Rent Control
In 2019, the State of California enacted the Tenant Protection Act, which includes a mild rent control as Civil Code 1947.12 [10% per year maximum] and a strong eviction control law, Civil Code 1946.2, which applies to cities that do not have stronger protections.
The Costa-Hawkins Act of 1995 prevented cities from enacting or extending their rent control ordinances, which otherwise would have exploded throughout California. Prop 33 in the 2024 election would only have repealed that law, and allowed cities to enact and expand their rent control, including commercial tenants, tenants in houses and condos, and other situations. Prop 33 lost for the third time in the 2024 election because landlords one again convinced voters with a barrage of TV propaganda that things would be even worse if Prop 33 passed. The huge anti-Prop 33 war chest came from the higher rents tenants were forced to pay since the last time the landlords convinced voters to reject it. Of course, without rent control, virtually only government-sponsored low income projects and expensive apartments have been built since 1979, when rent controls were first enacted. The “free market” solution has not worked; if it did, we would not still have rising rents.
The protections and processes vary, and the complexities of each are too great to describe in this article. You can obtain a copy on line or from the City Clerk. Essentially a rent control limits the amount of an annual rent increase, and creates certain exemptions, such as housing built since 1978, houses and condos, and nonprofit housing. These limits are almost always paired with “just cause eviction” protections, so that a landlord cannot simply evict a tenant for not paying an illegal rent increase. Some cities claim that they have “rent control”, but it is little to no more than the Tenant Protection Act already created. Cities that have stronger rent controls than the Tenant Protection Act provides, are:
Alameda
Antioch
Baldwin Park
Bell Gardens
Berkeley
Beverly Hills
City of Commerce
Concord
Cudahy
Culver City
East Palo Alto
Emeryville
Fairfax
Gardena
Half Moon Bay
Hayward
Larkspur
Los Angeles City
Los Angeles County
Los Gatos
Inglewood
Malibu
Maywood
Mountain View
Oakland
Oxnard
Palm Springs
Pasadena
Pomona
Richmond
Sacramento
Salinas
San Anselmo
San Diego
San Francisco
San Jose
Santa Ana
Santa Cruz
Santa Monica
Thousand Oaks
Union City
West Hollywood
Just Cause Eviction
The idea of Just Cause Eviction changes the ability of landlords to evict tenants for “no reason” of more importantly, to hide an illegal reason like retaliation or discrimination. Standard provisions permit and eviction for nonpayment of rent, violating a term of the lease, subleasing without consent, or creating a nuisance, which are already part of the State eviction laws. It is the additional types of eviction and the restrictions on these reasons which make the difference in these laws. An eviction for what it commonly called “no fault,” is where the tenant is required to move, but not for having done anything wrong. A landlord who wants to sell the house, move in a relative, do major reconstruction, or demolish the structure, would normally give a 30- or 60-day notice of termination. While these reasons are allowed in a Just Cause Eviction law, there might be restrictions, such as paying the tenants money as relocation assistance, gaining approval from the City, or proving that this is the real reason to evict.
There are a few cities in California which have Just Cause Eviction laws, but no rent control. It is the politics of the situation, where landlords will fight rent control, but not just cause eviction. As with the rent control situations, cities may claim that they have “Just Cause Eviction,” but it is no more than was already provided by the Tenant Protection Act. These are cities which have only Just Cause Eviction ordinances:
Burbank
Glendale
Long Beach
Ojai
Palo Alto
Petaluma
Mobilehome parks, and to some extent trailer parks, have eviction protections under the Mobilehome Residency Law [starting Civil Code 798] and Recreational Vehicle Park Occupancy Law [starting Civil Code 799.20] , where the reasons for eviction are limited and special notices must be given.
