Thread by @AlisonB916

Let’s do a quick trek through the proposed Sacramento rent-sort-of-control law. I can’t go to the meeting, so you all are welcome to any of this stuff. Use it well.

I will also note that there’s no way that I can pick up on everything that’s wrong with this law. This is a collective gripe session, and additional submissions are welcome.

First up, I’ve been advocating for a rental registry since what seems like the beginning of time. Not only does it enable us to track what’s going on in the rental market, but if it includes the landlord’s name, address and phone number, tenants can be protected against fraud.

Tenants would be able to find out whether the person who wants them to hand over a check for several thousand dollars is in fact the landlord or person authorized to rent out the property.

Second I’m embarrassed to say that I have one of the entities involved in this “compromise” money. (No, it wasn’t Region Builders or the Sacramento Association of Realtors.) I hope I can make up for this lack of good judgement. It was a friend who asked me to contribute.

The allowable rent increase is way too high. Indeed it’s just about the same percentage as rents have been increasing without rent control.

Wages aren’t going up 6% a year, and most prices for other goods and services aren’t going up nearly that much. In addition, most of the increase in the CPI is, guess what, rental costs. The CPI minus rent has been very low for a long time.

Long ago and far away, when your tweeter was barely more than a sprite, there were long discussions of the General Rent Adjustment, which is the increase allowed without a hearing. I admit that the discussions on the subject went on so long, and there were so many men involved

that I sometimes lost focus and thought about other things, like lunch and the laundry. But the cost of operating rental housing is much closer to the cost of operating owned housing than it is to the general CPI. To come up with something easy, most laws use a percentage

of the CPI, not a multiple. I can see that the landlord interests wouldn’t be bothered by this, but we should. (In the late ‘70s, landlords claimed that labor costs were increasing, even though wages were collapsing.)

Where was I? I got lost in thinking about the olden days. And then wondering how anyone with a commitment to tenants rights could support this piece of junk. But back to the main points.

Moving right along, we come to one of the provisions that allows excess slumlord profits. Landlords whose buildings are substandard can pass along the costs of deferred maintenance to tenants. In most rent control laws, code compliance is expected.

Indeed if the landlord fails to keep the place up to snuff, the tenants can file to stop a rent increase, or file for a rent reduction, on the grounds that the landlord is violating the implied warranty of habitability. Not in Sacramento, it seems.

Being able to file a petition for failure to repair or maintain is broader than the warranty of habitability though. It also can get tenants rent reductions when landlords pull petty crap like taking away storage spaces, closing down the laundry room and the like.

In places with better laws, that is considered a housing service and has a monetary value. Tenants can file a petition to have their rent reduced to compensate them for the diminution in service. Not in Sacramento though.

On now to eviction. I’ve noted before that if this law passes, landlords would have just enough time to issue 60-day notices before it takes effect. The rent control provision has a look-back to July 1, but the eviction protections don’t take effect until October.

If the Council wanted to deal with this problem, they could pass the eviction portion as a stand-alone emergency provision. They’d likely have to notice that, so don’t expect that to happen.

I keep reading over the just cause for eviction provisions, trying to figure out what fraud they’re trying to perpetrate there. I can’t figure it out, and that irritates me. Why?

Almost all just cause eviction laws start with the Big 5 just causes for eviction. It’s almost standard form. Failure to pay the rent, breaching the lease, uses the property for illegal purposes, making your neighbors miserable and trashing the place are the Big 5.

But Sacramento does it a little differently. There are 4 fault just causes: failure to pay rent, breach of the lease, criminal and nuisance activity, and failure to give access. Nuisance is a bit over broad and not clearly defined.

BTW, you still can’t trash the place. That’s usually included in the lease.

Back tomorrow to finish up.

Let us proceed. The next 3 grounds for eviction are non-fault. The landlord can evict a tenant temporarily to make substantial repairs. In this case, the tenant has the right to re-occupy the unit after the repairs are made.

