Now that the 2015-16 Legislative session has come to an end, Gov. Jerry Brown must decide the fate of nearly 800 bills.
And thanks largely to CAA’s advocacy work, rental housing owners and managers don’t need to worry.
Over the recently completed two-year session, the California Apartment Association has defeated numerous bad bills.
In the 2015-16 legislative session, CAA lobbied on 126 housing-related bills, including the following problematic legislation — all of which died before the session closed Wednesday, Aug. 31:
Rent control
AB 697 (Chu, San Jose) would have created a pilot project in specified counties to halt rent increases for qualifying seniors.
AB 1229 (Campos, San Jose) attempted to create a pilot project to permit a senior citizen in a rent-controlled property to apply to the local agency (e.g., rent control board) for a 12-month exemption from rent increases.
AB 2502 (Mullin, San Jose) attempted to give authority to a local government to mandate that a percentage of new development be affordable to low-income individuals and families. It proposed to overturn provisions of Costa Hawkins that were preserved through the Appellate Court decision in Palmer vs. City of Los Angeles.
Section 8 discrimination
SB 1053 (Leno, San Francisco) would have prohibited rental property owners from refusing to accept a tenant because the tenant had a Section 8 voucher.
Ellis Act – Removing Units from the Rental Market
SB 364 (Leno, San Francisco) would have prohibited a rental property owner from removing rental units from the market unless the owner had owned the property for five years or more.
SB 1267 (Allen, Santa Monica) would have required rental property owners who elected to go out of the rental housing business to provide a one-year notice to families with school-age children who had lived in the rental home for at least one year prior to the notice of termination.
Payment & Termination of Tenancy
SB 1267 (Allen, Santa Monica) In addition to including the Ellis Act provisions as outlined above, this bill proposed to give tenants the option to pay their rent by mail in all cases even if they lived at the property and there was a drop box or an office where the tenant could leave the rent; the bill provided that it was “conclusively presumed” that the rent has been made by the tenant at the time of mailing so long as the tenant can show proof of mailing.
The bill also required the owner — when serving a three-day notice to pay rent or quit — to serve all of the subtenants as well as the tenant.
Single-family rental registration & investments
AB 2282 (Calderon, Whittier) proposed to require single-family rental homeowners to register their units with the State Department of Business Oversight. The bill was later amended to require publicly traded companies (REITs) that own more than 100 single family homes to register with the State Department of Business Oversight.
AB 2283 (Calderon, Whittier) would have prohibited the Teachers’ Retirement Board and the Board of Administration of the Public Employees’ Retirement System from investing in publicly traded companies that had purchased single-family homes and were using them as rentals.
Criminal background checks
AB 396 (Jones-Sawyer, Los Angeles) would have prohibited landlords from using criminal background checks when screening prospective tenants.
Water conservation
AB 723 (Rendon, Lakewood) proposed to require that a rental agreement for a single-family rental or apartment unit to include a written disclosure stating the property owner’s responsibility to replace all noncompliant plumbing fixtures with water-conserving plumbing fixtures (as required by state law) and whether they had done so.
SB 789 (Wiecowski, Fremont) would have authorized a local public entity to impose an excise tax of up to 300 percent on an excessive user of water.
No arbitration agreements
AB 2667 (Thurmond, Richmond) would have prohibited arbitration agreements in place of an individual’s right to bring a lawsuit.
Taxes and fees
SB 8 (Hertzberg, Van Nuys) proposed to expand the state’s retail sales tax to “services,” which would have included property management, accounting firms, and other types of businesses.
SB 684 (Hancock, Berkeley) would have imposed a corporate tax rate ranging from 7 percent to 13 percent, based on the difference between the salary paid to the chief executive officer or highest paid employee compared to the median compensation of all employees in the company. The greater the difference, the higher the tax.
SCA 5 (Hancock, Berkeley) sought to amend the state constitution to allow for regular reassessments of commercial and industrial property to their fair market value, starting with the 2018-19 fiscal year.
Homelessness
SB 608 & SB 876 (Liu, Los Angeles) intended to grant rights to homeless individuals to rest in “public places,” which included sidewalks in front of private buildings. The definition of “homeless persons” included individuals and members of families who are sharing the housing of other persons due to a lack of housing, economic hardship, or similar reason.