Who Cares About the CARES Act?

With the COVID pandemic in the past, and no new pandemic announced yet, who would be caring today about the “CARES” Act (Pub. L. No. 116-136, 134 Stat. 281 (2020)? I am talking about one of its remaining requirements, the length of an eviction notice, mandated to be at least 30 days for the “covered” properties. Turns out, the tenants, the landlords, and the practitioners care about this issue a lot, on both sides of the docket. Has it expired already or not? The quest to find the answer continues.

SVF Grosvenor Del Rey Corp.: to whom thy payment is made

A landlord who indicates in a pay-or-quit notice that the payment would be acceptable by one of several methods, must insert the full scope of identification for each of the indicated means of payment, even if it sounds repetitive or counter-intuitive. And that identification now means the person to whom the payment is being delivered, not just the person to whom the payment is made. That is the core meaning of the decision in SVF Grosvenor Del Rey Corp. v. Schwarz, No. 25APLC00345, that was published on May 27, 2026. A three-day notice to pay rent or quit that offers a tenant to pay by mail must state the name, telephone number, and address of the person to whom the rent is to be sent, likewise for a personal delivery, even if it is the same person. An incomplete description in one of the methods would sink the entire notice, even if the other methods were flawlessly described, and even if the missing information on the mailing delivery would be a copy of what was indicated for an in-person payment.

Colonial Manor: what to know about the tenant’s wife

Landlord’s duties in drafting an eviction notice and the scope of the burden of proof in the consequent eviction lawsuit just got enlarged by the decision handed down from the Appellate Division of the Los Angeles Superior Court. The case is Colonial Manor, Inc. v. Reyes, No. 24APLC00316, as modified May 19, 2026 (modified opinion PDF). The landlord now has to account for a tenant’s spouse, to see if he or she should be treated as an original tenant, even if the spouse moved in years later.

Tenant Relief Act of 2020 - Forms

The Tenant Relief Act of 2020 has passed into law, and its full text is available here. It is rather a lengthy document, because it amends and adds quite a few statutes. A myriad of articles is written on this new law, and I am only adding mine to cover two practical areas of the subject: the forms and the quirky part in the due-date language, regarding the landlord's obligation to give notice.

Landlord's duty to update contact information - CC § 1962(c) interpreted by the court

In DLI Properties v. Hill, (Los Angeles App. Dep't Super. Ct., Sept. 17, 2018, No. BV 032016, 2018 WL 6192245) the court addressed the recently added sub-division (c) to Civil Code Section 1962, which provides that the landlord is barred from evicting a tenant for non-payment of rent during the period such landlord failed to inform the tenant about a change in the contact information.

This may apply in a rent-controlled jurisdiction, such as San Francisco, where the local municipal ordinance also contains requirements for the owners to inform about the changes.

Book update - ver. 2.8

I had a chance to update the book to include latest changes across the topics (and as usual, weeding out any typos I could find). There is also a brand-new chapter added - eviction notices under 37.9(a)(9), for the sale following a condo-conversion.

The links to both the paper and e-book versions remain the same, just check on the version No. before downloading, it shall show «2.8»

If you happened to purchase versions 2.6 or 2.7 this year, let me know, I will be glad to supply you with the paper copy of 2.8, so you have this year's updates and the additional chapter.

Here are the links to the updated e-book and paper versions.

New legislation signed today: timing on eviction notices and responding to UD summons and deposition notices

Among 25 bills signed today (URL upd. 06/26), one drew my attention: extending time to respond to eviction notices and to unlawful detainer summons (AB 2343).

How Preemptive Is the Ellis Act?

On June 20, 2018, California Supreme Court denied review of Small Property Owners of San Francisco Institute v. City & County of San Francisco (2018) 22 Cal.App.5th 77, thus affirming its holding, striking a 10-year ban on alterations of non-conforming units following the Ellis Act evictions.  The decision was reached on the preemption argument of the Ellis Act (Cal. Gov. Code § 7060 et seq.).  How often it is a winning argument, and how universally its preemption is applied? Let us take a look at a few recent decisions.

