Evictions for Sonoma County Landlords: Should I evict them?
If you are a landlord Sonoma County or elsewhere in the State of California, and have a tenant who is not paying rent, refusing to get rid of their five cats, or bothering your other tenants, then you may want to evict them from your property. There are a number of reasons why landlords may want to evict tenants, and in some cases a landlord doesn’t even need to give a reason.
Step one: Realizing you have a problem.
Many landlords are often surprised to discover that people who appear well-mannered, decent and honest can turn out to be exactly the opposite. If after signing the written lease agreement, moving in and paying their deposit the tenant is consistently late on the rent, and then starts finding problems with the tenancy, be forewarned. A very common dynamic is for a tenant who can’t make the rent is to suddenly find problems with the wiring, the heat, or rodents. It is your responsibility as a landlord to make certain that the tenancy meets standards of habitability, enumerated in the case Green v. Superior Court. Also see California Code of Civil Procedure 1174.2. In other words, if they are complaining about something, fix it immediately. Otherwise in a case where the tenants are being evicted for failure to pay rent, the tenant can raise that as a defense.
In Sonoma County, don’t rent to Section 8 tenants.
It may seem like a good idea initially. You have a rental property. You know the government offers programs that helps people pay their rent. You may feel liked doing the right thing and helping someone out who is down on their luck. In Sonoma County, renting to a Section 8 tenant can cost you thousands upon thousands of dollars because if they stop paying, then suddenly you have a whole separate area of Unlawful Detainer law. While most residential evictions are controlled by California law, Section 8 is a vast, complex web of federal and state law which provides a whole different set of regulations.
Frankly, I do not do evictions for Section 8 housing and I don’t advise anyone to rent to someone who needs Section 8. In Sonoma County, there are attorneys who know this area of law very well and can take a tenant’s case if they think they can recover attorney’s fees from the landlord. I can refer you to an attorney who is willing to handle a Section 8 eviction.
Whatever you think of them personally, they claim they are standing up for tenants and preserving their rights, and you can end up on the short end of the stick if it isn’t handled properly.
60-day notice to vacate premises
The law in California changed in January of 2007. Before that if a landlord wished to evict a tenant without cause, he or she could give a thirty-day notice. Now, if your tenant is a month-to-month tenant, you must give them 60 days notice to vacate. However, if the tenant has been in the unit for less than a year, you can give them a 30-day notice. There are exceptions to the 60-day requirement if the property owner is in the process of selling the property. However, there are requirements that must exist before this can happen.
The great thing about the sixty-day notice is that you need not give any reason to terminate the tenancy. But it must be in line with California law.
Protecting tenants when landlord is foreclosed on
Buried in a housing law signed this week by President Barack Obama are protections that will help thousands of renters stay in their homes — at least for awhile — after their landlord has been foreclosed on.
The law allows tenants to remain in their foreclosed rentals through the end of their lease and then 90 days after that before being forced to vacate by the lender. Renters without leases will have 90 days, a significant improvement over what most received before: almost no notice at all.
“Until this law was enacted, there had been no national protections for any of these households,” said Linda Couch, deputy director at the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “This gives renters time to adjust their lives.”
-msnbc.com
Evicting a tenant in California
If you are a landlord in California, you may believe that you can handle the matter yourself. After all, if they didn’t pay rent, don’t they have to go? Well, it depends.
It is far too complicated to explain all the subtle nuances, but I will do that later.
Here is how the process often works:
1. Tenant doesn’t pay rent.
2. Landlord gives gives three-day notice to quit or pay rent.
3. Tenant still doesn’t pay rent.
4. Landlord throws up his hands and goes looking for the next step. Usually this involves haggling with the tenant, trying to work it out, and this often succeeds. What happens when dealing with the tenant simply doesn’t work? Often they go down to the courthouse and ask the file clerks, who tell you to talk to a lawyer or refer you to legal aid.
5. The Landlord, like most of us, doesn’t have a pile of money sitting around. So he or she often tries to do it themselves. They buy books from Nolo Press on how to do their own Eviction, they search the internet for information, or the best option, they go to the local Legal Aid society.
6. Sometimes they find out their tenant has been there first, and that creates a conflict for Legal Aid. They cannot represent you both, so you are out of luck.
7. The next thing that happens is you file a Complaint for Unlawful Detainer. This has many of the rules like any other lawsuit, except that it is a “Summary proceeding”, meaning that it all happens very fast. It’s like a lawsuit speeded up.
8. Your complaint, which is based on your notice, must be absolutely perfect. There are a thousand nitpicky little rules that can frustrate you and make your complaint invalid. If your tenant lawyers up, they will first attack the notice. It is usually at this point that landlords realize they are in over their head.
9. Your complaint should be personally served on the tenant. At that point, they have five days to “answer” (that is a technical term for a type of pleading) the complaint. After that, you can take their default judgment and get a writ of possession. You take that to the Sheriff, who will evict your tenant in a few weeks.
10. In other words, even with an attorney your client will likely be in their for at least another month. If they lawyer up, they can be in their for months and this can turn into a giant black hole which your money is going down.
11. My legal advice here? Don’t do it yourself and don’t try to be cheap. Landlords do a surprisingly good job of helping themselves, but when things go bad, you need a professional.
Medical Marijuana and Eviction
In Silver City New Mexico, a medical marijuana patient has been served with a three-day notice to quit because of her possession of medical Marijuana. While medical marijuana is legal in the state of New Mexico (and California) federal law still makes it illegal.
Domestic Violence and Unlawful Detainers
New legislation allows landlords wider latitude in evicting perpetrators of domestic violence but also prevents landlords from recovering against tenants who leave as a result of domestic violence.
