That is a doozy!
In some cities in California (particularly the Bay Area)it can take an act of God, an act of Congress and a note from the President to get a tenant out. In SF and Berkeley, tenants have all the power. A disabled tenant can get much longer than a year to live there AFTER you have filed to reside in it. I know of several cases in which people bought homes they intended to live in right away in SF, but could not because the laws protected the tenants right to live there. The owners were left living in their car and paying the mortgage while spending a LOT of money in court costs and legal fees to try get these tenants out. Many tenants think just because they have lived there for 10 or 20 years, it is their home. Unfortunately, if someone buys it from the owner and the new owner wants to move in and have his family move into other units, it can be almost impossible to get the tenant out.
We had a tenant in Berkeley. We had two small houses on a piece of property and rented the back house to a Doctor as a home. He first broke the law by having patients coming to the house. We had a locked gate with a intercom system and we would constantly hear the buzzer for one of his patients.
Then when we sold the property and gave him papers that he would have to move, because the new owner wanted to use both houses for family, he put up such a stink. He went to the Rent Copntrol board to find out if first we could MAKE him move out and if so, how much $$ we would have to give him to move. I am not kidding. In Berkeley, there is a law that the owner must pay a tenant if they have to move out within a certain time frame. (At least there was when we owned the houses there. There may be new rental laws altogether now.) He screwed up however and did not file in time and we had to pay him nothing. The amount would have been around $10,000.00 to get him out. I think that is totally unfair, if you give your tenant notice you are selling and they have to move! Oh well, it happens all over and I had never heard of paying a tenant to move. I never got $$ when I was a renter! But Berkeley has some weird laws.
We were originally going to hang onto the property and move back after I finished Vet tech school and thought about renting out OUR house. We ran into the Mayor and asked her if we rented to a disabled person, (the house was completely disabled accessible for Ralph) and then wanted to come back in 3 years, would that be a good idea. She told us to NOT do it, that we would have real trouble getting our house back to live in!
A disabled person had, I think at that time, 6 yrs to live in a residence, and you could not for any reason move them out before that! She said as badly as Berkeley needed rental units, we should not do it. We didn't and eventually sold. But that sucks for Property owners. If we want to live in our house, we should not have to pay someone to move out OR wait 6 years to do it. That is totally unfair!
Other places I lived in in the North Bay area and East Bay area, had no laws such as those. I guess where apts and houses are at a premium, they can make up those laws to protect the renters. School teachers, police officers and all the other service oriented workers cannot afford to live there in SF! They have to commute in from Tracy, Livermore, Oakland and other suburb communities a ways away from the city. It sucks!
We may have to rent for awhile in Florida, til we sell this place, and I hope we can find a good house for the short time we need it.
Susi
