The Sacramento Update: We’ve Got Some Good News for a Change!

This is the busiest time of the state’s legislative session. The bulk of the work to consider new legislation will be done during the months of April and May. The Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles Sacramento-based lobbying team has had numerous meetings with legislators along with our affiliated apartment associations in Sacramento.

Once again, while we are in the midst of Senate Bill 91 and many local eviction moratoria, restrictions prohibiting rent increases, an environment of challenging rent collections, and now finally moving into long overdue rental assistance programs, rental property owners are faced with even more punitive proposed bills that only further discourage housing providers from staying in business.

One of the most threatening proposed bills for our members was Assembly Bill 854 by freshman Assembly Member Alex Lee. Once again, this bill attempts to make the Ellis Act, already complicated, even more out of reach for owners who simply need the flexibility to exit the rental housing business for any number of reasons. Among other things the proposed bill would prohibit a property owner from filing a notice to withdraw rental accommodations if all the owners have been owners of record have not owned the rental property for at least 5 consecutive years. It would also prohibit the notice to withdraw rental accommodations when the property owner acquired the property within 10 years after providing notice of an intent to withdraw rental accommodations at a separate property. The bill would impose those overly stringent requirements regardless of circumstance or situation, even if a property owner has been losing money.

Assembly Bill 854 was scheduled for hearing on April 15th by the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee. Our lobbying team in Sacramento had mobilized to ensure legislators were aware of opposition to the bill and understood the ramifications if they supported the legislation. Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles members also weighed-in with calls and emails to members of the Committee. As a result of our joint efforts, late on the evening of April 14th, we learned that the bill had been removed from the Committee’s agenda and that it would no longer meet established legislative deadlines to be considered for this year. Crisis averted for now!

In that same hearing, Assembly Bill 1188 (Asm. Wicks), a bill to create an onerous state rental registry requiring public disclosure of massive amounts of information about your properties and financial information was withheld from hearing for further amendment. We are hopeful that this will sound the death knell for this unwarranted intrusion on privacy, and we will be monitoring for further developments on this proposed bill very closely.

In addition, a number of other bills of initial concern will not be considered this year – they are Assembly Bill 15 and Assembly Bill 1241. Assembly Bill 15 would have extended the definition of “COVID-19 rental debt” as unpaid rent or any other unpaid financial obligation of a tenant that came due between March 1, 2020, and December 31, 2021 irrespective of whether a tenant had experienced COVID-19 financial related distress. Assembly Bill 1241 sought to limit the ability of an owner to inquire about previous criminal history of a rental applicant similar to a number of prior bills proposed over the last several years. We had made several attempts to negotiate with the bill’s author and sponsors but were unable to reach any type of compromise.

The combination of member outreach in response to Red Alerts and the expertise of our Sacramento lobbying team, has continued to deliver many successful outcomes for our members and owners of rental property. We will continue the challenging task of tracking and fighting back against harmful proposed legislation coming out of Sacramento that may be harmful to rental property owners. It is imperative that our members continue to be involved and provide their support in response to Red Alerts – along with our professional lobbying team, our members help to form a terrific combination that helps us to produce some definite wins.

We also urge you to contribute to the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles Political Action Committees (PACs) so we can support legislators who are philosophically aligned with the rights of housing providers and that are sympathetic to rental property owner issues. There is still a lot of time left in this session and plenty of work left to do.