Last week, the Board of Supervisors, led by Supervisor Kim, proposed legislation that would make several significant changes to the Rent Ordinance, providing clarity to some of the more vague articulations of tenant protections and also imposing some onerous burdens on landlords. For instance, while a termination notice must claim authority under one of the Rent Ordinance’s “just causes” for eviction, landlords would be required to state that the particular just cause is her “dominate motive” in terminating the tenancy. (No clarification on what happens if the landlord has two reasons.) Another would require landlords terminating tenancies under the Ellis Act to inform tenants of their rights to re-rent from successors-in-interest, as well as the current owners, if their units are ever placed back on the rental market. As Ellis Act termination notices generally take one year to ripen, this change could potentially void notices already in the pipeline.
The proposed amendment would also add a substantive change that would clarify the blurry line between municipal ordinances and Costa-Hawkins. The language of Costa-Hawkins provides that, where an existing tenancy is terminated following service of a (non-fault) termination notice or a notice of change to terms in tenancy, the unit loses its “de-control” status, and it becomes subject to rent increase limitations. This language was most likely included in the mid-90s so that there would not be a big rush to empty out rental units that were de-controlled-as-such, but which were grandfathered in by the existing rent-controlled tenancies that pre-dated Costa-Hawkins. In other words, the intent of the grandfathering provision was probably just to buffer the current tenancy, not to regulate subsequent tenancies in de-controlled units. And, while this is the stated interpretation of the Rent Board (see, AT150049), it is not supported by the plain language of Costa-Hawkins, which does not qualify the conditional protection. The proposed law would explicitly state that all new tenancies following a landlord’s notice would be subject to rent control, not simply the one immediately following the grandfathered tenancy.
