Alameda County Board of Supervisors
SAN FRANCISCO - A group of Alameda County rental home owners and the association representing landlords throughout California are fighting to keep alive their claims the county violated their constitutional property rights by keeping an unprecedented Covid pandemic evictions ban in place long after any health emergency had ended, illegally allowing tenants to live rent free for three years and costing the owners hundreds of thousands of dollars each.
On July 14, attorneys for the California Apartments Association and a group of individual rental property owners filed their latest brief in San Francisco federal court, responding to the attempt by Alameda County to dismiss their lawsuit.
In the filing, the landlords urged U.S. District Judge Laurel Beeler to reject the county's contention that a three-year long "moratorium" on nearly all evictions, for any reason, amounted to "reasonable expectations" and should simply be chalked up to the cost of doing business for the owners of apartments, condominiums and other rental homes.
"Just as 'reasonable expectations' do not include 'starry-eyed hope of winning the jackpot,' neither do they encompass the remote possibility that a landlord may be deprived of rent altogether, without any realistic remedy, and in particular that such a deprivation will last three full years," the landlords and CAA wrote in their brief.
The CAA and the landlords filed suit against Alameda County in federal court in 2022, while Alameda County was still enforcing its near total ban on residential tenant evictions.
That ban had begun in March 2020, instituted at the same time the state of California and counties throughout the Golden State imposed moratoriums of their own, as recommended at the time by the federal Centers for Disease Control.
In 2020, public health officials justified the eviction bans by claiming that forcing people to move during a time of declared pandemic would worsen the spread of the virus.
The landlords, however, noted that Alameda County's evictions ban was more severe than those imposed elsewhere, offering virtually no exceptions so long as the tenant claimed the pandemic had rendered them unable to pay their rent.
But worse, the landlords noted, the Alameda County ban continued long after the U.S. Supreme Court had declared the CDC could no longer justify recommending evictions "moratoriums," long after the state of California had ended the state moratorium, and long after the pandemic itself had ended and society and the economy had largely returned to normal.
During the eviction moratorium, landlords were forbidden from attempting to collect unpaid rent, but still were required to honor all of their obligations as property owners, including maintenance and upkeep, property taxes, mortgage loan payments and other costs, large and small.
Landlords said this left owners in the impossible position of having to cash in other investments, including retirement accounts, to pay for their property, while receiving not a cent in income from many tenants while the moratorium remained in place.
Alameda County ended the eviction moratorium on April 29, 2023.
However, the eviction ban ordinance had all but blocked landlords from pursuing delinquent tenants for back rent or using tenants' refusal to pay any rent at all during the moratorium against the tenant in eviction proceedings.
So, it was at least months after the moratorium ended that some landlords in Alameda County could evict non-paying tenants and recover their property.
And, when they did, the landlords said, they often discovered tenants had inflicted significant damage on the property, costing property owners even more for repairs and mitigation.
In their lawsuit, the landords and CAA said the extended moratorium in Alameda County amounted to an unconstitutional taking of their property by the local government. While the county never physically seized their property, the owners said the moratorium carried the same effect as an actual taking.
The individual landords - none of whom were large corporate property portfolio managers - said their losses from the three year evictions ban period amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars each, including lost equity from devalued property, lost rent and cost of repairs, among other expenses.
But further, they said, the eviction ban even deprived them of the realistic ability to sell the property during those three years.
"... 'Even though the owner may retain the bare legal right to dispose of the occupied spaceby transfer or sale,' the extended, indefinite occupation of that space by a non-paying holdover who cannot be evicted for failing to pay rent 'will ordinarily empty the right of any value, since the purchaser will also be unable to make any use of the property,' —which the (lawsuit) alleges did, in fact, happen here," the landlords said.
"In short, the Moratorium impaired every strand in the owners’ bundle of property rights."
In response, Alameda County has sought to dismiss the lawsuit, saying the landlords can't back their claims that the county, through its moratorium ordinance, robbed them of their property rights.
Among other defenses, the county has argued the landlords need to show the moratorium stripped out at least half of their properties' actual market value. Further, the county asserted that such moratoriums in the name of public health, denying property owners the right to collect rent for years, should be considered by the court to be just a "reasonable" risk of entering into the business of renting homes.
Judge Beeler has not yet ruled on Alameda County's motion to dismiss.
The landlords and CAA are represented in the action by attorneys Christopher E. Skinnell and Hilary J. Gibson, of the firm of Nielsen Merksamer, of San Rafael.
