Just-Cause Eviction & Mandatory 1 Year Lease in Santa Barbara

On April 16th 2019, the Santa Barbara City Council approved ordinances that require mandatory 12 month written leases as well as “just cause” eviction laws. Some of the details still remain to be worked on but it is important for both landlord and tenants to understand how these laws apply and how to draft a lease in order to comply with the new requirements.

Before this law was enacted, a landlord who wanted to sell their property or make major renovations had the option to terminate a tenant’s lease agreement. This is known as a “no-fault just cause” eviction.
Under the new law, landlords may still engage in no-fault just cause evictions for tenants who have been living on the property for less than a year. However, once a tenant has lived on the property for a year or longer, all evictions must be “just cause”.

Just cause is defined as non-payment of rent or any other violation of the lease agreement such as criminal activity, damage, nuisance, or waste to the property.

In all other cases, if the landlord wants to terminate a lease they may have to provide the tenant with either a one-time, non-binding conciliation meeting or a monetary assistance depending on the size of the property and number of units being evicted in a certain period of time.

The city agreed to tenant-displacement and relocation assistance for mass evictions. Under this proposal, evictions of 15 or more units would result in the landlord having to pay the tenants four times the median advertised rental rate or $5,000, whichever is greater. Landlords are also asked to increase the current 30-day and 60-day notification requirements to 90-day notifications in cases where more than 10 tenants are displaced. No monetary relocation assistance is required for eviction in properties with 14 or less units. The specific details of this ordinance will be reviewed and further clarified by the city committee and tenant/landlord task force in the coming months.

At the City Council meeting in April there were several different views regarding the new ordinances. Some of those in favor of the move say that some evictions occur in our market simply because landlords want to raise the price on a unit and the new law can protect the tenants from unfair evictions as such. However on the opposing side, a board member of the Santa Barbara Rental Property Association pointed out that the data collected by the city which is being used to make rental policies reflects inflated prices and is not entirely accurate.

The city reviews the data available on the market however we all know that a large percentage of rental properties, especially when priced appropriately, get rented without ever making it to the market, by a friend or neighbor through word of mouth. This data will never reach the statistics that are used by the city to reach a certain conclusion.

The “problem” with rental housing in Santa Barbara is a complex issue, but it comes down to this: There simply isn’t enough housing to satisfy rental demand. The housing market has always been tight and rents are high because of this on-going demand. The new ordinances may help protect tenants in some aspects however they will not address the housing shortage in our market.