Santa Monica Weighs New Use Permits for Former Rentals

Santa Monica, triggering yet another fight over rent control, is considering a law that would require landlords who remove their apartments from the rental market to obtain additional permits for other uses of the property.

City Atty. Robert M. Myers said the proposed city ordinance is aimed at stopping what he called abuses of the Ellis Act, a 2-year-old state law that allows landlords to evict tenants and go out of the rental business.

But apartment owners said city officials were merely trying to create ways to get around state law. They said landlords should be allowed to use their property as they see fit, within current zoning regulations.

Landlords in Santa Monica are increasingly turning to the Ellis Act as a way to escape what they see as the overwhelming financial burden that the city’s tough rent control law imposes.

The city maintains, however, that many apartment building owners are evicting their tenants under the Ellis Act and then allowing their property to be re-occupied by family or by groups of co-owners, in violation of local laws.

Both sides agree that the Ellis Act allows landlords to evict tenants and go out of the rental business, but the debate continues over whether there are restrictions on subsequent uses of the property.

The proposed city ordinance under review would require any owner who uses the Ellis Act to vacate his or her property to obtain conditional use permits for future residential or commercial use of the property.

The measure would allow the city to be involved in how the property is used and thus enable it to prevent abuses, Myers said.

“The focus of this is to have some city review process,” he said. “The city is concerned with abuses.”

The City Council opened discussion of the ordinance at its meeting Tuesday night and heard from three landlords who opposed the measure and from two tenant activists who supported it.

Acting on a motion from Councilman Ken Genser, the council voted to continue the discussion in two weeks. It instructed the staff to notify interested tenant and landlord groups in writing. Representatives of both sides said they had not become aware until the last minute that the law would be up for consideration Tuesday.

Nevertheless, landlords were quick to attack the measure and warn that it will not stand up in court.

James W. Baker, past president of the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, told the council that Santa Monica was embarking on “legal invention carried to new heights.”

“Clearly the city thinks it is living in ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ ” Carl Lambert, president of Action, a landlord group vehemently opposed to rent control, said in an interview.

“This will only get them deeper in hot water in Sacramento and in the courts.”

Bruce Cameron, a tenant who was evicted from his apartment under the Ellis Act, said the law requiring landlords to obtain conditional use permits was a “good first step” toward protecting renters.

The introduction of this ordinance is significant because it shifts one battle over rent control from the Rent Control Board to the City Council. This follows several key court cases that Santa Monica has lost and that have eroded much of the rent board’s authority.

With a new, more liberal City Council taking office last November, many tenant activists had hoped council members would take up their fight.

As of Nov. 28, tenants of 381 units in 65 buildings had been formally notified that their landlords planned to use the Ellis Act to withdraw the units from the rental market, according to Rent Control Board records.

City officials said they suspect that groups of buyers have begun to purchase apartment buildings with the sole purpose of using the Ellis Act to evict tenants and then occupy the buildings.

If groups of multiple owners occupy these buildings, de facto subdivisions are being created without the proper permits, city attorneys contend.

In other cases, city attorneys say, vacated apartment buildings that are located in commercially zoned areas are being turned into office or retail buildings without the required permits.