The Other Side
by J. Wallace Oman
As a tenant lawyer, I frequently hear my clients complain about their landlords. That’s no surprise. But it does surprise me how often I see landlords showing disrespect for and to their tenants, disrespect which appears entirely unnecessary. Needless to say, this disrespect and discourtesy often engenders its own natural reaction: the tenants become irritated, bitter and even antagonistic toward their landlords. They become unwilling to cut their landlords any slack or to forgive their landlords when the landlords make honest mistakes.
Listed below are a few of the most common ways that landlords show disrespect to their tenants. Perhaps you already know them, but this article could provide a real education for those who don’t. I won’t be covering situations where malicious landlords abuse tenants or malicious tenants abuse landlords, e.g. where landlords are trying to drive out long-time rent controlled tenants to sell empty buildings at higher prices, or where tenants are attempting to set up their landlords to bring claims against them for breaches of the warranty of habitability. Those extreme situations are fortunately not the majority of landlord-tenant interactions. But even within the good faith mass middle of the spectrum, landlords often make “human intelligence” mistakes that cause serious problems down the road for them and their tenants.
Problem 1: Landlord or “Lord of the Land”
Landlords often have the attitude that, “It’s my property and I can do anything I want with it.” I have noticed that some landlords who come to San Francisco from other parts of the state or country or world–where tenants have fewer rights–have this attitude. This attitude also is unfortunately promoted by some property managers, landlord attorneys and real-estate agents–both brokers and sales agents.
But in California and in San Francisco, a residential rental agreement gives the right of exclusive possession to the tenant, subject to certain “carve-outs” created by California Civil Code 1954 and by the rental agreement itself. (As an aside, landlords who present tenants with a 10-page fine-print rental agreement with many draconian provisions and attempted carve-outs on a “take it or leave it basis” are certainly telegraphing a message of disrespect and anticipated antagonism. I understand that landlords must protect themselves from abusive tenants, but that shouldn’t enable landlords to load up their rental agreements with unconscionable provisions.)
The residential rental unit is the tenant’s home, and many tenants feel very strongly about their homes and their rights of privacy and nonintrusion, particularly when they have lived in those units for a long time. In fact, landlords want to rent to tenants who “will treat the property as well as their own.” Landlords who behave in ways that fail to recognize and respect the tenants’ strong feelings for their homes, who treat the tenants as mere stepping stones and inconveniences in the appreciation in value of the landlords’ investment income property, are asking for trouble.
Problem 2: A Conflict When Entering a Unit
The cavalier entry of the unit by the landlord is one of the most frequent complaints I hear from tenants. (See my column “The Unnecessary Conflict in Landlord Entries,” in the February 2006 issue of this magazine.) It is one thing when a tenant and a landlord are having a major dispute, e.g. an eviction lawsuit, and landlord entries become another battleground in that dispute, but I am surprised by the number of times that landlords offend and irritate their tenants when they nominally have a cooperative and harmonious relationship. I am not talking here about a trespass by the landlord, like an entry without proper notice per Civil Code 1954, or without tenant consent or true emergency. I am talking about landlord entries with notices.
It should come as no surprise that many, if not most, tenants want to be present during entries of their dwellings, whether to ensure that their personal property is protected, to observe repair work being made or any number of other reasons. I would wager that most landlord homeowners would likewise want to be present for entries into their homes by appraisers and repair people. But it is sheer folly by a landlord, and a virtually guaranteed generator of bad will, to unilaterally select an entry time and then serve a 24-hour notice on the tenant without prior discussion to attempt to arrange a mutually convenient time. It is also rude to the tenant (and legally incorrect) to declare that “normal business hours” for entry are “7 a.m. to 7 p.m. all seven days of the week” or some equally intrusive period. And it is also legally erroneous for a rental agreement to declare that a tenant’s written request for a repair “shall be deemed a tenant’s simultaneous permission for the landlord to enter the rental unit under Civil Code 1954.” Tenants feel very disrespected when landlords just announce, via posted 24-hour notice, that they are entering the unit at a specified date and time rather than attempting to work out a mutually convenient date and time for entry in advance.
