Oakland tinkers with its Rent Ordinance and Rent Adjustment Program regulations once again

 

Just in time for the holidays, Oakland lawmakers gave rental property owners a gift: new regulations to comply with and additional tenant protections.

We laid out the agenda for tenants’ advocates in our earlier article and thought it was a foregone conclusion that all measures would sail through the City Council. Sure enough, they did. With District 6 Councilmember Keven Jenkins abstaining, the rest of his colleagues gave the thumbs up to a series of new regulations.

 

Before we review the new rules, we have to ask whether there was any transparency in how this process played out. 

According to the Rent Board, there was an exploratory process to suggest modifications to the city’s rent regulations that spanned at least 12 months beginning in fall 2022, with finalized recommendations to the City Council occurring within the last month and a half.

 

Denard Ingram, the Chair of Oakland's Rent Board and is now a candidate for Congress in the 12th Congressional District.

He asserted in a recent City Council meeting that there was outreach to housing providers and their advocates, Landlords have had ample opportunity to hash out details of proposed changes to the ordinance, he said.

Our industry partners take exception.

The East Bay Rental Housing Association (EBRHA) says they were blindsided by the final product presented to lawmakers at an October 19 Rules and Legislation Committee meeting and were never contacted for input during the preceding 12 months.

While EBRHA says rental property owners were not allowed to chime in on the proposed changes, the agenda was buried in an obscure section of the Rent Board’s website with no concerted effort to reach out to housing providers. Landlords are not visiting the Rent Board's website every day to look for newsy items.

We can relate. Short of placing a billboard on the front lawn of every rental property, there have been vigorous campaigns to educate tenants on their rights, with little endeavor to alert landlords about changes to the law.

Take a look at this postcard Daniel, a property owner, received in the mail educating him on the rights of tenants after the eviction moratorium was winding down.

 

Comparatively little effort was made to educate landlords on their rights.

There were also concerns about how to submit public comments, EBRHA says, with housing providers effectively muted from the City Council’s discourse in light of new procedures for submitting a public comment.

 

When the landlord wins in a Rent Board hearing, the tenant need not show up when they appeal. 

There are weighty matters in Rent Board petitions. Think rent increase petitions, tenants claiming a decrease in services, and landlords arguing for a fair return on their investment and attempting to pass through capital improvement costs. Other issues abound.

It’s an axiom in the law that when airing out grievances, both parties need to show up. To use an easy example, when an eviction action is filed, we may be able to obtain a default judgment when a tenant doesn’t timely respond to a complaint. The defendant forfeits their right to contest the case. This applies to any other lawsuit, for that matter.

We are not criminal attorneys, but another example is when someone is charged with a crime, they are given a date to appear in court. If they fail to appear, the judge will likely issue a warrant for their arrest.

Oakland has defied this conventional wisdom by allowing an appellant to skip appearing for the appeal.