San Francisco supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved an ordinance that will require landlords throughout the city to give tenants facing eviction a 10-day notice.
Under the ordinance, before filling out a three-day eviction notice, landlords must provide a tenant with a 10-day warning period that allows the tenant to correct the behavior that could lead to eviction.
If ultimately approved by Mayor London Breed, the ordinance is the first of its kind in California that provides an alternative to the formal eviction process during tenant and landlord disputes.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, landlords seeking to evict a tenant could simply file a three-day eviction notice for eviction proceedings to begin. However, since the pandemic, California state law has added a new 15-day requirement for landlords to notify tenants of eviction due to nonpayment of rent.
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According to Supervisor Dean Preston, who authored the ordinance, the legislation will ensure that tenants facing eviction continue to have protections in place, even after the pandemic-related protections expire.
"It's important that we take things that have worked in our pandemic response and look at making some of them permanent," Preston said in a statement. "One of the biggest positive changes during COVID has been, for the most part, making evictions a tool of last resort, rather than the starting point for landlord-tenant disputes. This law takes this lesson, and applies it permanently, in a targeted and common sense way."
Preston added, "This ordinance is a big step toward reducing evictions and keeping folks in their homes."
