Even though Vallejo City Council is not in session, the city manager has used his trump card as acting director of emergency services to declare a state of emergency that prohibits rent increases over 10%.
The declaration says the city manager, acting as director of emergency services, has the authority to make such a move when the City Council is not in session.
The measure, which expires after seven days, is intended as a stopgap until the City Council can vote on its own declaration. The City Council is expected to hold a special meeting next week for that purpose, but the date and time has not been announced.
To justify the declaration — which evokes the state’s anti-price gouging law — the document points both to the economic impacts of the wildfires of 2017 and 2018, as well as the actions of one property owner whose plans for significant rent increases raised the ire of tenant activists and city officials.
Vallejo and the rest of Solano County had most recently been covered by the state’s anti-price-gouging law from April to May of this year, when an earlier declaration from the governor’s office expired.
In addition to reinstating those protections through the city manager’s declaration, the City Council has asked Gov. Newsom to reinstate price-gouging protections for all of Solano County through Dec. 31, 2019 and possibly longer.
These actions come after a property owner recently purchased two Vallejo apartment communities and sought to raise the rents to market rates. The owner issued 60-day notices of rent increases as high as 100%. Responding to the likely displacement of many tenants, the mayor and city officials urged the owner to reconsider.
CAA worked with city officials and the property owner to try to resolve the situation. The owner offered to postpone the rent increase, provide relocation payments to tenants, moderate future rent increases, and work with the city of Vallejo to provide housing assistance to eligible tenants.
The mayor and other City Council members, however, were not satisfied with the proposal, which led them to ask Newsom to extend the price-gouging protections for Solano County and express support for a rent cap or freeze affecting all rental owners.
If the city manager’s declaration expires and the council takes no action next week, CAA members in Vallejo should still consult with an attorney before increasing rents by more than 10 percent for at least the next 30 days. Under the penal code, price-gouging protections last 30 days after an emergency is declared, and at present, it is unclear whether the protections would expire alongside the declaration.