“Is the county going to step up or is the county going to get in my way if I have to evict some of these tenants?” asked Tom Silva, a San Leandro landlord quoted in Steve Tavares’s East Bay Insiders Newsletter.
The topic came up because of reports that Trump is going to severely cut Section 8, formally known as the Housing Choice Voucher Program, which is administered by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. Section 8 “helps low-income families…afford housing in the private market. Program participants can choose any eligible housing unit, including single-family homes, townhouses, and apartments, with rent partially covered by a subsidy paid directly to the landlord.”
In this case, the landlord, Silva, is facing the possibility of losing 70 families he currently rents to; a perhaps typical example is a family that pays, out of pocket, $160 a month for a $2,100 rental. Do the math: Silva is facing an enormous loss of revenue if the Section 8 cuts go through—which they probably will.
Hence, his question makes a lot of sense. As a landlord, he has the right to evict tenants who, for whatever reason, don’t pay their rent. Or does he? This is where things get sticky. Both the city of Oakland and the County of Alameda have passed so-called “just-cause” laws that make it very difficult for a landlord to evict a tenant who doesn’t pay their rent. This means that the landlord must have a “just cause” for eviction, and not just a claim of simple non-payment.
In Oakland’s case, the “just cause” ordinance is tilted toward tenants (as you might expect in our progressive city). Although the ordinance nominally permits eviction for “failure to pay rent,” in actuality the eviction process is studded with roadblocks for landlords. The most glaring is that “the landlord must demonstrate… that the [rent] violation caused substantial actual injury to the landlord,” thus putting the burden of proof on the landlord. The tenant, or her lawyer, can always challenge the landlord’s claim by questioning whether or not a professed “injury” actually is injurious; and this process, like most jurisprudential matters, can drag out for months if not years. There are many other obstacles by which Oakland’s just cause ordinance attempts to slow down, or completely halt, the eviction process.
Alameda County’s just cause ordinance, updated last February, covers only the county’s unincorporated areas, such as Ashland, Castlewood, Castro Valley, San Lorenzo and Sunol, since cities themselves (Oakland, Hayward, Fremont) have their own ordinances. Tenants therefore are not offered protection from the county for non-payment of rent.
The State of California also updated its tenant protections last year, in a bill signed by Gov. Newsom. Its major component gives tenants more time (10 days rather than 5) to respond to a notice of eviction. Although this may be somewhat burdensome to landlords, it’s a relatively minor factor in the eviction process, and probably was a political necessity for Newsom.
But Oakland is a different animal altogether. The city always has been hostile to landlords, as it is hostile toward cops. The City Council has had members (Carroll Fife, Rebecca Kaplan, Nikki Bas, Dan Kalb) who outrightly sided with tenants, whether in eviction-related cases or in the ability of a landlord to raise rents (rent control). The East Bay Rental Housing Association, a lobbying group for landlords, has been fighting what amounts to a losing battle for years against local cities, particularly Oakland, that side sympathetically with tenants and make life considerably harder for landlords. The city’s just cause ordinance alone contains 4,705 words, each of which is a potential launchpad for a counter lawsuit by a tenant. Oakland has at least 57 tenant lawyers; they vie with each other for the best reviews on Yelp, and some of their names have become semi-famous in Oakland due to the prolificity of their billboards. These pro-tenant lawyers portray landlords, in many cases, as “dishonest, negligent, and abusive property owners,” and they encourage tenants to “Get the compensation you deserve” by hiring their particular law firm.
This isn’t to say that evicted tenants don’t have rights or deserve good legal representation. But the right of a landlord to charge rent, and the obligation of a tenant to pay it, are long-established custom and practice in English common law, which is the basis of our American justice system. And when the governance of a city, such as Oakland, is tilted away from fair and just practices, it can be said that that city is heading in the wrong direction.
Steve Heimoff