Other Examples of Landlord Disrespect
Space constraints prevent a full description of all the other ways that landlords create bad relationships with their tenants by disrespecting them, but there are a few more I regularly hear.
Performing inadequate repairs, either by doing the work themselves or by utilizing incompetent workers and defective materials in a misguided attempt to save money, can cause many problems with tenants. So can listing a for-sale building with a real-estate broker who mistreats the tenants (see comments above about entries). Real-estate brokers and their sales agents often make numerous assuring promises to tenants; they say they will always accompany prospective purchasers when they enter the unit, only to blithely break those promises and subject the tenants to the theft of their personal property (for which the landlords may well be blamed). To deal with one part of this problem, I always advise my clients to refuse to allow lockboxes to be used to enter their dwellings because tenants are always entitled to identify the persons who will be entering their dwellings.
When landlords occupy the same building as their tenants, they can aggravate those tenants by failing to respect the tenants’ boundaries and failing to leave the tenants alone. Some examples include closely and obviously scrutinizing everything the tenants do, complaining constantly about certain behavior and attempting to become friends with the tenants (see further comments on this subject below). In this shared building situation, it is especially important that the rental agreement have very clear and fair rules for the use of common areas.
Making unilateral changes to the month-to-month rental agreement by 30-day notice under Civil Code 827 to impose some new obligation or prohibition on the tenant is another good way to upset tenants. When a landlord does that, it often triggers major conflict with the tenant, which is adjudicated if not ultimately resolved by the San Francisco Rent Board applying Rent Board Regulation 12.20.
In a multiunit building, landlords should be wary of serving a three-day notice for nonpayment of rent (or other tenant fault) by posting the notice on the front door of the unit for all to see. Some property managers encourage landlords to serve a three-day notice for any late rent, regardless of the tenant’s good rent payment history or the tenant’s particular circumstances. Posting the three-day notice in this way is tantamount to shouting to all the building that the tenant is a deadbeat, and the tenant is likely to consider it an attempt at humiliation. Although California Civil Code 1162(3) lists “affixing a copy in a conspicuous place on the property” and mailing as one of the permissible methods of service of the three-day notice, there is no reason the notice couldn’t be placed in a sealed envelope with the tenant’s name on it. Analogously, I suspect that the landlord would be very unhappy if a mortgage lender posted a notice of default on the front door of the owner’s/landlord’s building for all to see.
The majority of tenants are dutifully and timely rent-paying individuals who are just trying to work at their jobs, raise their families and live their lives. They just want prompt effective repairs of defective conditions in their rental units. As property broker and longtime SFAA officer Marc Wilson stated in his April 2007 SFAM article, “‘A Few Good Ideas”: “Your tenant is not your friend. You and your tenant have the quintessential business relationship: you provide habitable housing and your tenant pays rent.” Landlords should understand that tenants may attempt to ingratiate themselves out of a sense of self-defense, or to protect themselves from landlord irascibility or arbitrary treatment. But the landlord should not confuse a business relationship of civility with an intimate personal relationship, and the landlord should definitely not inadvertently or clumsily take actions that disrespect or embarrass the tenant. Landlords who are careful to treat their tenants with respect go a long way toward avoiding the retaliation of disrespected and insulted tenants.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of SFAA or SF Apartment Magazine. The information contained in this article is general in nature; consult the advice of an attorney for any specific problem. J. Wallace Oman is a San Francisco attorney specializing in tenant representation. Before that, for almost 20 years he was a staff attorney with the local, federally funded legal services program. He is a co-author of California Eviction Defense Manual, Second Edition (CEB California Continuing Education of the Bar 2006). He can be reached at walloman@aol.com. Copyright © 2007 by J. Wallace Oman and SF Apartment Magazine. All rights reserved.