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HomeMy WebLinkAbout10/28/2025 Item 5a, Tway, Amini, and Symens - Staff Agenda CorrespondenceCity of San Luis Obispo, Council Memorandum City of San Luis Obispo Council Agenda Correspondence DATE: October 28, 2025 TO: Mayor and Council FROM: Timmi Tway, Community Development Director Prepared By: David Amini, Housing Coordinator / Sadie Symens, Deputy City Attorney VIA: Whitney McDonald, City Manager SUBJECT: ITEM 5A – RENTER PROTECTIONS STUDY SESSION – SAFE AND STABLE RENTAL HOUSING Staff received the following questions, regarding the specifics of local renter protections as well as safe housing policies. The questions are below with staff’s response shown in italics: 1) Do we have a breakdown of the specifics of our last two years of verified code enforcement calls regarding safe housing? i.e. stats on mold, versus locks, or other issues? Please refer to page 16 of the staff report where code enforcement complaints are discussed. In addition, the following table illustrates details of verified safe housing complaints in the City in 2024 and 2025: ITEM 5A – RENTER PROTECTIONS STUDY SESSION – SAFE AND STABLE RENTAL HOUSING Page 2 2) I’ve heard from building inspectors about a high number of a specific unsafe electrical panel in our city. How would that issue be best addressed? Through a renter’s checklist or could this be incorporated into the fire inspection? This issue could be addressed in a number of ways. One way would be to provide proactive education to all property owners about electrical panel safety. The City could also include information in potential tenant guides about what to look for related to electrical panel safety. Tenants and/or landlords can also submit a request for Code Enforcement to assess a specific situation. The City could explore adding this as a component of the annual fire inspections for buildings with three or more units. 3) Is there a threshold of increased protections that subjects the city to municipal level enforcement of the Tenant Protection Act? For example: a. Would having renters and landlords sign on to a checklist or handbook subject us to municipal level enforcement of the Tenant Protection Act? The Tenant Protection Act regulates, at the state level, just cause for eviction and maximum rent increases for covered rental units. A local regulation surrounding habitability of a rental unit during a tenancy would be outside the scope of the Tenant Protection Act and would not require local level enforcement of the TPA’s provisions. However, if, for example, the local regulation would allow a tenant to raise failure by a landlord to sign on to the checklist as a defense to an eviction, this would be preempted by the Tenant Protection Act unless the City adopts a comprehensive eviction control ordinance that is more protective than the Act. That is, enforcement of the checklist/handbook requirement would have to be outside the eviction defense context. b. Would having the Tenant Protection Act kick in at say 6 months like in Palo Alto lead to municipal level enforcement? Yes. A local ordinance regulating issues covered by the Tenant Protection Act would be preempted by the Act unless it is “more protective” of the Act. So in order to enforce its provisions earlier than 12 months, this would require a comprehensive ordinance that would be enforced at the municipal level. The City would not be able to enforce the provisions of the TPA after 6 months of tenancy without adopting the TPA as local law. ITEM 5A – RENTER PROTECTIONS STUDY SESSION – SAFE AND STABLE RENTAL HOUSING Page 3 c. Essentially, can we take a surgical approach to strengthening protections without dramatically expanding the staffing needs? The City can regulate certain aspects of landlord/tenant relationships under its police power to regulate for the public health, safety, and welfare. However, the state TPA has preempted the field of just cause protections and rent increases, and only local ordinances that are “more protective” as a whole will be enforceable. The City cannot enforce provisions of the TPA (such as requiring just cause to be stated in a written notice of eviction) without adopting the TPA as local law. 4) SB567: Understanding that the city has limited resources for our city attorney’s office, if a rental registry is introduced or alternately if safe housing code enforcement calls point to exceptionally bad players that do not respond to lesser enforcement, could we pursue local enforcement of AB1482 either in house or with contract attorneys with the idea of recouping attorney’s fees as outlined in SB567? If the City is made aware of violations of either the just cause for eviction or allowable rent increase provisions of the Tenant Protection Act, the City Attorney’s office may seek injunctive relief against the offending landlord (ask the Court to issue an order prohibiting the landlord from evicting a covered tenant without just cause or from unlawfully increasing the rent.) This is the case even if the City does not adopt the Tenant Protection Act or a more protective local ordinance. However, with the current resources available, it is not feasible for the City Attorney’s office to meaningfully enforce these types of violations. Addition of legal staff dedicated to this type of enforcement work and/or budgetary allocation to contract with outside legal counsel would be required. 5) Have most of the communities such as Davis and Goleta approached this issue in incremental steps or have they established teams the size discussed in the report from the inception of the programs? Some cities, such as Davis and Fresno, have first established a rental registry program prior to enacting further local renter protections. Other cities, such as Concord, have established rental registries, rent stabilization, and eviction protections through a single ordinance, with associated increases in staff and external resources. A key finding in staff’s outreach to other cities was that sequencing the rental registry separately and before further rental protection ordinances was a best practice to minimize strain on staff resources as well as avoiding overwhelming the community with new requirements. Staff can provide additional information about staffing levels required for registries and other changes at the Rental Registry Study Session. ITEM 5A – RENTER PROTECTIONS STUDY SESSION – SAFE AND STABLE RENTAL HOUSING Page 4 6) If we opt to move forward with some combination of the options presented in the report, is it feasible to use one-time funds to hire a consultant to progress the next steps either in research or structuring the framework of a program? The idea being that we could move the ball forward during this funding cycle with an eye towards more sustainable funding in the next budget cycle. The current 25-27 Financial Plan and associated Major City Goal Work Programs identify several work program items related to safe and stable housing. They include: this study session on renter protections, a future rental housing registry study session, development of a strategic plan for the safe housing program, a study session on code enforcement priorities related to safe and livable neighborhoods, among other housing related work program items. In addition, staff have identified several “next steps” that will be conducted, including revisions to the Mobile Home Rent Stabilization Ordinance, the development of a substandard housing checklist, as