Oakland’s agenda to expand tenant protections and penalize landlords moves forward and goes to the full City Council on December 3rd. 

At one point, we considered San Francisco and Berkeley to be home to the most onerous regulations placed on landlords, but over time, Oakland may have supplanted its neighbors to become the most difficult place in the Bay Area to operate a rental business. And it looks like it isn’t going to get any easier.

On Tuesday, November 19th, Oakland’s Community and Economic Committee (CED) convened to discuss a series of proposals set forth by outgoing District 1 Councilmember Dan Kalb, a progressively leaning politician who wants to go out with a hurrah by installing new tenant protections in an already maddening regulatory regime.

• Limit banking of CPI rent increases to expire after five years and after the transfer of property.

• Prohibit rent increases for owners delinquent on business taxes.

• Extend tenant petition deadlines from 90 days to 180 days, giving more time for tenants to make allegations against the landlord, even if concerns or repairs were not communicated to the landlord.

• Prohibit no-fault evictions for owners delinquent on business taxes.

Immigrant, elderly, and minority-owned housing providers are expected to be impacted and we are particularly concerned about what effect this will have on the sale of multifamily properties as would-be purchasers are limited in their ability to bank rents in a building they are looking to acquire.

This agenda comes at a time when Oakland’s budget shortfall put the city teetering on the edge of a financial cliff. As it attempts to patch a $ 115 million hole, it seems that housing providers are an easy target to go after for money without knowing exactly why they are behind on their business taxes in the first place. Could it be that the tenant is not paying rent?

When merchants of all kinds fail to pay Oakland’s business tax, there are already stiff late penalties and interest charges. If a restaurant falls behind on its business tax, it will be saddled with a bill, but it won’t be prohibited from serving food. So, landlords have become the whipping boy for Oakland’s financial crisis.

We’re not sure there is any good news but if there is, it is that Supervisor Kalb was open to a payment plan for financially strapped owners who have fallen behind on their taxes.

Our community should thank District 6 Councilmember Kevin Jenkins, the lone dissenter in furthering these proposals. The Councilmember told those in attendance that until recently, he had been a lifelong renter, and his rents were never raised.

This sentiment was shared by others in attendance who value the stable income and the friendship of quality tenants they rent to and that raising rents would only destroy the fabric of that relationship. Many of these landlords now regret that with rising costs and the possibility that they will lose their ability to bank rent increases, they will have no choice but to raise rents to future-proof their business.

Rather than punishing housing providers in Oakland more than the penalties they already incur for being late, a better public policy would be to ascertain why they are falling behind and get them cash-flowing again.