COVID Special Protection Laws
The COVID pandemic of 2020-2024 resulted in government-ordered stay home orders, and shut downs of businesses, effectively preventing tenants from having the money to pay rent. The Courts, State Legislature, Cities and Counties enacted special eviction protection laws where landlords could not evict the tenants for nonpayment of rent or other reasons for various periods of time. Congress passed special laws sending out trillions of dollars to the States to pay landlords in what California called the Tenant Relief Act, distributed through the HousingIsKey programs. Landlords were the only kind of business that got that kind of bailout.
The patchwork of these ordinances, new statutes, and existing law created such confusion that landlords were unsure of what to do. One of the first laws passed in California was Civil Code 1511, says that if someone was prevented from complying with a contract due to government regulation, they are “excused” from their breach. A tenant who could not pay rent because of the government shutdowns of businesses is the perfect candidate for that protection. For some tenants, there was a delayed effect from the COVID shutdowns, so that even though they were able to pay the rent for the first 3 years of the pandemic, their company went out of business because the economy shrank. They should still be under that protection.
The federal government, California, cities and counties all took a stab at the problem. In the initial eviction moratoria of California, the landlord was not allowed to evict the tenant for nonpayment of rent, but could file a “small claims” case for the unpaid rent for unlimited amounts. As the pandemic continued, evictions continued to be filed, and new laws were created to stop the evictions. Ultimately, the moratoria periods expired, and landlords have continued to do evictions for nonpayment of rent, as well as bring separate lawsuits for the COVID period rents. Depending on the circumstances of your particular situation, there may be several defenses you can raise against these actions, even though you clearly did not pay the rent.
New Eviction Protections
Starting 2025, tenants will have 10 court days[ i.e., 2 weeks] instead of 5 court days [i.e., 1 week] within which to file their first response to an eviction lawsuit. Los Angeles enacted an anti-harassment ordinance, where landlords cannot force a tenant out by a broad variety of tactics, and extended the Just Cause Eviction provisions of its rent control law to all other residential tenants.
The no-fault eviction protections of the Tenant Protection Act were amended to avoid fraud. If the landlord’s reason for eviction is moving in a relative, the landlord must identify the name of the person, their relation to the owner, and other proof. If the intended relative fails to move in within 90 days after the tenant has vacated or to occupy the unit for at least one year, the landlord must offer the place to the tenant who left at the old terms in effect when they left and compensate the tenant for their temporary relocation. Similarly, if the reason for eviction is construction or demolition, the landlord must provide proof including permits, a description of the work to be done, the estimate start and end dates, and other information.
The above information is provided as your introduction to the vast and complicated system of these laws. There may be other cities or communities not listed above whose special laws are unknown or not well publicized.
Register to Vote!
Your power starts with your registering to vote. Two thirds of California residents are tenants, but only a small percentage of the tenants actually vote. That means when the politicians are deciding whether to favor the landlords who give them money or the few tenants who might show up at the polls to vote for the name they see the most, they favor the landlords. This new law is an example of that. If tenants voted in the numbers that homeowners do, politicians would be tripping over each other to write strong laws for tenants. If you don’t register to vote AND VOTE, you are part of your own problem. And that’s the truth.
Tenants as a group are “disenfranchised,” excluded from consideration and the process, in that vicious cycle. We don’t register to vote, so when the politicians look at where their votes will be coming from, the R-4 apartment zones show very low registration. If tenants don’t register to vote, that means you don’t care what they do. If you don’t care, they don’t care. You end up with a choice at the polls between politicians who never mention the tenants’ needs, because they don’t want to offend the landlords who use your rent money to pay for the politicians’ campaign. You have nobody “worth” voting for, and so you don’t vote, and don’t even register. You need to break out of that vicious cycle.
You may have been registered to vote, but then forgot to re-register in the hassle of your move to a new place. Times goes on and it’s entirely forgotten until the election comes but you don’t get a ballot, because you’re not registered. Another election, another silence, and another signal to the politicians that you don’t care. Register. It takes only 5 minutes on line: https://registertovote.ca.gov.
