Eviction By Declaration Bill Advances, Exposing Sacramento Double Standard on Tenants

AB 1513 (Fox) would allow property owners to circumvent the already expedited court eviction procedures in order to evict someone the property owner declares is a trespasser. Current law allows police to arrest trespassers, and when it isn’t clear if someone’s a trespasser, the matter gets resolved in court where a tenant has the right to trial in an expedited proceeding. The bill’s author and its sponsor, the California Association of Realtors, have not explained why existing law is not sufficient to deal with trespassers. Legislators have not even asked the author or sponsors to come forward with a single case in which a new “eviction by declaration” law is needed. Yet the bill continues to advance. This contrasts sharply with how tenant protection bills are treated in the Capitol.

The Dangers of AB 1513
Assembly Member Fox has chosen a terrible time to try to strip away tenants’ rights to have their day in court. Wall Street investors are buying up foreclosed properties in bulk. The consolidation of rental property in the hands of distant corporate entities increases concerns that tenants will be improperly accused of being trespassers in their own homes.

The fact that the bill is sponsored by the California Association of Realtors adds insult to injury. Real estate agents working on behalf of post-foreclosure owners are some of the worst actors in the foreclosure crisis, frequently giving tenants false information about their rights and threatening to call law enforcement to remove tenants. This bill will further encourage their misconduct.
The problem has been so pronounced in recent years that the recently enacted Homeowner Bill of Rights included provisions to plug loopholes that post-foreclosure owners and their agents were using to evict tenants by accusing them of being unauthorized occupants. Fox’s bill threatens to undo these important advances.

AB 1513 also undermines the bright line that has enabled police to stay out of landlord-tenant disputes. When post-foreclosure owners acquire property and try to use law enforcement to remove tenants, police should respond that they don’t do evictions and that disputes over tenancy should be handled in court. Likewise, legal aid lawyers and other advocates should be able to confidently inform clients that only a sheriff with a court order can remove a tenant from his or her home. If AB 1513 becomes law, police will be in the eviction business and tenants will be denied their day in court. These dramatic changes to landlord-tenant law are dangerous and entirely unnecessary.

Watch a video of TT's Director, Dean Preston, testifying against AB 1513 at the Senate Public Safety Committee hearing:


The Politics of AB 1513

This bill shows how politics trumps policy in Sacramento. Ask anyone in the Capitol about this bill and you will find that the real story is no secret. Assembly Member Steve Fox, a Democrat elected in a Republican district, is courting realtors as he runs for re-election. Democratic lawmakers want to keep this district in the “D” column. The marching orders were clear: this bill must pass so Fox gets the win, even if legislators don’t like the bill. Hence the lopsided vote in the Assembly where only Assembly Members Tom Ammiano (D – San Francisco), Mark Stone (D- Santa Cruz) & Phil Ting (D – San Francisco) had the independence to vote “no.”

Thanks to opposition from Tenants Together, the Western Center on Law & Poverty, the grassroots Kill the Bill Coalition, and other community groups, the bill has gone through significant amendments to limit the damage. As currently written, the bill will sunset in a few years, be limited to three cities (Palmdale, Lancaster & Ukiah), and contain a new requirement for minimal judicial review. Even with these amendments, the bill remains fundamentally flawed and subject to abuse by investors seeking to evict tenants.

The Double Standard

Despite the fact that Assembly Member Steve Fox and the realtors sponsoring AB 1513 have not identified a single real situation — that’s right, not one — in which their “eviction by declaration” law is needed, the bill survived the Assembly Judiciary Committee, the Assembly floor, and yesterday Senator Loni Hancock’s Public Safety committee with only Senator Holly Mitchell (D – Los Angeles) dissenting.

Tenants Together has asked repeatedly for examples of why AB 1513 is needed. We have made clear that we are not asking for examples of trespassing; we are asking for examples of how existing law is not sufficient to allow property owners to remove trespassers. In other words, why do we need this bill at all? To date, we have received no answer. Nor has any legislator bothered to ask the author or sponsor such a basic question.

This is quite a contrast to the burden imposed on tenant advocates. When tenant advocates bring forward a bill to protect tenants from abuse, we are armed with data and specific stories because we know the committees will demand proof of the problem before approving legislation. Landlords and realtors not held to this standard.

When we recently showed that many hundreds of tenants annually were being thrown out of their homes due to Ellis Act abuse, state legislators argued that the numbers didn’t rise to the level of a crisis warranting action from Sacramento. Democrats like Cheryl Brown (D – San Bernardino) argued that 216 filed Ellis Act eviction notices (that’s 500 people) was not a big enough percentage of the housing stock of San Francisco to warrant action.

