Dear Mayor Garcetti: I’m certain that when you served on the City Council and chaired the Council Housing Committee, you always made certain that important housing legislation was thoroughly examined, reviewed and evaluated by not only tenant rights representatives, but also several apartment association staff and leaders. Your outreach was outstanding.
Details[AOA: Do you think your city is going to be any different in the future than what the city below is proposing? Folks, this is the future that the renters and politicians have envisioned for you and me and their first step is Prop. 10! Then, their next step will be statewide “tenant welfare” (rent…
DetailsDo You Keep Up with Market Rents? According to a Rent.com survey, as many as 80% of property managers across the U.S. over the last couple of years have raised rents. Have you raised rents this year? Mom and Pop landlords often mistakenly charge lower than market rent. When I mentioned this on MrLandlord’s Facebook page, a landlord responded:…
DetailsIn a noble but misguided effort to combat racial discrimination, the City of Seattle passed a series of ordinances forbidding local landlords from choosing their own tenants: A “first in time” ordinance requires landlords to rent to the first financially-qualified tenant who applies. And the “Fair Chance Housing Ordinance” forbids landlords from considering applicants’ criminal…
DetailsIn January 2018, Assembly person Richard Bloom’s AB 1506 was challenged and defeated in the Assembly Housing Committee. If successful, it would have automatically eliminated and repealed the protections for small apartment owners afforded by the 1995 Costa-Hawkins Fair Housing Act. After the defeat, tenant activists, eviction attorneys, the Statewide Tenant Union, Tenants Together and…
DetailsCalifornia Landlords Settle Over ‘No Criminal Record’ and Discrimination California landlords have reached a settlement and agreed to pay $8,000 after a complaint alleging they used a policy of “no criminal or police record of any kind,” and in addition discriminated on the basis of race and national origin.
DetailsQuestion One: My rental is undervalued and I am planning to bring the rent up to market level. I am also planning on increasing the security deposit at the same time. What do I do if the tenant only pays the new rent and refuses to pay the increase in the security deposit?
Q: I have a tenant who moved into his rental unit last month. I included a provision in his lease that prohibits smoking cigarettes in his unit. Now, his neighbors are complaining that cigarette smoke from his unit is seeping through their air vents. When I approached the tenant, he told me that he has…
DetailsQuestion 1: Our long term tenant told me that she has cancer and would like to have a co-tenant with her in her one bedroom apartment (San Francisco rent controlled). Am I obligated to honor her request? If I allow her to have a roommate, am I allowed to raise her rent? In addition, am…
DetailsDear Housing Providers: A Constitutional Amendment was just introduced that could quickly DOUBLE the two-billion-dollar parcel tax burden already imposed on homeowners. Yes, double! California is the only state in the USA where parcel taxes are even legal. Parcel taxes were invented here to dodge Proposition 13’s 1% cap and now Senate Constitutional Amendment 22…
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