Sacramento Report
By Ron Kingston

Among the proposed bills in Sacramento will be the 60-day notice issue AGAIN!

The Western Center on Law and Poverty (WCLP), the leading statewide tenant organization, will sponsor legislation to extend the state law requiring residential landlords to provide at least 60-days notice of the intent to terminate a periodic tenancy when a tenant has resided in the dwelling unit for one year or more.

History

The statewide effort to lengthen the notice to terminate started in 2001, when a pilot program was established for three lower-vacancy rental markets in the Los Angeles area. The enabling legislation at the time required landlords in those regions, in the case of no fault evictions, to give 60-days notice before terminating a month-to-month or other periodic tenancy if the tenant had li ved in the dwelling for a year or longer. There were a few exceptions to the new requirement. This notice requirement was expanded tothe whole state in 2002 subject to a three-year sunset provision, which expired on January 1, 2006.

Then, in 2006 WCLP lead another successful legislative effort to require residential landlords to give a 60-day notice to terminate a periodic tenancy foran additional three-years. The sunset provision expires on December 31, 2009, which compelled the WCLP to sponsor a bill in 2009.

New Expectations

We can expect the new legislation to continue to allow residential landlords to provide a 30-day notice if all of the following conditions are met:

•The rental unit is alienable separate from the title to any other unit.
•The owner has contracted to sell theunit to a bona fide purchaser for value and has established an escrow with a licensed escrow agent or real estate broker.
•Notice was not previously given to the tenant pursuant to law requiring a 60-daynotice to terminate a tenancy.
•The purchaser in good faith intends to reside in the property for at least one full year after the termination of the tenancy.

The sponsors of the legislation will argue that tenants receiving a “no fault” notice to terminate a tenancy need additional time to locate and then move to a new rental unit due to a tight rental market and to save enough money for the costs of moving to a new rental unit. They also should be expected to demonstrate a few celebrated hardship cases that they will claim is sufficient cause for the legislature to approve yet another bill requiring a 60-day notice to terminate a periodic tenancy.

The facts that lead up to the initial enabling legislation and subsequent efforts were quite compelling in the eyes of the legislature and Governor. In his signing message of the last bill in this area, the Governor advised the sponsors that they will have the burden to demonstrate that the state law requiring a 60-day notice to terminate a periodic tenancy is a “statewide problem”. At the time, of course, we did not face a mortgage crisis of epic proportions, a foreclosure rate that has no equal, a housing construction meltdown and other extremely serious housing issues. We have extremely serious housing issues. We should expect that the sponsors and others will argue that now, more than ever, tenants need additional time to move.

There are compelling arguments that we have usedin the past on this matter which primarily turn on the notion that the additional time will do little to help good and rent-paying tenants because the no-fault termination process is not generally used to evict such tenants. We have used this law to rid the property of a nuisance tenant.

AACSC will turn to members in the ensuing weeks and seek input as to the impact of the law that will expire on December 31, 2009. We ask landlords and managers to contact Nancy Ahlswede or me as soon as you can so we may accurately report to your board real life experiences of the law. Particularly, we want to document how many tenants failed to pay the rent for 60 or 30 days afterreceiving a 60-day notice to terminate (or quit).

Nancy may be reached at: nahlswede@apt-assoc.com.

Ron may be reached at: Ron@CALPCG.com
or you can call him at (916) 447-7229.