As we began 2020, the headline was statewide rent caps and eviction controls and we said the amount of information the rental housing industry had to digest was voluminous. Now, you can put a multiple on it.
In our latest article
, we dissect Alameda County’s recent amendments to its temporary eviction moratorium. It has quite a bit of teeth.
In order to avoid a wave of evictions once emergency orders are lifted, municipalities elsewhere have given some breathing room to tenants who must pay back rent accrued during the COVID-19 crisis, yet Alameda County tenants have no less than 12 months for this “IOU,” and cannot ever be displaced because of a failure to pay this debt. Owners and operators, then, are unwittingly cast into the role of debt collectors.
The County’s sweeping actions served to temper the optimism of Oakland rental property owners who, ironically, learned on the same day that the City postponed its own agenda of protections. We give you
an update on Oakland’s itinerary here
.
Contra Costa County, meanwhile, has instituted its own version of an eviction ban.
We touch on it here
.
Pivoting to San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors needed only minutes of deliberation to prohibit rent increases during the pandemic. Owners are reminded that
they
can raise the rent after the state of emergency is lifted, but cannot charge extra back rent for months that hikes were suspended.
Finally, we were asked by two media outlets to give our takes on important topics top of mind to owners in the midst of the pandemic, and the links are shared below.
These are uncertain times, but informed counsel can reduce the guesswork and anxiety.