well as further efforts to promote education and legal assistance for tenants through collaboration with community partners such as Cal Poly and the SLO College of Law. These actions can be addressed by staff in the current Financial Plan without additional resources. There is no funding or staff resources identified or available to develop other policies that have been identified in the staff report, particularly local ordinances implementing rent stabilization or eviction protections. Consultant funding can be helpful to assist with program development and research, but consultants require oversight and management from City staff, and staff recommend that extensive public outreach is conducted with any changes that are pursued, which al so requires staff time. Should the Council wish to prioritize certain efforts, tradeoffs will need to be made with current Major City Goal work programs. This may also delay existing work that must be done, such as the work Community Development must undertake to ensure adequate community education and processes related to the changes in the WUI Code and Fire Hazard Maps and housing ordinances to address changes in state law. The City is also forecasting a structural budget deficit in the next financial plan period. Staff are evaluating potential budget reduction options to be discussed at public meetings in the Spring of 2026. Staff have not identified ongoing funding sources that would enable the City to add significant resources in the next budget cycle. ITEM 5A – RENTER PROTECTIONS STUDY SESSION – SAFE AND STABLE RENTAL HOUSING Page 5 7) How many inspections were conducted under the rental housing inspection program? What percentage of inspected homes had documented safe housing violations? How many landlords opted for voluntary inspections? Between May 2016 and the repeal of the RHIP ordinance in 2017, inspectors performed inspections of approximately 915 rental units. Of the 915 units, 62 percent passed (16 percent after one inspection, 46 percent after two inspections), while 37 percent had outstanding corrections and/or missing permits for construction. The inspections completed under the rental inspection program were required by the municipal code at the time. The city did not, however, force entry via an inspection warrant for those who refused. There were some landlords and several tenants who refused entry. The locations where the tenant refused entry were noted and a copy of the lease was requested. The expectation was that the unit would be inspected upon expiration of the lease when the unit was empty. Those locations where the landlord/property owner refused entry were noted, but no follow up was completed prior to repeal of the ordinance. 8) Do we have a ballpark idea of what the average per bedroom rent was in 2015? (I understand there are many variables in answering this, so no worries if it’s not possible) The average rent in the City in 2015 was $1,278 per month according to the U.S. Census American Community Survey, however, we do not have data on the average per bedroom rent. The current average rent in the City is $2,625 per month. 9) Are there situations where the tenant can make repairs in a unit if the landlord does not make the repair in a timely manner, and can the tenant withhold the amount of money from the rent for the cost of the repair? While the City cannot advise tenants on whether or when to make repairs to their rental unit and deduct the cost of repairs from their rent, California Civil Code § 1942 does establish this “repair and deduct” remedy if certain conditions are met, including that the landlord was notified of the problem and given an opportunity to fix it and that the repairs do not exceed one month’s worth of rent. ITEM 5A – RENTER PROTECTIONS STUDY SESSION – SAFE AND STABLE RENTAL HOUSING Page 6 10) Can you clarify the meaning of the numbers in the section from the staff report below. Is there double counting happening with the numbers? The data mentioned in this section of the staff report is used to identify the number of housing units in the City that are exempt from the provisions of the state Tenant Protection Act (TPA) described further in the staff report. Single family homes are exempt from the TPA, except for those owned by corporations. Housing units built within the last 15 years are also exempt from the TPA. Owner-occupied mobile homes are also exempt from the provisions of the TPA. The Tolemi BuildingBlocks data uses county assessor ownership data to determine the ownership types of single family homes, and identified that only 2 percent of single family homes are corporate owned, meaning that 98 percent of single family homes are exempt from the TPA. When counting single-family homes not owned by a corporation, multifamily housing units built within the last 15 years (in order to not double count single family homes), and owner-occupied mobile homes, staff determined that 64% of housing units in the City are exempt from the provisions of the Tenant Protection Act. 11) How many business licenses are currently on file for rental properties in the City? The City currently has 2,619 active business licenses for residential rentals in the City. Some of the licenses are for multiple rental properties with one owner. ITEM 5A – RENTER PROTECTIONS STUDY SESSION – SAFE AND STABLE RENTAL HOUSING Page 7 12) Can we use our business license process for a registry? What information do we currently ask for? What could we ask for? The City’s business license information currently provides some of the basic information that a rental registry would contain, namely owner information and addresses/units that are being rented. It should be noted that the information about addresses of rentals and unit numbers is entirely self-reported, meaning that staff has limited availability to ensure that the information is accurate or that all rental units are listed for a particular owner. The business license form could be updated to require more information for rental properties such as the property age, number of bedrooms per unit, rent amount, or other basic information. One of the key differences between the existing business license database and a potential rental registry is that the reporting of each address and unit number in the business license process is not proactively enforced – it is up to rental property owners to provide the City with accurate information. A potential rental registry would include research by the City to attempt to identify all rental properties and a roll-out process where outreach is conducted to all rental property owners informing them of the requirement to register, plus a possible penalty structure for failure to register. Another key difference between the existing business license database and a potential rental registry is that the business license database is simply a spreadsheet of information. A potential rental registry could employ a software- based solution that would have a map-based interface with property-specific information, as well as be able to provide important data-backed insights, such as neighborhood-specific rent trends, breakdowns of landlord types (corporate vs. private ownership), and tenant information such as the breakdown of students vs. families in a particular neighborhood. The data provided through a registry could inform future land use planning decisions, inform the upcoming Housing Element, as well as guide future City policy initiatives regarding rental housing.