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E-Mail Forum – 2017 |
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Court Decision May Void Relocation Provisions of Richmond's Rent Control and Just Cause Ordinance
March 23, 2017 |
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| Court strikes down S.F. law governing how much landlords must pay to relocate tenants
Mar 23, 2017, 7:33am PDT
Riley McDermid
Digital Producer San Francisco Business Times
A San Francisco court has struck down a 2015 city law that allows payments of up to $50,000 in relocation assistance from landlords to tenants that have been evicted when a rental property goes off the market.
The court ruled Tuesday that the law was pre-empted by California's Ellis Act because it “placed a prohibitive price on a landlord’s right to exit the rental market.” The decision was made by a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeal in San Francisco.
A San Francisco court has struck down a 2015 city law that allows payments of up to $50,000 in relocation assistance from landlords to tenants that have been evicted when a rental property goes off the market.
The court ruled Tuesday that the law was pre-empted by California's Ellis Act because it “placed a prohibitive price on a landlord’s right to exit the rental market.” The decision was made by a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeal in San Francisco.
“A property owner’s lawful decision to withdraw from the rental market may not be frustrated by burdensome monetary exactions from the owners to fund the city’s policy goals,” Justice Barbara Jones wrote in the panel's decision.
The state's Ellis Act governs how landlords remove rental properties from the market and treat tenants who are evicted, as well as allowing cities to pass their own laws about what rights tenants have locally.
"The 2015 law enacted by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors was the latest in a series of relocation assistance laws passed by the city since 1994 with the aim of easing the burden on evicted tenants facing a tight and expensive housing market," the Associated Press reports.
"The 2014 ordinance required a payment equal to two years’ worth of the difference between the tenant’s current rent and the cost of comparable housing in the city. It had no limit on the total payment and no requirement for the payment to be used for housing."
That law was struck down by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in 2014 after he ruled that it was an unconstitutional revoking of property without fair compensation. Now the city will use a 2005 law passed by the Board of Supervisors to determine tenant compensation, with guidelines that limit payments to $6,286 per tenant or $18,858 per unit.
“We’re disappointed," John Cote, a spokesman for City Attorney Dennis Herrera, told the AP. "We’re reviewing the opinion and evaluating the options.”
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