Alameda County Sups approve new tenant protections after a years-long saga
Tenants’ advocates say the watered-down ordinance didn’t go far enough to prevent unscrupulous evictions.
In what Alameda County District 4 Supervisor Nate Miley called a “tortured journey” to reach the finish line, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday, February 4 to approve a pared-down ordinance based on California’s just cause law with slightly more protections for renters in unincorporated parts of the county.
When a tenant is uprooted through no fault of their own, housing providers must give a 60-day eviction notice under state law, but residents in unincorporated areas of Alameda County will now be entitled to a 90-day notice when a household member is under 18, is disabled, or qualifies as lower income. There is also a new administrative burden for landlords because, within three days of serving the notice, it must also be shared with the county’s Office of Housing and Economic Development (HED).
We expect further guidance from this agency with regard to notice requirements before the law goes into effect on March 6, 2025.
State law currently dictates that in a no-fault eviction (such as owner move-in, withdrawal of the unit from the rental market, demolition, or substantial remodel), the landlord must pay the outgoing tenant one month’s rent in cash or alternatively, waive the last month’s rent. Yet this farewell gesture won’t be enough in unincorporated Alameda County. Housing providers will now have to fork over two month’s rent to the household being transplanted.
The newly crafted ordinance also frowns on evictions that look retaliatory and adds new teeth to existing laws that prohibit retribution when a tenant makes complaints about habitability issues. We believe this is a precursor to an anti-harassment ordinance that will be proposed at some point in the future. In our view, these types of anti-harassment laws are duplicative of laws already on the books and only serve to enrich enterprising tenants’ attorneys who want to put their kids through private schools after getting a six-figure judgment.
Notably, this new regulatory regime will apply to single-family homes when the owner owns more than five units in unincorporated areas. This is no surprise given a deep distrust for large landlords and sophisticated investors who gobble up vast housing stock.
RELATED: Laws and public policy surrounding rental properties look like a modern-day Robin Hood
No matter what anyone thinks about the ordinance, nobody can say there was a lack of public engagement.
At one point in the Board’s meeting, the amount of time council members and staffers invested in this process was brought up. It required hundreds of hours and countless meetings with stakeholders over the course of years. It has been argued by some that this took so long because of a preoccupation with a global pandemic and eviction moratorium, but suffice it to say, Supervisor Miley was right in saying this was a tortured process.
A visibly flustered District 5 Supervisor and Board President David Haubert expressed fatigue talking about this subject and recognized that whatever lawmakers do, it will not be enough. He says that while tenants are entitled to a safe, secure, and sanitary dwelling, the needs of housing providers must also be addressed. Haubert is also aware of the hardships of fair and honest landlords who have toiled and invested their life savings into purchasing a property that houses other people.
He says that the Board has done quite a lot thus far to listen to landlord and tenant camps, and they have had ample opportunity to air out their concerns. The glass is half full, not half empty, he says and while there is room for improvement, the Board has fulfilled its obligation in brokering a compromise.
At one point in the public forum, a speaker claimed that a four-year-old girl could not eat cereal from a bowl because of a cockroach infestation, and Supervisor Haubert was taken aback. He said that public policy should shift to finding bad actors who allow substandard living conditions to exist, rather than punishing good landlords. Others in attendance shared this sentiment of isolating unscrupulous landlords through a complaint-driven program and proactive inspections.
What says other Supervisors?
A long proponent of housing security, District 2 Supervisor Elisa Marquez expressed her disappointment that the ordinance did not do enough and promised that the law was only a first step in advancing a larger agenda.
The Supervisor said that while tenants’ advocates were willing to compromise and engage in a constructive dialogue, the landlording community was unwilling to budge. We take exception. In an earlier article, we noted that when both sides came together in a meeting moderated by Supervisor Miley, the tenant camp was unwilling to talk until demands were met and proceeded to walk out of the room in protest to an awaiting press conference. It seems that this meeting was not made in good faith and was merely a publicity stunt.
Supervisor Miley took the position of a stately diplomat. Once a tenant and a landlord himself, he professed that there is a delicate balancing act in weighing the needs of renters and housing providers, many of whom are seniors, minorities, and retirees. Driving out small landlords would hurt everybody, Miley maintains, and would only lead to more vacancies and homelessness. To target mom-and-pop landlords with onerous rules that can potentially put them out of business would be, in his words, cutting off the nose to spite the face. We concur.
If we overburden small housing providers, rental properties will atrophy. These small operators will not be able to replace that leaking roof. And when they are forced to go out of business, who will buy these neglected properties? It will be large, so-called “greed-fueled” landlords that scoop them up.
Parting thoughts
After following this ping-pong match for years, we are relieved that there is a sense of finality and hope we don’t revisit this but we likely will as the agenda of tenants’ advocates marches forward.
It’s been said that a few bad apples spoil the bunch. Responsible landlords should not get a black eye for the neglect of other property owners who ignore the rules we are all governed by. There are good landlords and bad landlords and by the same token, there are good tenants and bad tenants. Nobody should be painted with the same broad brush.
What we lament about this long and storied history in unincorporated parts of Alameda County is that it was portrayed as “us against them.” We always want harmonious landlord-tenant relationships and that is the goal Bornstein Law aims to achieve.