Articles Tagged with San Francisco wrongful eviction law firm

josh-wilburne-501947-unsplash-copy-300x200San Francisco’s Rent Control Ordinance gives tenants certain rights when it comes to eviction. It either prohibits eviction in certain cases or, in others, allows the tenant to recover relocation costs from the landlord. It also created The Rent Control Board to help prevent tenant abuse by landlords. One of the areas of law that the ordinance covers, which is frequently abused by landlords, is called “just cause” evictions.

Rent Control Ordinance

The  San Francisco Rent Control Ordinance regulates how and when landlords can increase rents and pass on their costs to their tenants. It also regulates tenant evictions. It provides restrictions on when landlords may evict tenants.

antonina-bukowska-142087-copy-300x200Oakland Just Cause for Eviction Ordinance

Oakland is a “Just Cause for Eviction” city, which means a landlord cannot evict a tenant unless he or she can prove “just cause” in at least one of 11 ways. The Oakland Just Cause for Eviction Ordinance lays out the specific conditions under which landlords are permitted to evict their tenants in Oakland. This ordinance, along with the Oakland Rent Adjustment Program (RAP), is one of the most important housing protections for residents of Oakland as it prevents tenants from losing their homes due to a change in property ownership, inability to raise rent, or other reason unrelated to the tenant’s behavior.

To Whom the Just Cause for Eviction Ordinance Applies

jeremy-wong-298986-copy-300x200Title 22 specifies the standards according to which California nursing homes must adhere. Many of the standards aim to preserve the patient’s level of health and independence, even when it means more work for the nursing home staff. For example, it stipulates that patients must get enough exercise to preserve their mobility.  In practice, this means that nursing home staff should provide walking assistance to patients who can walk with assistance rather than transporting them in wheelchairs. Likewise, it prohibits feeding tubes for patients who are capable of oral feeding, even if they require assistance with feeding. In general, it requires nursing homes to provide patients with the kind of health maintenance care that it would be difficult for them to get outside the nursing home. Therefore, when a nursing home unjustly evicts a patient, and the patient loses the state of health that she had been able to maintain while living at the nursing home, it could be a case of elder abuse. This issue is at the center of a lawsuit currently being argued in California courts.

Details of the Case

A nursing home in Sacramento, California sent a patient to the hospital for a psychological evaluation after she reportedly began behaving aggressively at dinner and throwing table utensils. Physicians at the hospital examined the patient and determined that she was fit to return to the nursing home; in fact, they did not find anything wrong with her. They sent her back to the nursing home, but it refused to re-admit her. According to California law, nursing homes are required to reserve a patient’s bed for seven days when a patient is hospitalized. Likewise, the nursing home did not give her advance notice before she went to the hospital that they would not let her back in when she returned, which is also a violation of the rules.

bethany-legg-9248-copy-300x200San Francisco tenants have a lot to worry about. Finding an apartment takes weeks, sometimes months, of searching. Rents have skyrocketed in recent years, and many landlords are using dubious methods to force long-time renters out of their homes in order to raise the rent even more. While some landlords try to take advantage of lawful evictions whenever possible, others utilize illegal means, such as harassment, fraudulent landlord or relative move-ins, and fake eviction notices.

Fake Eviction Notices

In competitive real estate and rental markets like San Francisco, it should come as no surprise that some landlords will try and get tenants to move out of their units without going through a proper and formal eviction process. Landlords often use harassment, making a tenant’s life and home so uncomfortable, it feels best to leave. Other landlords use neglect. They ignore repair requests and let the building or specific unit become less and less habitable until a tenant moves out.

lili-popper-29464-300x169San Francisco rental and housing costs have skyrocketed in recent years. The amount a landlord can get for a small unit has doubled or tripled compared to potential rent prices just a few years ago. This potential financial gain means it is often in the landlord’s best interests to have a long-term tenant move out so that the new rent can be increased a significant percentage – a move that may not be possible with current tenants under rent control laws. This motivation has led landlords across the area to illegally evict tenants. However, lawmakers and prosecutors are cracking down on this type of behavior and at least one notorious landlord has been fined millions of dollars for deceptive and bad faith practices.

San Francisco Landlord Heavily Fined

In a ruling against local landlord Anne Kihagi, Judge Angela Bradstreet stated there was a pattern of bad-faith harassment, retaliation, and fraud against Kihagi’s tenants, San Francisco Gate reported. Kihagi was found to have intentionally ruined her tenant’s ability to quietly enjoy their rental property due a campaign of continual harassment, a reduction in services, and unlawful evictions. She was fined close to $2.4 million for violations of California housing law and ordered to pay all of the city’s court and investigative fees, which are expected to be a couple million dollars.

We all know that the cost of housing in San Francisco has skyrocketed in recent years resulting in a shortage of affordable rental housing.  What you may not know is that these market forces have also resulted in a startling increase in the number of tenants facing eviction.  In far too many cases, landlords are using wrongful evictions to chase out existing tenants, particularly lower-income renters, and profit from rising prices.  Our San Francisco wrongful eviction lawyer helps tenants who have been illegally pushed out of their housing or otherwise harassed by a landlord in violation of city and/or state laws.

Article Examines the Rising Number of Eviction Notices in San Francisco

This week, the Peninsula Press, an award-winning project of the Stanford Journalism Program, published a fascinating (and upsetting) look at eviction notices in San Francisco.  According to their data, eviction notices have increased 60% since 2011, a major concern in a city where two-thirds of the population lives in rental housing.  In 2011, nearly six tenants a day received eviction notices for a total of 2,080 notices served last year.  Notably, the Mission, Sunset, South of Market, and Tenderloin neighbrentorhoods accounted for over a quarter of the eviction notices served in the past six years.  These numbers only count notices, not actual evictions, but it is also important to remember that one eviction may leave a whole family homeless.

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