City Council Puts More Muscle In Santa Monica Tenant Harassment Law

And Votes To Declare Moratorium On Short-Term Housing

Hannah Heineman
Mirror staff writer

   By a unanimous vote at its regular meeting, April 10, the Santa Monica City Council moved to strengthen the City’s 1995 tenant harassment law and agreed with City staff that the law must be more vigorously enforced and that the public needs to be educated about the law.
   Henceforth, the tenant harassment law will specifically prohibit a landlord from interfering with a tenant’s privacy, as well as clarifying provisions that the City may be awarded penalties, costs and fees and modifying the language to prohibit a landlord from pushing a tenant to vacate through fraud, intimidation or coercion.
   The Council also voted to add an investigator to the City Attorney’s office and double fines for violating the law from $500 to $1,000 for each separate violation, as a means of improving enforcement of the ordinance. 
   In addition, the City Attorney’s Consumer Protection Unit which handles tenant harassment complaints will now assist tenants in making Building and Safety complaints, rather than simply making referrals and City databases will be updated to assist with complaint compiling and retrieval.
   The City’s new educational campaign will include a City housing forum on tenant harassment issues, an interview on CityTV with Assistant City Attorney Adam Radinsky, head of the Consumer Protection Unit, news, updates and tips in the City’s quarterly newsletter “Seascape.” updated information on the City’s website and a City-wide mailing to tenants and landlords.
   Prior to the vote, City Attorney Marcia Moutrie and Radinsky outlined the bases for their recommendations that enforcement and educational efforts be stepped up and that the ordinance be amended. 
   Radinsky stated that his office received few complaints until 1998 because Costa-Hawkins (the statewide legislation that allows a landlord to increase the rent of a vacated rent-controlled unit to market level) was not in full effect. However, since then the pace has picked up to over 100 complaints a year. Thus, “tenant harassment has gone from a small portion of what we do to the vast majority of our work.” He estimated that now 70 to 80 percent of his four-person unit’s time is “spent on complaints and related issues.”
   Moutrie told the Council that the City’s “power to enforce the law through criminal prosecutions is fairly narrow,” it is difficult to get sufficient evidence to win convictions in tenant harassment cases or to get jail time for a defendant on misdemeanor cases, and that the courts prefer not to have trials on misdemeanor cases.
   Members of the community urged the Council to make changes and additions to the ordinance’s language that were not included in the staff report, but Councilman Kevin McKeown encouraged his fellow Councilmen to “enact this tonight [the changes proposed in the staff report] knowing that we are not done and we can direct staff to continue to examine language that has been recommended.”
   Mayor Mike Feinstein, representing the Council, marked the twenty-second anniversary of the enactment of the Santa Monica rent control law, by blowing out candles on cupcakes that were presented by Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights leader Michael Tarbet. 
   After blowing out the candles, Feinstein stated that “The flame of rent control will remain forever vigilant...this is just a ceremony today of reinstituting our commitment to these community values.”
   After the Council heard a staff report on the impacts of short-term corporate suite rentals in the City, as well as statements from attorneys who represented both developers of short-term housing and hotel owners, it asked City staff to prepare an emergency ordinance which would impose a temporary moratorium on permits to construct new corporate housing or converting existing housing to corporate housing, to give the City time to develop policies regulating such housing.
   The Council agreed with Councilwoman Pam O’Connor that this is “an emerging market niche and it has a place. There is a need for this type of housing and there is a untapped market for it here in Santa Monica...but it has the potential to spiral out of control and radically alter the balance of our community by making it more transient.”
   It also agreed with the staff report that “regulation of short-term housing is necessary, and there are a variety of regulatory options. Revisions to the hotel definition, multi-family housing definition, or establishment of new short-term housing definition could provide clarification as to what constitutes a hotel versus a short-term housing use. Establishing a maximum unit cap on short-term housing based on a percentage of total housing units in the City is also an option. This would prevent the City from being overly impacted by such developments and help ensure the continued availability of long-term housing opportunities...Regulations should be developed identifying the appropriate district in which to locate the use either by right or by discretionary review.”
   Speakers who commented on the issue gave the Council a taste of just how complicated this issue is. City codes prohibit renting apartment units for less than 30 days but do not restrict landlords from renting apartments out from month to month.
   Citrus Suites, two apartment buildings downtown and on the beach, offers short-term rentals. Suites’ attorney Ken Kutcher from the firm of Harding, Larmore, Kutcher and Kozal emphasized that its rental policies meet City codes. Suites’ owner Howard Jacobs pointed out that he uses a standard lease and that the average residential stay is three months, but that some residents stay as long as a year and a half. 
   Attorneys Jim Butler and Monica Witt, representing the Oceana Hotel, contended that apartments like Citrus Suites that offer short-term rentals should be considered hotels and be subject to the City’s bed taxes because they offer services such as maid service and concierges that would also be offered at a hotel. Butler said, “It’s the services that define the product.”
   Butler and Witt also seconded the staff’s report’s assertion that corporate housing near the beach violated both the letter and spirit of the City’s prop S, which prohibits additional hotels in the beach overlay district. 
   Earlier in the evening, the Council approved the authorization of a crosswalk study, construction and design services for the 26th Street corridor which will be completed this summer so the recommended work can be included when bids are solicited in the fall for construction of Phase II of the City’s Crosswalk Enhancement Program. Other Phase II streets are Wilshire, Santa Monica, and Ocean Park Boulevards and Broadway.