The expiration date of California’s eviction moratorium has come and passed with no calamity.

It’s been said many times and in many ways that landlords are in the business of providing housing, not in the eviction business, and this immutable fact has not changed once we turned the page on October 1st.

This message has been drowned out by apocalyptic predictions of an eviction cliff, tsunami, or wave of evictions, whatever term you like. Our industry partners commissioned a report that suggests these doomsday predictions and fear-mongering relied on faulty data. 

Anecdotally, here on the front lines of practicing landlord-tenant law, we can debunk the notion that there will be widespread displacement. To be sure, the number of notices demanding rent is up, but most of our time and energies have been spent cajoling landlords and tenants to tap into burgeoning state and local relief funds. 

These outreach efforts are not just good strategy; it is what the spirit and the letter of the law requires. 

Although much of these funds have been sitting unused, we are beginning to see clients get paid by the clunky apparatus put into place. Our grade of rental assistance programs began at C+. We can now give them a B minus, and let’s hope that promises for further reform and speedy disbursement of sorely needed money are promises kept.

For any in our community who have uncooperative renters refusing to come to the table, consider calling upon us as an intermediary. In many instances, Bornstein Law has been able to break the inertia by contacting the recalcitrant tenant and kindly inform them of their rights and obligations, along with providing a succinct accounting of rent owed. A letter from our firm tends to get noticed and often breaks the silence of a tenant who will not participate in rental assistance programs. 

Of course, many landlords and tenants can be a bull in a china shop and unable to have a productive conversation. Removed from the emotional fray, our correspondence with the tenant can dislodge breakdowns in communication and start a dialogue in what has historically been an acrimonious rental relationship.

For many of you in Alameda County, the malaise continues until local states of emergencies are lifted. In San Francisco, property owners endeavoring to recover possession of a unit through no fault of the tenant are hamstrung to do so because of the city’s recent 60-day extension of no-fault evictions.



We continue to be proponents of tenant buyout agreements, especially when there are scarce other options available to effectuate a vacancy. 

And so, as we’ve repeated throughout the long, dark winter of COVID, this will not be the smoothest of transitions. At least we see the light at the end of the tunnel and have a clear path to achieve our objectives. 

Thank you for your continued engagement and as always, we are glad to provide guidance in a new era of carefully prescribed rules as to what rental providers can and cannot do, and must do moving forward. 

Godspeed,