Landlords present unified front against relocation proposal
After a few minutes of deliberation, it was clear that an urgency ordinance that would have given qualified evicted tenants money from landlords didn’t have a supermajority of votes from Healdsburg City Council.
The council did not vote on the ordinance at its meeting March 4, and instead gave direction to staff to present a similar, non-urgency ordinance as well as two other options to address mass or no-fault evictions.
Vice Mayor Leah Gold and Councilmember Shaun McCaffery were in favor of passing and refining the ordinance, while councilmember Joe Naujokas said he could go either way.
“I recognize that this is not a perfect ordinance. We gave staff two weeks to come up with this,” McCaffery said. “I think it is important that we pass this tonight.”
McCaffery said he wanted to come back within 90 days, which urgency ordinances allow for, and have clear direction for staff to refine the law.
Public comment was filled with landlords, property managers and realtors, all decrying the ordinance as unsound and a danger for local property investment.
One self-described “mom and pop” landlord said she would raise rent for new tenants and begin requiring credit checks should the ordinance pass.
Others said that the ordinance did not solve the problem of affordable housing, and said there were too many gaps in protection for landlords with bad tenants.
The models that were used to draft the ordinance were also criticized, as it was based on what larger cities had done. Legal concerns were shared, especially when it came to the trigger for payout if rents were raised more than 10 percent.
Throughout comments, there was issue with a stick being used rather than a carrot on the affordable housing crisis.
Naujokas made note of the concentrated group of landlords at the meeting.
“I do appreciate the constructive engagement we’ve heard from the landlord community,” he said. “I want to point out that this engagement is happening because we are proposing this change. When the big evictions came up, I didn’t hear anyone from the landlord community saying, ‘Oh, this is horrible, here are some ways to prevent this in the future. It was only when we put something down on paper that we’re starting to hear.”
While councilmember Evelyn Mitchell said she needed more time to refine and then support an ordinance, Mayor David Hagele said he wasn’t convinced the ordinance was the best route to protect residents from displacement.
Hagele then provided direction accepted by the rest of council for two other options.
The first was to look at partnering with a program that could help residents find monetary assistance and low-income housing in the area, possibly using existing local preference language to keep people in north county.
The second option was providing a well-funded rental rehabilitation program that could assist landlords with paying for needed repairs in exchange for commitments on low-priced rent.
Funding for each option was not discussed at the meeting.
“Something has to have some teeth,” McCaffery said after the options were presented, stating that the penalties for “repositioning” homes — evicting someone to change the rental to fit with a more affluent aesthetic — were a good thing.
Therefore, the ordinance was put back on the table as a regular ordinance. Now it will likely be several months before these items are fully fleshed out by staff.
As it stood, the urgency ordinance would have given tenants the option to be paid three months fair market rent upon eviction, dolled out by the landlord.
Evictions had to have been for a tenant who had lived in that unit at least one year, and was restricted on what types of homes qualified. A $7,000 cap was in place.
Qualified tenants would have to stay compliant with their leases throughout the eviction process. Triggers for a payout were raising the rent by more than 10 percent or evicting a person with no fault attributed to the tenant, though there were exemptions for the latter clause.
