sbrobert
By Robert Bernstein
As many of you know from my previous article here, my wife and I were evicted from my home of 31 years back in June. There is a proposition on the current ballot that is directly relevant to what happened to us.
Proposition 21 allows local governments to expand renter protections beyond what the state provides.
A so-called”Tenant Protection Act” was passed in 2019 that helped lead to our eviction. It limited rents but allowed the landlord to evict tenants. In fact, the law is an incentive to evict long-term tenants. The State Legislature has refused so far to fix their terrible mistake. Please let local governments help.
Here [http://swt.org/endorsements/2020/] are my other election endorsements if anyone is interested!
The ballot is getting rather long. I am not sure what is to be done about this, but who really has time to go through each of these items and people in adequate detail? Even the organizations I trust have found it impossible to cover every candidate and proposition and often just focus on those they prioritize.
Feel free to offer your own recommendations and why you are making them!
Propositions like this one are all to common in California. Propositions that sound great, and will help get a supporting politician reelected, but will cause longer-term harm that will outweigh the short-term benefits. Prop 21 would provide protections for current renters but is also yet another law that inhibits the development of new residential units. Long-term, assuming people keep making more people, the reduction in new residential units will lead to greater demand for the existing units, driving up rental prices long-term.
Thank you for the two comments so far. They may yet get deleted, so I will include the essence of each question in my reply.
BABYCAKES: We were explicitly evicted by new owners after living in my home for 31 years. There was no cause at all. The “Tenant Protection Act” allows an owner to evict a tenant with nothing more than a claim that they will be doing major renovations. OR that they or a family member will move in. They do not have to give any proof. And there is no enforcement mechanism.
VOICE OF REASON: You wrote “Prop 21 would provide protections for current renters but is also yet another law that inhibits the development of new residential units”. I am not sure what part of the proposition you are referring to. Proposition 21 does not give any specific protections at all. It just allows local governments to fix flaws in the existing laws.
It wasn’t your “home”. It was your rental unit. You buy a “home”. Yours was where you set up temporary housekeeping. This should not have come a surprise. You had zero ownership interest in this property; only the renewable right to occupy it by mutual agreement. The landlord could not force you to stay against your will and fore you to keep paying for it even if you wanted to leave. And vice versa. Rental is not ownership. This is basic. Even if you pretended otherwise. All real estate contracts must be in writing and I assume your landlord did not put it into writing you were allowed to stay there solely on your own terms as long as you wanted. And could also leave on no notice if that is what you wanted too.
As I get closer to retirement Ill be selling my income property when the current tenants move. This kind of law scares me and I cant afford to carry the payments and taxes if the tenant can’t or won’t pay. No longer worth the risk with no landlord protections. Its going to be one less somewhat affordable rental with the new owners paying much more than the current rent.
You were evicted through a court process? Or the landlord chose not to renew your lease, whether it was monthly/yearly/whatever?
I rent as well, and would fully understand if the landlord wanted his or her house back to renovate, let a relative stay there, sell it, leave it empty or house the homeless. It’s THEIR house, not yours. They can do what they want with their property that they paid for and continue to pay property taxes on.
Hi SBRobert. I have been listening in on most City Council meetings relating to this and similar topics. They will absolutely take the opportunity to make things stricter on landlords, saying they’re doing it to make housing affordable, in reality it won’t (long-term) and they’re just concerned about optics and reelection. or higher elections.
Like any other business arrangement the tenant / landlord relationship is a partnership which truly works only when both parties are satisfied. As a former landlord I know that when you get a good tenant ( in this town particularly) you really want to keep them and bend over backwards to do so. This is the second article that you’ve bashed your landlord for following all laws and rules but not bending over backwards for you. I would really like to hear from the landlord on this to get the full picture.
As I recall, it was a case of his longtime landlord selling the property. The new landlords said he could stay, with reasonable rent increase, then suddenly said no, get out, we are going to remodel. I would also be happy to hear the other side. This whole topic is complex. But it is particularly difficult for the tenants as there are so few available rentals, and moving is stressful and expensive even in the best circumstances.
