San Francisco Apartment Association

Sacramento Report

CAA Efforts Result in Legislative Success

by Francisco Silva

The stroke of midnight on September 9 signaled the end of the legislative session, bringing to a close another stellar season for the California Apartment Association (CAA). CAA's legislative team is delighted to report success in stopping all the legislation this year that would have hurt the rental-housing industry. CAA also worked with legislators to fix proposed bills that would have negatively impacted the rental industry and supported legislation that will positively impact the industry and its customers. A sampling of CAA's victories is summarized below. Watch for a full year-end report in the association's Perspective Magazine and on www.caanet.org.

Most notably, CAA successfully stopped Senate Bill 51, which would have extended the 60-day notice for termination law. With the Assembly legislative session coming to an end, proponents of SB 51 failed to garner enough votes to keep the law on the books. CAA opposed the bill and with the California Association of Realtors, worked into the final evening of the session to stop its passage. The bill was taken up on the Assembly floor on three separate occasions in hopes of getting the necessary votes; it failed each time. CAA members and staff were successful in demonstrating that the overbroad 60-day-notice law restricts owners' ability to manage rental communities and to protect good tenants from problem tenants who harass, threaten or otherwise disrupt the living environment of their neighbors.

As a result of the bill's failure on the floor, the 60-day-termination provisions are repealed as of January 1, 2006. The law will then revert back to its pre-existing state, wherein a termination of a tenancy will require a minimum 30-day notice to the tenant. The change in the law will require owners and managers to amend their month-to-month rental agreements to make sure that any agreements executed from this point forward are consistent with the new law. CAA's Forms Committee will amend the association's rental agreement and make it available on the CAA Web site.

Assemblymember Jerome Horton's (D-Inglewood) AB 769 passed on the Assembly floor with 77 aye votes and now awaits the governor's signature. CAA sponsored and supported the rental-management education bill, which establishes education requirements for slumlords. The bill received strong bipartisan support and accolades for its intent to educate and reform the bad apples within the rental-housing industry. If signed into law, this bill will support the ongoing efforts by CAA's local chapters and divisions to work with local housing-enforcement agencies in addressing the problems caused by slumlords.

SB 575, another CAA-sponsored bill, passed with strong bipartisan support. If signed into law, this bill would help to ensure that California has a healthy and well-balanced housing market. CAA teamed up with affordable-housing proponents in order to pass this legislation, which makes it easier to develop affordable multifamily housing. The bill clarifies the so-called anti-NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) law and makes it more difficult for NIMBY protestors to manipulate the loopholes in the law in order to unfairly stop the development of multifamily housing. For instance, the bill strengthens the enforceability of the law by creating an expedited hearing and approval process, granting courts the authority to vacate erroneous actions by local agencies and allowing courts to impose fines where the local agency violates the law in bad faith. SB 575 also creates incentives to encourage local governments to zone land for multifamily housing and to create zones with reasonable densities.

CAA staff worked with California Attorney General Bill Lockyer during the legislative session to fix a flaw in sex-offender bill AB 1323, which he sponsored. In light of the new Megan's Law Web site, the bill proposed (among other things) to update the Megan's Law disclosure requirement, which said that rental-property owners and real-estate brokers must make specified disclosures within their leases and their sales documents, respectively. However, the bill as initially written would not have given sufficient time to rental-property owners and real-estate brokers to implement the proposed changes to their written forms. CAA representatives worked with Assemblymember Juan Vargas (D-San Diego) and the Attorney General in order to create a six-month delay time for implementation of the modified lease-disclosure requirement, giving the industry sufficient time to comply. The CAA Forms Committee will update CAA lease agreements in order to make them consistent with AB 1323 if, and when, the bill is signed by the governor.

Assemblymember Rick Keene (R-Chico) worked diligently with CAA representatives to ensure that his methamphetamine-lab bill, AB 1078, appropriately addressed issues that affect residential-rental properties. Accordingly, AB 1078 creates statewide assessment and clean-up standards and procedures that will help provide owners fair and expeditious means of cleaning a property that has been contaminated by a meth lab. The bill also ensures that a property is not permanently marked as contaminated, or as substandard housing, if the owner cleans the property as specified. At the same time, the bill mandates that prospective purchasers and tenants are protected from, and informed about, properties that have not been fully cleaned. Even the most diligent and ethical of owners can find themselves faced with tenant-operated meth labs, so this bill will help make sure their properties remain marketable.

In addition to the aforementioned, CAA and its members successfully lobbied for many other bills, most of which have been highlighted in previous RHA articles or CAA legislative alerts. The results are impressive. Here is a rehashing of some of the efforts that inspired headlines in our previous reports:

  •  provisions requiring extensive disclosure by rental-property buyers and sellers removed from SB 735;
  • SB 540, the resident political-sign legislation, stopped in its tracks after CAA opposed onerous provisions;
  • legislation (AB 781) stopped that would have interfered with an owner's right to leave the rental-housing business;
  • legislation (AB 1574) stopped that would have taken money from the state and given it to Sacramento in order to create a new housing-enforcement agency;
  • CAA successfully lobbied to remove on-site recycling provisions from legislation; and
  • a coalition of business interests stopped an end-run around Proposition 64, the Stop Shakedown Lawsuits Initiative.

With your help, CAA was able to achieve all the victories discussed above and many others. Your discussions with legislators as well as your letters, telephone calls, e-mails and faxes to them truly made a difference. CAA's e-mailed Legislative Briefings and Alerts will keep you informed of the latest legislative issues and provide you with information regarding how you can help with respect to specific bills. If you are not receiving it, please call the association's member-services department to update your e-mail address.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of SFAA or the San Francisco Apartment Magazine. Francisco Silva is the vice president and counsel of legislative affairs for CAA. Copyright © 2005 by the San Francisco Apartment Magazine. All rights reserved.