Another ridiculous attempt to solve a problem. The problem isn't landlords, it isn't tenants. The problem is too much industry, too much building, too fast with insufficient environmental impact studies.

While the City Council looks at this ridiculous mediation stuff, there are plans to develope the open space near Shoreline, to make yet another Google complex... No matter how this development is done, it will decrease our oxygen, bring more short term workers to an already overpopulated area, and even if some housing us included in this development, it will be expensive, new housing, and not enough for the added needs. All these factors will continue to increase housing costs and housing shortages, while increasing transiency, air pollution, traffic.


City Coucil, WAKE UP!

Once again, this time at last night"s April 19 City Council meeting, I warned the City Council about preemptive evictions - about landlord that may well evict existing tenants and simply get new ones paying much higher rent - instead of dealing with the prospect that existing tenants (given a rent increase over 7.2%/year) will demand mediation. Once again, I explained why the current language of the proposed ordinance does NOT outlaw such preemptive evictions and how to fix it. Every law that restricts action based on an ill-motive by the actor (here, a landlord) potentially involves discerning and proving the ill-motive. This is true not only of the currently proposed limitation on "retaliation" (section 43.30) but every instance of unlawful discrimination, I explained. If a new landlord, for example, were to notice that a tenant is black, jewish or gay and issue a notice terminating the tenancy (otherwise in accordance with any lease and laws), the burden would be on the tenant to discern the ill-motive and prove it in a lawsuit (such as in an eviction case filed by the landlord after the tenant declines to simply leave). But to have a basis for not leaving and a defense to an eviction case (and to thereby discourage even the attempt to simply clear out existing tenants), there must be a LAW that makes the motive unlawful. If there is no such law, there can be no legal basis to sue or defend against a lawsuit. If there is no law against preemptive evictions, there will be no good reason that "bad" landlords will not evict existing tenants and get grateful new ones. I told the City Council (again last night) that I was not wedded to the phrase I had proposed as a fix. But some language is needed to outlaw preemptive evictions. For anyone interested, the current language would outlaw adverse action by a landlord if taken "because of the Tenant's exercise of the Tenant's rights pursuant to" the ordinance. A tenant who has not exercised any of the "Tenant's rights" under the ordinance would not be protected from any adverse action by the landlord. The tenant's rights under the ordinance consist of the right to require mediation of disputes - including a rent increase of over 7.2%/year. Unless a tenant has demanded mediation of some dispute, the landlord could not credibly be accused of retaliating "because of the exercise" of any - let alone all - of the "Tenant's rights" under the ordinance. The matter can be fixed by extending the ban on adverse action by the landlord motivated by ("because of") not just the actual "exercise of" rights but the prospect the the tenant will exercise "any" rights under the ordinance - such as the right to demand mediation of a rent increade of over 7.2%. I also told the City Council last night that although a tenant could demand mediation (i.e. discussion with a mediator) of an eviction notice under the proposed ordinance, service of the eviction notice would not have violated the law and would not provide a legal defense in an eviction lawsuit unless service on the notice had been "because of the exercise" of a right (or all "Tenant's rights") under the ordinance. All of this may seem technical to non-lawyers. I wanted to at least be sure none of the four councilmembers who approved the ordinance on March 15 (Councilmembers Kasperzak, Clark, McAlister and Showalter) misunderstands the matter and votes mistakenly on April 26 to adopt the mediation ordinance as written. All four of these councilmembers were endorsed as candidates by landlord advocacy groups. Specifically, three listed on their own campaign websites the endorsement of the "Mountain View Housing Council" and Clark listed on his campaign website the endorsement of the "Tri-County Apartment Association" (a division of the California Apartment Association). Landlords knew these were landlord advocacy groups but most (other) voters probably had no clue. Landlord advocacy groups do not make a habit of endorsing candidates who do not support their special interests. So, the reasonable suspicion here is that these four councilmembers are determined to enact a mediation ordinance with a giant loophole of allowing (by not outlawing) preemptive evictions. We shall soon see.

Gary, City Attorney Jannie Quinn is on record in this article, opining "(I) do not believe it is appropriate to place in the retaliation provision, nor is it practical in terms of its effect."

The situation you're describing comes across to some of us laymen as two attorneys expressing differing assessments of a legal issue (not an uncommon situation!) Quinn happens to be the public official in this case.

You can float rhetoric about Council members beholden to "landlord advocacy groups" (although I recall that those groups were among numerous, diverse endorsements each candidate collected when campaigning -- thus equipping any potential critic with a portfolio of groups to select from opportunistically, and thus accuse a given Council member of being in that group's pocket). Yey, unless and until you and Quinn can get together and explicitly and publicly argue out this point of interpretation, it will continue to come down, for many of us, to whose legal view do we perceive as the most insightful and responsible in this case.

The article does state that the City Attorney has apparently given (bad) legal advice to Counoilmembers. However, the City Attorney is not disclosing anything she wrote and deliberating says nothing on the subject at Council meetings. That is not the usual practice. The same City Attorney presented a right-to-lease ordinance mostly borrowed from Palo Alto adopted by the Council in November. She then brought it back for amendments on March 15 because it was not clear as written. I correctly reported speaking to the City Attorney about the nediation ordinance. As I reported, the City Attorney did not even suggest in that conversation that her language was sufficient to forestall preemptive evictions. On the contrary, she told me that she did not know if the City Council (majority) would want to go that far. But thanks for asking.

Correction: deliberately. I admit when I make a mistake.

By the way and in response to another issue raised by the man or woman posting as "common sense," my point about the endorsements by landlord advocacy groups is NOT that Councilmembers are powerless to buck those groups but that Councilmembers were already screened and endorsed on the basis that they (appeared to) agree with the political agenda of the groups in maintaining the perogative of landlords to get or oust tenants and to set rents freely. In the future (such as next fall), voters will likely learn about those groups and what campaign signs posted in common areas at apartment complexes tend to say about the candidates being so promoted. And voters will probably be on the look-out for mailers from groups with no clear connection to Mountain View. Candidates whose faces mysteriously appear on such mailers should expect a voter backlash in 2016.

Continuing the conversation - if only with myself - and in response to the idea that barring adverse action against tenants because they may exercise rights under the landlord-tenant mediation ordinance should not be in a section labeled "RETALIATION," I suggest the four councilmembers who have supported the ordinance simply change the label to "ADDITIONAL TENANT PROTECTION" or other title they prefer. Moreover, any of the four councilmembers who does not like the word "prospective" I suggested for section 43.30 could use another word or words. For example, the section could ban adverse action by the landlord "because of the Tenant's exercise of any of the Tenant's rights under this ordinance or because of the prospect that the Tenant will exercise any of the Tenant's rights under this ordinance." There is no real dispute that, as written, the proposed ordinance, would permit and encourage preemptive evictions. No councilmember should vote for the ordinance as currently written. I am passing this post along to the City Council and City Attorney this morning (April 21) so that it might be read sometime before next Tuesday evening, April 26, when adoption of the ordinance on so-called "second reading" is expected to be on the agenda.

At last night's (April 26) meeting, the City Council voted, as expected, 4-3 to adopt the landlord-tenant mediation ordinance which will get tenants nothing but EVICTED. The landlord-endorsed City Council (majority) continued to refuse to even place on the agenda consideration of any amendment to the ordinance that would outlaw preemptive evictions. The four that voted for the worse-than-nothing ordinance were, once again, Michael Kasperzak, Pat Showalter, Chris Clark and John McAlister. The last two have announced that they plan to run for second terms on the City Council in the November election. In my view, no one should vote for them - not because they will do nothing for tenants but because they have proven to be disingenuous polticians.