Anaheim officials are debating who should be responsible for enforcing statewide renter protection laws as some residents facing evictions call on officials for help and others call on local leaders to enact a citywide rent control law.
Tuesday’s debate kicked off months after a group of renters living in Hermosa Village near Disney went to city officials earlier this year for help after receiving eviction notices to clear the way for apartment remodels.
Councilman Stephen Faessel said at Tuesday’s city council meeting what happened with the residents there is not a one time occurrence.
“Cases like this are not going to go away, and likely in the future, we will have more residents come before us and ask for our help and assistance, and we are only marginally able to do anything,” he said. “We need to plan for that.”
Now, city council members like Faessel are questioning what role the city should play when it comes to enforcing state laws like Assembly Bill 1482, which limits how much a landlord can raise the rent annually and implements eviction protections for tenants.
And whether or not they have the resources and bandwidth to get involved in protecting renters.
Councilwoman Norma Campos Kurtz said at Tuesday’s meeting the city should focus on educating residents on what their rights are as renters and landlords in California.
“We need to have a good, strong education program on the rights of an owner-manager and the rights and responsibilities of tenants,” said Kurtz who is up for election in November.
Councilwoman Natalie Meeks also voiced support for educating residents about their rights, but said city officials need to be clear if they’re going to enforce state law or simply provide housing assistance to residents.
“If we could help everybody, we would – but we can’t. And so where are we going to insert ourselves? Where are we going to focus our resources, and where are we going to focus our housing dollars?” Meeks said at Tuesday’s meeting.
Councilwoman Natalie Rubalcava, who requested Tuesday’s update on renters’ rights along with Kurtz, said staff should come back in the next budget cycle with ideas on how to enforce some of the state laws.
She also said rent control won’t address the state’s housing crisis.
“Even if we as a council passed a rent control initiative that went even further than the state requirements do, we probably wouldn’t be able to enforce those either,” Rubalcava said.
Other OC cities have created their own laws to try and protect renters like Costa Mesa where officials allocated $300,000 from federal COVID bailout dollars to rental assistance providers to help families facing no-fault evictions.
This includes sitting down with an outreach worker to help get evicted families into a new home, up to $500 in moving assistance and other financial assistance based on income.
Six months after the ordinance was implemented, Costa Mesa officials said the number of evictions in the city went down by 50%.
[Read: Costa Mesa’s Evictions Are Down By 50%]
Victor Cao, a senior vice president at the California Apartment Association, said the association can conduct public outreach in Anaheim about renters’ rights and spoke out against cities adopting their own tenant protection laws.
“Our characterization is that they are pretty much unworkable and they’re restrained on city resources,” he said during Tuesday’s meeting.
Anaheim City Councilman Jose Diaz, a landlord himself, said sometimes tenants are the problem and supported working with the California Apartment Association to help educate renters about their rights.
According to a 2021 report by the Southern California Association of Governments, 55,113 of the 100,615 homes in Anaheim are renter-occupied.
The median gross rent in Anaheim is $1,958 and the median household income is $88,538, according to census data.
About 13% of residents live below the poverty line and about half of Anaheim residents on a public health plan.
Tackling Evictions in Orange County
Tuesday’s discussion came after a study by the nonprofit United Way found over 3,000 OC residents were evicted from their homes in 2022.
It also comes after officials in Buena Park and Costa Mesa last year adopted laws aimed at protecting renters from being evicted by landlords who falsely claim they want to renovate, sell or live in their property themselves.
Laguna Beach adopted a similar law this year.
[Read: The Year of The Renter: Orange County Tenants Get Some Relief]
Most of those local ordinances were implemented to speedline a state law – Senate Bill 567 – that went into effect in April and requires landlords to have building permits before booting a renter on the basis of substantial repairs among other requirements.
At the county level, the OC Board of Supervisors this year created rent assistance programs to help prevent residents from being evicted and falling into homelessness.
Meanwhile, officials in Santa Ana are the only ones in OC that have adopted a citywide rent control ordinance and have been grappling with implementing, and enforcing the ordinance passed in 2021.
This November, Santa Ana residents will vote on whether they want to reaffirm or deny rent control.
Editor’s note: Ashleigh Aitken’s father, Wylie Aitken, chairs Voice of OC’s board of directors.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.
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