San Jose giving tenants break from rent increases

Apartment, mobile home landlords forbidden from raising rates until Dec. 31

In its latest effort to relieve San Jose residents impacted by the spread of COVID-19, the nation’s 10th largest city is freezing rents on tens of thousands of apartments and mobile homes for the rest of the year.

The city joins just a handful of those across California, including Oakland and Los Angeles, that have instituted similar measures to protect tenants and prohibit rent increases during the economic fallout of the current pandemic.

“During this time we have to take certainty whenever we get it and we have to make certainty for our residents wherever we can,” San Jose City Councilwoman Dev Davis said during Tuesday’s City Council meeting.

The temporary emergency ordinance prohibits landlords from increasing rents until Dec. 31 on nearly 39,000 apartments and more than 10,000 rent-controlled mobile homes that fall under the city’s rent stabilization program.

The council’s decision to add another safeguard for the city’s tenants comes after thousands of San Jose residents have filed for unemployment benefits in recent weeks, hundreds of stores have been forced to shutter and more

than 1,000 city employees face furloughs.

For San Jose residents such as Adelita Gomez, who are struggling financially due to the current pandemic, the new tenant protection means one less added expense that they have to worry about.

Gomez, who lives with her husband and two children in a rent-controlled unit, lost her job late last month when her company conducted a round of layoffs

fueled by COVID-19 fears. She recently received notice that her landlord intended to increase rent on June 1.

“With the financial instability that my family has already found ourselves in, to know that there’s going to be an added cost every month is very concerning,” she said.

The ordinance covers residents who were facing a rent increase in May or the coming months, but the council opted not to make the ordinance retroactive. Hence, landlords who increased rents for April won’t be forced to revert

the rents back to their previous costs.

Councilmember Pam Foley said that making the ordinance retroactive “appeared to be illegal,” even though the city attorney indicated it could be justified.

The city’s apartment rent ordinance typically allows owners of apartment buildings with three or more units that were built on or before September 1979 to increase rents by up to 5% every year. Owners of mobile home parks that were built on or before September 1979 are typically allowed to raise fees by up to 75% of the change

in the region’s consumer price index — with a maximum increase of 7% — every year.

Single-family home rentals and most newer apartments are not subject to rent control under state law and therefore will not be covered by the new emergency ordinance.

Jacky Morales-Ferrand, the city’s housing director, said the three main objectives of the ordinance were to stabilize the city’s housing stock, prevent homelessness and ensure landlords could still receive a fair return on their rental

properties.

But the new tenant protection has irked some small mom and pop landlords who say they need that income to pay their bills.

Roberta Moore, who owns a fourplex rental in San Jose, said she agrees with the city’s objectives of preventing more homelessness and relieving additional burdens on tenants but feels the city is failing to look out for small landlords like her in the same way.

“What I have a problem with is making mom and pops take on the burden of providing loans and paying for it,” Moore said.

The new ordinance is just the latest of a string of measures the city has put in place to aid tenants during the COVID-19 pandemic, which began nearly two months ago.

In addition to the freeze on rent increases, the city has adopted a temporary ban on residential and commercial evictions and implemented a temporary paid sick leave policy that guarantees any essential employee in the city will be paid if they are affected by the coronavirus crisis and unable to work.