Cities reject emergency protections for renters
Council members in Foster City and Burlingame express concern that the ordinances would target landlords unfairly
Two cities on the Peninsula rejected proposals this week to strengthen protections for tenants.
Foster City and Burlingame both declined to pass ordinances that retroactively would have barred evictions without just cause and limited rent increases, with city leaders expressing concern about unfairly targeting landlords. Palo Alto also delayed consideration of a similar ordinance.
The votes stand in stark contrast to more than a handful of other Bay Area cities that have adopted emergency ordinances to protect renters in response to concerns about landlords booting tenants from apartments before a new state law that will make it harder to hand out eviction notices takes effect next year.
In September, lawmakers in Sacramento passed Assembly Bill 1482. Set to take effect in January, the law will limit rent increases across the state to 5% plus inflation and require landlords to have just cause — such as not paying rent or major renovations — to evict tenants.
Tenant advocates hailed the law’s passage as a major victory, but some critics warned it could backfire by prompting landlords resistant to the restrictions to raise rents every year where they might not have otherwise. And in recent weeks, reports have surfaced of landlords issuing eviction notices with the hopes of raising rents before the law kicks in.
Shirley Gibson, the directing attorney for the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County, recently told this news organization that her team saw an uptick in calls after the bill passed.
At Foster City’s meeting Monday, the city manager told the City Council the city had received a few com
plaints, with Mayor Sam Hindi pointing out that not all tenants who get such an eviction notice are likely to complain, meaning the real effect could be greater than it appears.
“Because the reports of adverse impacts on tenants have only surfaced since Governor Newsom signed AB1482 into law, there has not been time to conduct substantial research or engagement with tenants or property owners and landlords,” reads a report by Foster City staffers. “This increases the possibility that the city adopting interim measures may have unintended consequences or may ultimately be ineffective. Any risk is mitigated, to some extent, by the fact that the proposed urgency ordinances only would be in place through Dec. 31, 2019.”
Still, several of Hindi’s council colleagues, echoing concerns voiced by the San Mateo County Association of Realtors and others, worried passing an ordinance would unfairly penalize small mom-and-pop landlords and open the city to legal challenges. They said they didn’t want to essentially criminalize landlords who thought they’d been acting within the bounds of the law by applying an ordinance retroactively to October, as the proposal would have done.
The pushback angered advocacy groups like Peninsula for Everyone, which argued that landlords know about the approaching state law and are unfairly taking advantage of this time at the expense of tenants.
“Renter advocacy on the Peninsula is often an exercise in disappointment,” Peninsula for Everyone wrote on Twitter after the votes came in, “and last night was no exception.”
The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors did approve an emergency ordinance Tuesday that will immediately enact the main points of AB1482 in an attempt to prevent landlords from circumventing the new law.
The county joins a number of cities up and down the Peninsula that have adopted similar so- called urgency ordinances in recent weeks, including Milpitas, Menlo Park, Redwood City, San Carlos, San Mateo and Daly City.
The region’s largest cities, San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco, already have renter protections in place.
The group Faith in Action Bay Area, along with other tenant advocacy groups, attended the board meeting in favor of the ordinance. The organization pushed back at the idea that recent evictions are an “unintended consequence” of the new legislation.
“Landlords are incentivized to kick out lowerpaying families to lock in higher- paying tenants,” the group tweeted during the meeting. “It’s a very intentional act by a bad actor that requires intentional leadership to address.”