New year with new laws. Landlord-Tenant Edition

Every new year usually brings about new laws and regulations. Let's explore some of these in Landlord-Tenant land.

• In San Francisco, there are new eviction requirements. Mostly, any notice to terminate sent to the tenant must include a Notice specifically created by the Rent Board under Section 37.9(c), which gives tenants certain information in six different languages. Also, for no-fault evictions, all notices must include what the lawful rent is at the time the notice was issued.
• Also, in San Francisco, it is now more difficult to eviction a tenant for nuisance and having additional occupants. For nuisance, it must now be "severe, continuing or recurring in nature", which raises the bar for the landlord's burden. For additional occupants, even if the lease has hard limits, tenants may attempt to go around those limits under a procedure to request adding in the additional occupants. This procedure requires the landlord to approve or deny the request within a limited number of days. Further, any denial must be reasonable.  However, the law still retains some maximum occupancy limits based on the number of bedrooms, which prevents a situation where 10 people are sharing a small studio. The new law also gives the tenant 10-days to cure any breaches of any anti-assignment or subletting clause in the lease.

Overall, as almost always, these new laws do make evicting tenants more and more difficult, as these laws are designed to provide tenants more protections and rights. As good of an intention as these laws may be, sometimes, a problematic tenant needs to go. If you or someone you know has a problematic tenant, feel free to give this office a call for a free consultation at 415-886-7103.