement by the Ellis Act. In 2015, plaintiffs, including individual landlords and the Small Property Owners of San Francisco, argued in Coyne v. CCSF that an enhanced relocation assistance payment regime was preempted by the Ellis Act. The payment amounted to a subsidy of a tenant’s new rent for two years after displacement under the Ellis Act.
Division Five affirmed the ruling, but determined that the correct standard was whether a local ordinance places a “prohibitive price” on a landlord’s ability to exit the rental market. “Like provisions in past City-enacted ordinances which have been invalidated, the City’s Rental Payment Differential obligation places conditions on a landlord’s right to go out of business that are not found in the Ellis Act. The Ellis Act contains no requirement that obliges a landlord to pay their former tenants future rental subsidies so that they can leave the residential rental business.” Division Five agreed with its colleagues in Division Three, which recently applied the “prohibitive price” standard to invalidate San Francisco’s prohibition on the merger of rental units for 10 years after an owner has invoked the Ellis Act.
