The temporary moratorium on the eviction of tenants in San Francisco for the non-payment of rent from April through July, if formally documented as being due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has effectively been made permanent by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors.
While the ordinance does not forgive any past due rents, nor prohibit a landlord from seeking to collect once the moratorium period has ended, it does remove the threat of eviction due to unpaid rents accumulated during the pandemic and prohibits the charging of any associated late fees and/or interest.
At the same time, the legislation establishes the framework for a relief fund to compensate (qualified) landlords who are unable to collect.
And having been extended through the end of August last month, Mayor London Breed has inked a new executive order extending the moratorium period for another month through September 30, 2020.
Does anyone have a comprehensive understanding of this situation? This is the SF order, there is a CA order, and then there is a court decision a few week back, and then there is 6 months grace period after the order ends…. Can anyone piece all these together?
Local rules dominate unless overturned in court. CA decision does not matter unless the SF rule is challenged and loses in court.
And while the ruling has been appealed, an industry challenge of the local ordinance was denied.
Nationwide rules now as well. My bet is that these rules will morph into permanent and the whole theory of housing as an investment rather than human right will shift in the future.
After all, the FED can simply bailout those at the top of the pyramid (mainly mortgage security bag-holders) with the push of a button…
How are counties and states going to get their much needed taxes if nobody is paying rent or mortgages… and hence, property taxes?
In CA at least, smallholders liquidate to folks who can Ellis?
The county can foreclose on your property if taxes go unpaid for long enough.
Easy. They are going to sell municipal bonds…to the Federal Reserve, at near 0% rates. I predict a California muni bond crisis, followed by FED bailout, and modern money theory welfare funding printed directly to the states
“What ever it takes”
Personally, I dont know of any landlord who has tenants that stop paying rent, but I do know of quite a few that have vacancies that can’t be filled now…
“I do know of quite a few that have vacancies that can’t be filled now…”
Have they tried lowering their rents?
Sold that rental property just in time. This pandemic could drag out another year or two. When does this end?
It appears that in some cases that the moratorium could extend for 2 months after the order expires, ie the end of November. Does a moratorium prohibit even giving a notice, is preparing and serving a notice fiction considered “attempts to recover possession”?
Does this mean that it is in the interest of the landlord to serve a three day notice to pay or quit prior to the order terminating while making sure that the effective date of the notice falls prior to the order termination? In this way the landlord doesn’t fall within that two month window extending the moratorium. EG landlord serves after the order expires at Oct 1st and then is prohibited from any further action for the following two months.
This all presupposes that serving a notice is not considered an attempt to regain possession. Could this be satisfied by stating in the notice that there is no attempt to regain possession as long as the moratorium is effective. In this way, if the tenant fails to pay pursuant to a 3-day pay or quit tenancy would be effectively terminated although any further action for eviction would be stayed pursuant to the moratorium.
However, action to collect funds would not be stayed. In a default situation, could the landlord file bifurcated money judgment. Then, when the moratorium is no longer effective, file for possession judgment?
Yet another reason why I owner-occupy in SF, and all my rental property is out of state.
I hope the tenants enjoy life under their new landlord, once the building is foreclosed. A kindly Russian gangster, money laundering creep, or vulture fund, perhaps? They should stop paying for their car, too, so as to enjoy walking.
Seriously, evictions are a terrible thing to happen to someone hit by this unforeseen calamity. Mooches who can afford to pay rent but refuse to can be flushed out by lawsuits or the Franchise Tax Board.
Without including some forbearance for landlords, things just get worse. How about this: grant defaulted building owners a two year option to repurchase their foreclosed property 105% for the amount of their mortgage debt, or just back interest, might be a fair solution. Banks would take a small hit, but not a huge one. The last round of bank failures was not fun for anybody. Owners would still have an incentive to maintain and insure their property. Since the property value will have decreased, they can have Prop 13 taxes temporarily reduced, if market value is lower than their Prop 13 basis.
The Real Estate owners need to get ahead of this. Otherwise, we are headed to Peskin Paradise.
Are you joking? Most of the landlords in SF have been milking Prop 13 for so long that their market value can’t possibly drop below their Prop 13 basis.