So, the City Council adopted an eviction ordinance last night (and an urgency ordinance to boot). Did they get it right?

As I previewed in the agenda, this item was continued from last meeting. The Staff added a few tweaks to the proposed ordinance in the mean time: not only did they introduce the possibility of an urgency ordinance, they also signaled they would also recommend dropping the required relocation assistance from two months’ fair market rent to one month’s fair market rent. They also put some meat on the bones of the cost to the City: $1,150,000 of ARPA funds, with $850,000 being spent this year to fund three full-time positions and legal costs.

After some hemming and hawing they decided on going with the urgency ordinance – meaning the ordinance would go into effect immediately, rather than after a second reading and a 30-day waiting period like an ordinary ordinance – and cutting the relocation assurance to one month’s fair market rent. I’ll admit being surprised that a “pro-business” Councilmember like Don Harper originally voted to approve relocation assistance to be measured by the market rather than the tenant’s current rent, which to me seems like a violation of the spirit of the private, contractual agreement between tenant and landlord, but he probably saw the writing on the wall.

As for performance, I’d give them a solid B-. Pulling forward the provisions of SB 567 was the only thing to do practically speaking. The Staff was quick to emphasize that the evictions reported to them spiked since the first discussion of the ordinance in October. I would speculate some of that spike may have been due to landlords being spooked that the City would adopt an even toothier ordinance, so some of them may have rushed to get under-market or problematic tenants out before the new rules went into effect. So additional discussion would simply exacerbate the problem the Council itself may have partially created.

As for the notice and the relocation assistance, it could have been a lot worse. The notice produced by Staff is fairly bare bones and setting relocation assistance at one month’s fair market rent rather than current rent (as SB 567 requires) is obnoxious but certainly not as punitive as other ordinances adopted by neighboring cities.

The hiring of additional staff looks a little more mischievous. One wonders if we would have gotten an ordinance like this at all if it wasn’t for the fact we employ Nate Robbins as our “Neighborhood Improvement Manager”, who was more muted this meeting after straying a bit into advocate territory in terms of tone last time around. And now we have even more staff with jobs tied to continued expansion of the City’s services in this area. The rents aren’t going to get any lower any time soon, so I wonder if we will see more activity in this area, especially as the “free” ARPA funds start to run out.

Come April 2024 the rest of California will be subject to similar rules, and so the long run success or failure of the policy will likely be tied to the logic of SB 567 itself and not this ordinance. Too bad SB 567 is probably a bad idea, and a bad idea for the housing market in particular. Oh well.