New law upends how landlords respond to abuse in rental units

It’s been said that home is where the heart is, but what happens when that heart is broken? The law affords additional protections for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, elder abuse, human trafficking, or stalking.

Housing providers face unique challenges whenever there is conflict between household members living under the same roof. This differs from disputes that may arise from neighboring tenants who do not live together.

Whenever abuse rears its ugly head and there is a foreseeable threat, housing providers must proactively address the situation because failure to do so can expose them to liability if someone gets injured or killed. In abusive households, landlords have a host of obligations foisted on them and from our experience, many of them are not prepared to deal with the morass.

Now, there are additional burdens for housing providers to comply with after Governor Newsom signed into law Senate Bill 1051. This law will go into effect on January 1, 2025, and applies to all leases that started on or after January 1, 2011. SB 1051 makes important amendments in three respects. Let’s review them.

 

Landlords will be required to change locks at their own expense.

Under current California law, housing providers must change the locks if a victimized tenant has a court order or police report in hand. If the landlord does not change the locks within 24 hours, the tenant has the option to take it upon themselves to change the locks at their own expense. At any rate, there is no penalty for the landlord’s failure to change the locks. The New Year will change this financial responsibility.

Under the new law, housing providers must pay, out of their own pocket, to change the locks on all exterior doors, or reimburse the tenant who paid to change the locks themselves. This can be hundreds of dollars. That’s right - the landlord will have to incur a cost for domestic strife in their units.

 

Expands the definition of who a “protected tenant” is. 

When we think about the term protected tenant, we normally think about tenants who are elderly, disabled, catastrophically ill, educators during the school year, etc. The list of categories of certain vulnerable Californians deserving increased protections has been ever-growing.

Pursuant to SB 1051, the victim, or protected tenant, is no longer defined as the tenant themselves. Rather, the term “victim” is now broader. It includes those who are not abused but merely live in the same abusive household.

 

Police reports and/or court orders are no longer required. 

What constitutes abuse? Traditionally, the victim who is asserting domestic violence must have a copy of a temporary restraining order, protective order, or a copy of a written report by a peace officer. Yet soon, third parties can vouch for the alleged victim. Think physicians, counselors, violent crime advocates, and the like.

These third parties, acting in their professional capacity, can indicate in writing that the tenant, the tenant’s immediate family member, or the tenant’s household member is seeking assistance from physical or mental injuries or abuse.

 

What is abuse anyway? 

For that, we turn to paragraph (1) of subdivision (a) of Section 1161.3 of the Code of Civil Procedure. This law protects tenants from eviction or lease non-renewal based on certain crimes committed against them or their household members. These offenses run the gamut, including domestic violence, elder abuse, sexual assault, stalking, human trafficking, and crimes that involve a deadly weapon.

When we talk about “domestic violence,” we normally associate it with the stereotypical wife-beating husband but in fact, it can come in many forms, such as verbal threats and acts that cause emotional or psychological trauma.

For example, cutting up someone’s clothes, smashing their cell phone, hiding someone’s medications out of spite, throwing their mattress out to the curb, or harassing their domestic partner’s friends and family on Facebook. Increasingly, we are seeing abuse come in the form of text messages and if there is any good news to this - we’re not sure that there is - it is that text messages can be preserved and documented to demonstrate the abuse. The quintessential point is that someone does not have to be physically assaulted to be a victim of domestic violence. This is a broad term.

 

When you encounter a tenant claiming to be a victim in a rental unit, contact our office. 

We want you to be compliant with the law and not let domestic problems reach a boiling point. Landlords should just provide housing but the reality is they wear many hats. During the pandemic, for example, they became de facto social workers when assisting tenants in filling out forms for governmental funds to pay rent. Yet when it comes to domestic violence, elder abuse, human trafficking, and other forms of abuse, this is normally beyond the scope of what a landlord or a property manager can handle on their own and they are strongly advised to seek proper counsel.