OAKLAND — Upset at having to pay nearly $7,000 to move back into a home they already owned, an Oakland couple is attempting to overturn a new city law that fights displacement by forcing landlords to reimburse tenants in no-fault evictions.
The couple is taking aim at Oakland’s Uniform Relocation Ordinance, passed in January, which requires property owners to pay their tenants as much as $13,000 for relocation expenses if the owner decides to move themselves or a family member into the building, pushing the tenant out.
Several local cities, including Berkeley, San Francisco and Palo Alto, impose similar relocation payments as a cushion for renters who find themselves thrust back into the unmerciful Bay Area housing market through no fault of their own. But a lawsuit filed against Oakland this week claims the city’s ordinance violates property owners’ constitutional rights.
“California, especially the larger cities, (has) a real housing problem — and that problem is not created by the people who want to move back into their own homes,” said Sacramento-based property rights attorney Meriem Hubbard, who represents the plaintiffs. “So we are saying that that is a Fifth Amendment taking (of private property).”
A spokeswoman for the city of Oakland did not immediately provide a comment on the lawsuit.
Those in favor of relocation payments, including Jeffrey Levin, policy director for East Bay Housing Organizations, say they are a crucial means to help displaced renters afford the often overbearing expenses of moving — including first and last month’s rent, and a security deposit. Such assistance is especially important in the Bay Area’s cut-throat housing market, he said.
“If people are unable to find replacement housing out there, they will either end up relying on some kind of public assistance for housing — if they are even able to get it, because there’s huge waiting lists — or potentially could end up homeless,” Levin said.
Lyndsey Ballinger and her wife, Sharon Ballinger, who both were on active duty in the Air Force, lived in a three-bedroom home they owned in Oakland until 2015, when they were transferred to the Washington, D.C. area, according to the complaint filed in federal court. They rented out their house while they were away, intending to return home to the Bay Area when their assignments were complete. That day came in March of this year, and the Ballingers gave their tenants a notice to vacate their property.
While the Ballingers were away, the Oakland City Council passed the relocation payment ordinance, which expanded a similar law passed last year. As a result, the Ballingers had to pay their tenants $6,582.40 before they could move back into their home — a condition that didn’t exist when they initially signed the lease. For a young family with two small children, living in the expensive Bay Area, that was a hefty sum — and it put a strain on their pocketbook, Hubbard said.
“It’s really difficult,” she said, “especially for people like the Ballingers, who had to pay to come back. They had to move too, and the military doesn’t pay anywhere near this amount of money for you to move cross-country. So it was a burden on their finances.”
The Ballingers are asking the court to prohibit Oakland from enforcing its relocation payment ordinance, and to force the city to reimburse them the money they paid their tenants.
A similar case prevailed in San Francisco in 2014. Two of the plaintiffs, a husband and wife who lived upstairs in a townhouse they owned and rented out the bottom floor, decided to take the bottom floor off the rental market and use it to house family and friends. Under San Francisco’s relocation payment ordinance, which required landlords to pay two years’ worth of the difference between the tenants’ current rent and market-rate rent, the couple would have had to pay more than $100,000 to evict their tenants, according to the federal complaint.
“The city was basically using landlords as an ATM machine to fund housing for renters when they took their property off the market,” said J. David Breemer, who represented the plaintiffs, and works with Hubbard at the Pacific Legal Foundation.
The landlords won that case, and San Francisco amended its ordinance to cap relocation payments at $50,000, Breemer said. The amended ordinance was quickly challenged by another legal team in state court, and last year a panel of appellate judges struck down the new law as well. Now San Francisco caps its relocation payments at $19,897.15 per unit.
In Oakland, renters evicted through no fault of their own — whether because the landlord decided to move in or give the property to a relative, the building was converted to a condo, or the property was otherwise permanently taken off the rental market — are entitled to $6,875.58 for a studio or one-bedroom unit, $8,462.26 for a two-bedroom unit and $10,445.60 for a three or more-bedroom unit. Tenant households that include low-income, elderly or disabled tenants or minor children are entitled to an extra $2,500 per unit. The payments increase each year with inflation, and the Ballingers’ payment was calculated using an earlier rate.