The landlord can evict so that the landlord or a family member can occupy the unit. This is the one most often abused by landlords. In one case in San Francisco the landlord, who lived in an East Bay mansion, alleged that he was moving to a one-bedroom in the Mission. Yeah.

Once landlords figure out that they can’t allege something patently absurd, we then get the cases of outright fraud, where landlords make it appear that they’re moving in. They then re-rent the unit. This diminishes over time, as landlords discover that they’re expensive.

The final non-fault cause is for an Ellis Act eviction. Since most of you and Jim Wood don’t know what the Ellis Act is, I will explain it. Passed in 1985, it allows a landlord to go out of the landlord business. It has been much abused in cities with rent control.

In Ellis Act evictions, tenants get 120 days’ notice. However, in many cities tenants get relocation monies. Not in Sacramento, even though we pay the majority of the sales tax increase that keeps the city afloat.

There are easy ways to limit the damage the Ellis Act can do. First, prohibit condominium conversions. Second, prohibit demolition of rental housing. (We are in an affordable housing emergency, after all.)

And of course, in addition to not providing relocation assistance, the city did not impose the requirement that elder and disabled tenants receive a one-year notice, both of which are permitted under the Ellis Act. (I should note that the Ellis Act was passed at the behest

of the real estate industry after the court ruled that cities could prohibit landlords from going out of business. But I didn’t really need to say that, did I?)

Let me digress briefly to explain why tenants don’t get 120 days for non-fault evictions in general. It’s not the fault of the City Council. State law allows cities to require just cause for eviction, but not to change the notice period. That’s determined by the state.

I’ll finish tomorrow. I’m sitting around worrying about the dangers of finger surgery.

Let us move through to the merciful end. Section 5.156.090 B seems to have been drawn from another rent control law, and there’s little point in having it in this law. If the landlord violates the law, there’s little the hearing officer can do.

If tenants had the right to rent reductions, it would make sense, but in this law, it’s a waste of space, and may be confusing to tenants. If your landlord is violating the law, you’re likely to end up in court. Which brings me to my final irritation.

And I’m amazed that alleged tenant people would agree to this. The law allows tenants to raise violations as an affirmative defense in unlawful detainer. But it does not specifically allow tenants to sue affirmatively. It allows the city to sue, but not tenants.

You may not think this is important, but it is. A tenant takes a huge risk in being taken to court. If they lose, they go onto the tenant screening databases, and will never be able to rent a decent apartment again.

And because eviction actions are summary proceedings, they move very quickly. Tenant lawyers are not thick on the ground in the Valley, and during the foreclosure crisis, I was sending tenants to lawyers in the Bay Area. There just aren’t any here.

And tenants do not have a right to a lawyer. (Landlord-tenant cases are civil actions, not criminal cases.) In some more developed cities, tenants do have a right to counsel, but even in those cities, it often required a ballot measure.

Digression to explain how bad it is: When your tweeter was little more than a girl, she worked at an eviction defense mill. A man came into our office with a bunch of papers, one of which was the default entry. It was bad.

He had tried to respond, but not being a lawyer, hadn’t put his answer in proper form. Reading through his paperwork, I found the notice to quit his landlord sent him. I read the notice. And then I read it again. And again.

I have read a lot of eviction notices, but in only a very few has the landlord said that he was evicting the tenant because the tenant demanded repairs.

I prepared his paperwork and sent him off, only to learn later that the motion to vacate the default had been denied. It was stunning, so stunning that one of the SF law firms with a two-bridge view took on this case to get the Judicial Council to develop a check-box form.

I tell this story to point out how hard even very good cases are, and that tenants take a huge risk in defending against wrongful evictions or unlawful rent increases.

End digression. It’s at least possible that tenants could sue for wrongful eviction, but it’s not clear in the law. What’s most disturbing is that the City Council is allowing, implicitly at least, that landlords be enabled to commit fraud. This is a bit much.

And finally, while housing subject to Costa-Hawkins can’t be rent-controlled, the City Council could require landlords have just cause for eviction in otherwise unprotected units. There’s no reason not to.

The merciful end.