There was a statewide rent control petition on the ballot recently, that got a 40% vote. That’s only 11% from winning. If tenants start registering to vote now, when that petition gets back on the ballot, we can win, and have a real rent control law that finally provides us with the protection we want and need. You are only one of 20 million tenants, but this sleeping giant can take control. It starts with you.
Our Economy and the Big Picture
Some tenants are against rent control because they are against government regulation, think most landlords are honest, that tenants are suffering their own consequences somehow, and that the free market will make everything OK. It is the conservative propaganda that big landlord money pays to keep shouting, much as Hitler’s propaganda worked. The repeated lie eventually sounds true.
Housing is a necessity of life, with food and water. It is different from normal things we buy for that reason. Housing has an “inelastic demand” and an “inelastic supply”, meaning that new housing construction is very slow to react to increased demand, and we don’t really have a choice as to whether we will have a place to live. In the 4 decades that landlords have fought rent control on the theory that it will discourage new construction, hardly any new construction has occurred, anyway, and most notably in cities where new construction is expressly exempted from rent controls. It is a lie, proven over time.
We regulate how much utilities can be charged because it is worth a lot more than we pay to have them, and our money should not be diverted away from other purchases by overcharging for them. No one questions that. Even the pure free market thinkers do not question whether the Securities and Exchange Commission should regulate the stock market, because it benefits them. Why not housing?
We have an entire economy to think of, not just tenants and landlords. Landlords are about 2% of the population, while tenants are 66%. The tenants’ money greatly affects the entire economy. Tenants want to buy clothes, food, entertainment, equipment, vacations, and gifts. The tenant dollar goes only so far. When the landlord raises the rent, the tenants have less money to spend elsewhere, which hurts all of the other businesses, as well as the tenants. The reduction in those sales has a “multiplier effect” which causes the total money in circulation to be reduced by 5 times that amount, in a chain reaction: A has less money to spend with B, who lacks that money to spend at C, and so forth. The entire economy suffers so that the richest 2% can get even richer.
Meanwhile, the employers of those tenants face not only the reduced sales, but are forced to pay higher wages to keep the tenants because their rents were increased. Indeed, when the minimum wage is increased, the benefit is immediately removed because the landlord takes it all. The employer still has to pay more, and either cuts profits or has to lay off the workers. In addition, the landlord of the employer’s business raises the employer’s rent, too, so higher rents and higher wages for the employer make survival difficult. Many businesses fail for that reason, and homeowners who were against rent control lose their business and then their home in foreclosure and become tenants, themselves, before becoming homeless. Add to this the mass relocation which has already started from rising ocean levels caused by global warming, and the housing crisis kicks into overdrive Meanwhile, American businesses who can survive by raising their prices to the consumer have gradually lost their competitive edge in the face of products overseas, leading to massive bankruptcies, layoffs and a severe depression from which we may never recover.
The growing homeless population itself is the natural result of laissez faire economics. In the economic terms of supply and demand, the market price is what sellers and buyers both agree on. If the price is too high, the buyer doesn’t buy, and the seller has to lower the price to sell. If the price of housing is too high, you become homeless, but the landlord does not have to lower rents because other people who can afford the higher price will fill the vacancy. Homeless people can get a free room and food by committing crimes and having the tax payers pay for their jail time and associated police and court expense. Why not? They have nothing to lose and at least room and board to gain? It is part of that free market, is it not? Wandering bands of homeless families trying to survive in this free market system are given few choices, and cannot be controlled. The free market says they should survive any way they can. Why interfere with the landlord’s profits with government regulation when we can have a society like that?
With the economy weakened by these factors, the gross national product plummets, and with it the tax base for our government to provide military defense, health care, schools, and infrastructure also collapses. We lose the middle class, and have in the end a feudal society, with the very few ultra rich and the helpless poor masses. Granted that is several years off, something only our children will have to face, not us.