The "Educators" Ordinance Is Back

Today the court of appeals reversed in full its 2016 judgment, which up until today was holding the "educators" ordinance on hold. There is a hope that the certiorari review will follow, but, as of now, the ugly and self-contradicting piece is coming back on the books. And I mean it literally as well, I'll have to update the book again (only in this case, downgrade it back).

Bending Laws of Physics - A New Opportunity For Lawyers in Richmond

Lawyers are so generally expected to be masters at bending laws, there are folklore quotes about it in pretty much every language. In Russian, the saying goes as "The Law is like an axle--it goes where you turn it." In other words, fatta la legge trovato l'inganno. But the newly enacted Rent Ordinance in the City of Richmond, California, raised the expectations of legal process to a new, previously unattended height--to bend the laws of physics. This must be the highest bar a practitioner will ever meet.

This is not say that time-bending is impossible (URL upd. 06/26). Other non-laywering professions post victorious news about conquering what was previously unthinkable, almost daily. Just yesterday, a gravitational wave from 2 billion years was detected, and the BBC today reported on a first-ever chemical surgery on an embryo, correcting its DNA. And now, thanks to the legislators in Richmond, we can boast of something too.

Eviction Notice book - new edition is out

I can finally announce that the new edition (better to say, "addition"), of my eviction notice book is finally out and available on Amazon (print and e-book (URL upd. 06/26) versions). Since the 1st version came out in April 2015, all later iterations were improvements, corrections, and updates of the material outlined there, the "for-fault" evictions and the generally relevant information (exceptions, common elements, and other useful observations of general type).

This issue is different. It adds 22 pages of new material. Half of it covers topics common for all non-fault evictions, and there rest is dedicated to the first two "non-fault" just causes: owner move-in and relative move-in (37.9(a)(8)) evictions.

New Category Of Tenants In SF - Educators

[02-14-2018 update: Court of appeals reversed the judgment today];
[Cal. Sup. Ct. denied review on April 25, 2018; Rent Ordinance reinstated back the "educators" ordinance's language on May 15, 2018, see the press release here].

The rules of equality never meant to apply equally to the rule-makers themselves. This had often been the case since the times immemorial, and so observed by many, including Oliver Wendell Holmes.*  And in the context of our times and our local legislature on the issue of housing, examples of unequal treatment of classes of individuals in California are aplenty. Yet at least, for most of the times, you can see a public policy behind the legislatively created exceptions. Not all the times, but often. For a counter-example, when the reasoning is not immediately apparent, see CC §§ 43-53.9 and related sections, where the series of statutes provided a right to create senior-only housing (technically, a discrimination by age, albeit for a laudable purpose). In most of those statutes, one county (Riverside) is expressly excluded from these rules, see §§ 51.2(c), 51.3(j), 51.4(c), 51.10(d). I am sure there was some valid reason for that, but I don't know what it is.

Our county of San Francisco has its own rich history of laws treating us differently from elsewhere, especially in the field of housing regulations. Discriminating or differentiating the application of laws to individuals based on their age, disability, or familial status were for many years recognized applications of public policy of supporting those groups, by offering them additional protections, including such protections from evictions. Until now, however, it was more or less applied with care, providing a right for these individuals to claim a "protected" status as a tenant, in the concept of owner- or relative-move-in evictions, and there was a counter-balance for similarly disadvantaged landlords, by recognizing that the moving-in person could be in a similar position of being old or having children.**

Yet now we have a new and unprecedented piece of legislation, discriminating individuals by the source of income: Ordinance 55-16 created a new category, an "Educator," and it will widely apply to almost all non-fault kinds of evictions. Not only it offers no counter-balancing exceptions, but it takes away the ones existed before. I have a feeling that this legislative gem will be soon tested in courts, but for now it is the law, coming into effect on May 23, 2016. I had a chance to speculate on it, when it was introduced, let's now look more closely at what's coming.