Robert, on what grounds did the landlord evict you? I read your original article and this where you are stating that you were “evicted.” I am all for tenant rights and everything, but deciding not to pay/stay based on raised rent does not sound like an eviction. I’m not a lawyer or anything, but I think eviction means that you were removed by the landlord for “some reason” (like the renter is causing problems, etc.), not the renter’s inability/unwillingness to stay in the rental property. I remember having my rent nearly doubled…I looked around, saw what a great deal I had been getting, and paid the increase. At that point I realized that the landlord was the person who was in control, so I scrimped/saved/clawed took on extra jobs, kept my car running, no dinners, no drinks, no trips, and no extras turned into a small/modest home here in Santa Barbara. It can be done. Oh, and I rent a converted garage out for below-market rate ($950 for 1 bed/bath/full kitchen/W&D plus all utilities….cable/internet too). My suggestion to anyone who will listen, you CAN buy a house in SB, maybe not a “dream” house, but no one is going to “evict” you (unless you stop making payments).
Should landlords boot people our automatically at three years, because letting them rent “too long” is bad, BabyCakes? It would be doing them a favor and a favor to everyone else by helping the vacancy rates. Best of all it would be a wake-up call if one are still renting after three years, because that in the long run is making a very poor financial decision for oneself. You idea has merit. What is “renting too long’ is up for discussion.
Word of advice for renters. Save alot of money so that when the owner decides for any reason you’ve got 60 days to vacate…. You have moving expenses and first last and security available.
I have been a long time renter 20 various years and have had at least half a dozen landlords. I have also owned a home here for about a decade. As a renter, I’ve always looked for the right landlord in addition to the right house. At times we moved in knowing full well that the owners would come back at some point. Or that we could be asked to leave at their discretion without really needing a reason. It is their home and if I owned it wouldn’t want it any other way. Regardless of this proposition, I will still pay my rent and on time as I need a place to live. In addition, my landlord needs a place to live somewhere else if I want to be able to keep living in their home/my rental. If I don’t pay them and they don’t pay theirs, then quite possibly they are gonna need to move back in which would leave me looking. And that is how it should be. The only regulation I need is that if I give them the money they are asking for each month, they keep letting me stay at their home. Pressure is on them to keep it maintained if they want to continue keeping a good tenant.
It’s no secret: building more affordable housing is already a difficult challenge in California. But Prop. 21 would make it near impossible. It will ensure that new construction won’t pencil out financially. And it will result in forcing millions of existing rental units to be pulled off the market. No on 21
USA, that’s not always possible for many of us. Lots of us, especially during this pandemic, have lost our jobs and had a drastic reduction in any income! I would LOVE to have a savings pillow for a rainy day, but I’ve had to use mine just to eat and live.
BABYCAKES, well, LUCKY YOU! I’ve been trying to buy a modest home here (even a shotgun shack up in the hills somewhere) and I have been unable to. Just couldn’t do it, even though I tried and tried. I was denied loans (even though I have stellar credit and the mortgage would have ended up being less than my current rent). I missed opportunities left and right, not due to any lack of really trying, and then…. THEN the housing prices shot, like a rocket, straight out of the stratosphere. Normal people just cannot buy a “modest home” in Santa Barbara anymore, it’s now the territory of the uber wealthy or the uber lucky.
Pitmix, there is no solution to housing affordability in paradise like Santa Barbara, with limited buildable land and a constantly increasing supply of people wanting to live here. The only solution is more units, which is extremely difficult to get approved and very expensive to build. I think you missing how units get built, private individuals need to invest a lot money to develop real estate. To take that huge risk they need to know there is a high likelihood they’ll be able to recoup their investment along with a reasonable return, and there investment horizon is decades long. Prop 21 and other like it increase the risk to developers and further squeeze potential investment returns, it disincentives the creation of new units. In your example above, that 2br/1ba renting at $4,200 may keep renting at that level for now, but it’s future rent growth is limited while all the expenses to maintain the rental are not capped. some extreme rent control provisions even cap the amount you can re-tenant the place at once the current tenant vacates. If the city/county/state want’s more affordable housing they need to build it themselves. Their approach of trying to force the private sector to do it doesn’t work because developers will simply say “no thank you”, and do something else with their capital.