Landlords have been inundated with notice requirements and some are losing track of it all.

One of our clients once quipped that he was going to put a bookshelf in each of the rental units he owned, just to store the amount of notices that his tenants need to be served with.

The only advice we can say in jest to add to is to not keep the bookshelf too dusty and replace the notices because they change often and sometimes, with no warning.

 

A delta in communication?

Short of erecting billboards in front of apartment buildings, there was a massive campaign to educate tenants about protections afforded under eviction moratoriums.

This outreach continues, as evidenced by a postcard that recently blanketed mailboxes throughout Oakland.

 

 

We find this outreach to tenants to be productive, but landlords should also be given a heads-up when notice requirements change.

Tenants should absolutely be aware of their rights. Yet so, too, should rental property owners be alerted to new notice requirements that can change on a dime.

Failure to provide an updated notice can tank an eviction action, and we'll use the analogy of a computer update.

Let's say there are some minor updates or some new protection from a recently identified virus, and the computer automatically makes the updates.

Not so with intermittent changes to landlording documents and notices. Rental housing providers go on living their lives and conducting their business with no notification or instruction about what they are required to do.

Of course, our promotional message is to remind you that while Bornstein Law can ensure your compliance with ever-changing notice requirements,  we urge the powers that be to invest more proportional resources into educating landlords on their rights and alert them to any rule changes they have to follow.

Until then, ambitious tenant attorneys will attempt to capture landlords in a "gotcha" moment.

An astute observer of our social media told us we should cite local examples of discrepancies in notices, but we don't want to give ammunition to tenant attorneys - we don't want to give them any ideas. Rest assured, brilliant tenant attorneys will find errors like a heat-seeking missile.