Stealthy Amendment to The Rent Ordinance

Some amendments pass while being widely covered in the news, but not this one. It was not even announced in the "What's New (URL upd. 05/26)" section of the Rent Board. And yet it did pass and will become effective in a couple of weeks, Ordinance 0017-16.
[Update 3-22-16] - The new form is now available for download and the news announcement is published]

This ordinance is a very short piece, but the changes it enacts should not be overlooked; indeed, that is the very danger of unknown changes in legislature, since ignorantia juris non excusat,* an ancient maxim apparently known since Aristotle. If you are like me, and had no idea about the changes coming, you might be interested in this summary below:

2015 Roundup In CA/SF Real Property Law

2015 was an eventful year, if measured in the scope of the real property legal changes. No stone left unturned. I got to witness it from the front seat myself: for this was the year when I decided to publish my book on the San Francisco eviction notices. It got published in April 2015, and I thought to be done with it for awhile. Little did I know, the changes would demand me to issue seven revisions during next five months, after which a big slew of changes came at once with the Ordinance 171-15, making me to rewrite almost the whole book anew! Version 2.0 went out in December (and yes, with some of the even more recent changes mentioned here, version 2.1 is already in the making).  But enough about me, let's look back and observe, what an enormous year 2015 was for the legal landscape in CA/SF real estate:

New Edition Of The Eviction Book

Writing a law review is unfair business--it does not stay relevant for long. Only in April I had published my first edition of the eviction notice book, and today that version is already obsolete. It lived through updates up to a version 1.7, which I proudly reworked in September, ... and then the Rent Ordinance was amended in so many different spots, I had to re-write most of the chapters. And so the second version was born!  [Amazon link (URL upd. 11/26)]

Here is what's new:

Passing On Eviction Protections 2.0

On September 22, 2015, the Board of Supervisors passed a set of proposed amendments to the Rent Ordinance. The did it in first reading, and for the most parts of the proposal voted for it 11 to none. This amendment must be a no brainer then, if it met such support, yet the joyous media coverage avoids to talk details. Let's give it a try here.
[Update 11-21-15] - the amendments became effective on November 9, 2015. The Rent Board's published version of the Rent Ordinance now reflects the changes; the multilingual form now required to be attached to the eviction notice is published here (URL upd. 05/26).
[Update 12-5-15] - 3 amended and 1 new Rule in 6.xx series became adopted, effective December 4.

1:1 - Two Recent Attacks on Ellis Act Notice Went Different Ways

Within one week the Appellate Division of the San Francisco Superior Court issued two decisions addressing requirements for an Ellis Act eviction under S.F. Admin. Code, Section 37.9A(f), taking an evidently different approach in reading the section in two cases and achieving opposite results.

Drafting Eviction Notice In San Francisco -- Book's Volume I Is Published

I  am excited to report that the first part of my book, covering general requirements and nine "for-fault" evictions, is finally out and went live on Amazon today. Here are direct links: paperback (URL upd. 11/26) and the ebook (URL upd. 06/26) versions. Second volume is still in the works, it will cover the "no fault" evictions.

Is There A True Ellis Act Eviction Epidemy—A Study In Reading Statistics

On March 23, 2015, the Rent Board published its annual statistical report (URL upd. 05/26) on eviction notices, filed with the Board from March 1, 2014, through February 28, 2015. Page 2 shows a break-down by the types of notices and their change in usage in comparison to the previous year. I noticed a 48% decline in filed notices under the Ellis Act cause for eviction, and wondered, whether this decline is connected with the last year's attempt to increase the relocation payments due to the tenants to some cosmic amount, something the courts currently holding as unreasonable and unconstitutional. I saw it closely related, and along with that I also made several peculiar findings on how statistics work in scaling up (scarring up?) the reported amount of the Ellis Act evictions.

Direct Deposits And Other Electronic Means Affecting Landlord and Tenant Duties

An important new case came down last December, Kruger v. Reyes, 232 Cal.App.4th Supp. 10, 181 Cal. Rptr. 3d 521 (2014), covering several rules: timely service of the notice for non-payment rent, proper calculations in that notice of the rent due and the time when it is due. None of those concepts are new, but the case contains rare findings due to its fact pattern, including the issue of tenants paying rent by depositing funds directly to the landlord's account.