In our fight for Ellis Act reform, tenants showed up in force to tell their stories, backed by data from the Rent Board and other public records. In contrast, the real estate industry simply lied about how the Ellis Act is used, falsely claiming without a shred of evidence, that the Ellis Act is used by property owners to avoid bankruptcy. They were never asked for a single example of a landlord who used the Act to avoid bankruptcy. They knew that in today’s Sacramento they would never be asked for such evidence and that their false statement, if repeated enough, would be regurgitated by legislators hungry for campaign donations.

Exposing the Double Standard

This double standard must be exposed at every possible opportunity. Through online organizing, social media, direct action, and legislative advocacy, Tenants Together will continue to expose the disparate treatment of tenants in Sacramento and demand fair treatment for California’s 15 million renters.

Tenants Together Statement on Defeat of Ellis Act Reform Bill

Yesterday, Democratic Assembly Members Sharon Quirk-Silva (D – Fullerton) and Cheryl Brown (D- San Bernardino) teamed up with Republicans Brian Maienschein (R – San Diego) and Beth Gaines (R – Roseville) to defeat SB 1439 (Leno), a modest bill to stop speculators from misusing California’s Ellis Act to evict long-term tenants.  The bill, co-sponsored by Tenants Together and San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee failed on a 3-4 vote, with Assembly Members Ed Chau (D – Monterey Park), Tom Ammiano (D – San Francisco) and Mariko Yamada (D –Davis) voting to support the bill.  The bill would have plugged a loophole that has allowed speculators to purchase apartment buildings and immediately evict long-term San Francisco tenants who are disproportionately elderly and disabled.  With no real arguments against the bill, the real estate lobby relied on a strategy of misrepresentations and campaign donations to prevail.

The defeat of SB 1439 highlights a growing problem in Sacramento.  The real estate industry’s control of Democrats through campaign donations corrupts the lawmaking process, undermining the ability of California’s 15 million tenants to have their needs addressed by legislators.

Tenants saw the same dynamic when Democrats heavily funded by real estate money joined with Republicans to defeat SB 603, our bill last session for fair treatment of security deposits.  That bill would have simply imposed a penalty on landlords who illegally withhold security deposit funds, something that is already the law in Alabama.  The bill was unacceptable to realtor-funded Democrats for reasons they refused to articulate.

With rents, evictions and habitability problems escalating across the state, tenant discontent is on the rise.  We thank all of the tenants and tenant organizations who came to Sacramento, sent letters, signed petitions, made calls and otherwise supported our legislative efforts.  Your presence was felt in the Capitol, and without your support, we would not have made it this far.  We defied the odds and got this bill through the California Senate, but in the end were not able to get it through the Assembly Housing & Community Development Committee.

The Ellis Act reform bill was backed by an incredibly broad coalition of labor unions, senior groups, tech companies, and social justice groups.  San Francisco political leaders --Mayor Ed Lee (SB 1439 co-sponsor), Senator Mark Leno (SB 1439 author), Assembly Member Tom Ammiano, Assembly Member Phil Ting and the entire San Francisco Board of Supervisors – were united for Ellis Act reform.  We appreciate the solidarity and the hard work of all of our allies in this fight.

We are deeply disappointed that Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins (D – San Diego) did not take steps to secure passage of SB 1439. Tenant advocates were excited to welcome Speaker Atkins – a proven leader on affordable housing construction -- when she recently took over leadership of the Assembly.  As Speaker, she has considerable power to control whether bills live or die.  Her inaction on this bill stands in sharp contrast to the Senate in which President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D – Sacramento) and incoming Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D – Los Angeles) fought for passage of the bill, leadership that proved essential in a difficult floor fight.  We urge our members to call Speaker Atkins at (916) 319-2078 and urge her to take a more proactive role in passing commonsense tenant protections like SB 1439.

California’s 15 million tenants need representation and leadership in Sacramento.  Too often, lawmakers claim to be affordable housing champions while refusing to stop unfair displacement, exorbitant rent hikes, security deposit theft, and other abuses of current tenants.  This was the case in the Assembly Housing & Community Development Committee where Assembly Members went out of their way to profess their support for affordable housing, while voting to displace tenants from affordable housing.

98-year old Mary Elizabeth Phillips testified at the hearing yesterday.  How could any lawmaker who claims to care about the vulnerable look this long-term, elderly tenant in the eye, and vote to empower the speculators who are evicting her?

This marks the beginning, not the end, of our fight to change the dynamic in Sacramento and stop unfair displacement of California tenants.  We urge tenants who would like to get involved in our struggle for fairness and justice to visit our website www.TenantsTogether.org and become a member today.

If you would like to get updates on our campaign to reform the Ellis Act, sign the petition here.