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Mountain View’s Rental Housing Committee agreed last week to consider new ways to get property owners to register rental units with the city, a requirement that has gone ignored by many landlords.
Under the city’s rent control program, property owners are required to be transparent about their rental units and provide information including current rents, latest rent increases and the number of bedrooms and bathrooms in each home. But compliance with the mandate has been low, with only about 30% to 35% of landlords reporting this information to the city.
Committee members agreed that it’s time to take a more forceful approach. In a series of straw votes at the March 28 meeting, committee members agreed to look at fining violators and publicly disclosing which landlords are in defiance of the city’s rules.
Since the passage of rent control in the form of the Community Stabilization and Fair Rent Act (CSFRA) in 2016, property owners in Mountain View have been subject to several new requirements, including payment of an annual per-unit fee and, more recently, up-to-date registration information with the city. Getting landlords to pay rent control fees has been a problem in the past, but most are now in compliance after the city sent out reminder letters, according to housing staff. Registration, on the other hand, remains a problem.
One way to boost compliance is to start telling tenants when their landlord is violating the rules. Tenants are empowered under the rent control law to refuse to pay rent increases imposed while their landlords are noncompliant. But residents are currently unable to access that information, said Anky van Deursen, program manager for the CSFRA.
“There is no way that tenants can find out whether a landlord has complied with paying the fee or registering the property,” Deursen said at the March 28 meeting.
In the same vein, the city could also create a website listing of all landlords who have failed to register properties or pay fees, where tenants and tenant advocates can look up an address and check for noncompliance. The listing could be expanded to include property owners who have violated rules related to habitability and maintenance of the property.
Both the website and notices to tenants received unanimous support from the committee, as well as the possibility of cranking up late fees on property owners, but some of the more aggressive enforcement approaches caused a rift between committee members. A bare majority supported administrative penalties against violators, and only a minority of the committee supported withholding rental payments in an escrow account for noncompliant landlords.
Committee Chair Susyn Almond supported the idea of withholding rent, and said she was worried that the website and notices weren’t going to be enough to get landlords to follow the law.
“I don’t know if that’s really going to motivate people to register,” She said. “Unless there’s something that really has some teeth to it, only letting tenants know may not be enough of a threat for anybody to bother to register their property.”
But Joshua Howard, executive vice president of local government affairs for the California Apartment Association, said education and outreach is still the right approach, and that the city should be mindful of the mandates they place on property owners in the midst of COVID-19. Full registration was required in March 2021, right around the time California began taking applications for rent relief.
“Landlords have been struggling with the pandemic, with eviction moratoria, emergency rental assistance applications — it’s been a very rough two months to implement yet another bureaucratic requirement in the midst of a pandemic,” Howard said.
Although the idea ultimately fizzled at the meeting, Howard warned there would be legal challenges against the withholding of rent from noncompliant landlords, arguing that the CSFRA does not grant the authority to use the powerful tool as a way to spur compliance.
Jeff Zell, a property owner in Mountain View, urged the committee to “stop punishing landlords,” saying that they have already been saddled with an “unbelievable” burden of working on rent relief applications.
“I think you just have to understand how much work and how much crap we’ve had to go through on top of not getting rent for a lot of these units,” Zell said. “It sucks, and there doesn’t seem to be any sympathy, and you don’t seem to care.”
The city’s rental registry was adopted in June 2020 as a way to add more transparency to the city’s rental market, which has close to 15,000 units that are subject to rent control. Housing officials said the registry improves compliance as it relates to lawful rent increases, and creates a solid database of information that a hearing officer needs to make a determination on a rent dispute. Prior to the mandate, only 31 of the more than 650 properties had provided this registry information to the city.
Committee member Emily Ramos, one of two members who supported the idea of withholding rent for noncompliance, said the city needs to have some way to compel property owners to follow the law when there’s a problem, specifically in instances where habitability is threatened. She pointed to concerns raised by tenants living at 555 W. Middlefield road in February, who reported health concerns related to renovations and potential exposure to asbestos.
“I hate the idea that we couldn’t do anything about it when tenants came to us and said there was a problem,” Ramos said.
Has the RHC considered doing an internal audit to look for inefficiencies and counter-productive behavior and outcomes, and report back to council?
Get input from both tenants and housing providers.
Maybe there are some issues that cause people to avoid participating.
Hint Hint.
Maybe all withhold of say 10% of rent vs. all of it. The landlords are withholding because they can with no penalty. There should be a cost. All the rent is too much. Won’t happen. Puts too much strain on tenant. Even 3% might work.