A big shout out to…

… ANNIE! For clarify the insanity that is California rent control and tenant laws while I sat around and clarified nothing! WITH DEEPEST SINCERITY, I THANK YOU, because truly, California’s tenant laws are a cluster f***, and inquiring minds obviously want to know.

I’ve been in the weeds, as usual. And honestly, there are a lot of questions we still don’t have answers to. That is why we are spending the big $$$ to talk to a lawyer next week. (After which I will update you all on the situation).

We are almost positive that we must adhere to San Francisco’s rent control laws. Our building was built before 1979 (so much before – it’s about to turn 100!!) and even though it’s not a registered unit, I’m sure rent control still applies (otherwise, single family home owners would be incentivized to NOT register their units). Basically, in all situations, renters in San Francisco have a ton of rights. Which I think is a great idea. 70% of the housing in SF is on the renters market, and most of that is owned by landlords who are trying to save a buck (or make a lot more bucks) in anyway they can. I think renters deserve protection in those situations, and I LOVED rent control when I was a renter in SF for 10 years.

I do think maybe there should be different rules for single-family home owners who are renting their spaces, but I honestly don’t know what they rules should be. But the city depends heavily on these spaces to provide below-market priced rental units, so they might want to think about protecting those home-owners so they are more inclined to rent those units.

We paid for the initial heat treatment, but thought that maybe we could eventually put the onus on our tenant for getting rid of the bed bugs (if they are found again), since he clearly brought them into the unit. I’ve read that in single-family home situations, where there are no other tenants who might have brought them in, landlords can require tenants to pay for treatments. But SF has a new bed bug law that went into effect in 2017 (because they are evidently a huge problem here), and we may be responsible for paying for treatments no matter what (I can’t find this information anywhere except on tenants’ rights sites paid for by tenants’ rights lawyers so I don’t know if they are choosing deliberately vague wording to make it sound like landlords ALWAYS have to pay to attract more customers).

We might still be able to push the responsibility on to him if we believe he is not taking the proper steps to ensure the issues won’t happen again. This is doubtful (him taking the proper steps) since he is still claiming that he didn’t bring them in, but that he got them from “rodents in the walls” or “feral cats in the backyard” (even though there is no evidence that bed bugs move with rodents or cats (they can feed on them, but they haven’t been shown to travel with them).

The probable issue will be that we’ll do this second heat treatment (only to his unit because he believes the first wasn’t done properly), and he will still think he has bed bugs, and the pest control won’t re-do the treatment without seeing further evidence of bed bugs (they are only doing a second treatment this time because they didn’t heat the bathroom last time – because our tenant said that was okay! And then decided it wasn’t okay!), and we will refuse to pursue another company or treatment option and he will flip out when we tell him he has to pay for it himself if he wants to do it. At this point, we may offer him some money (not $10K required for an owner move in but a portion of it) to leave of his own accord.

The messiest issue will be if he finds evidence of bed bugs AFTER the three month warranty on the treatment is up. At this point we are probably required to do another treatment, which feels unfair because clearly in this situation he would not be doing what he needs to do to ensure bed bugs are not reintroduced to the unit, or are being properly eradicated in the first place (we believe there is still far too much clutter in his unit to ensure complete eradication – yes we’ve been taking pictures). At this point, a lengthy legal battle might ensue.

We realized, after some particularly unhinged emails, that our tenant is now sleeping every night in the unit, even though he believes there are still bed bugs and he’s still getting bit. This is clearly making him miserable, which means he must have no where else to go. He told us previously that he hasn’t slept in our unit for 16 months, and instead was sleeping at his girl friend’s apartment. We believe that option is no longer available to him for whatever reason, or he would be taking it. The fact that he no longer has an easy option for where to go complicates matters

So that is where we are now. We have a consultation with a landlord lawyer on Wednesday morning. I’ll let you know how it goes.