The San Diego City Council passed an ordinance proposed by San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and City Council President Sean Elo-Rivera providing protections to renters from eviction as long as they continue to pay rent and comply with their lease.
The ordinance passed 8-1, with Councilmember Jen Campbell (District 2) dissenting, after hours of comment from renters and landlords. It still has to pass a second reading, which will be on May 16, then be approved by the mayor, who has 10 days to sign it. The law would then go into effect 30 days after that.
Elo-Rivera and Gloria revealed the Residential Tenant Protections Ordinance to Prevent Displacement and Homelessness last week, saying it is a step toward addressing the twin housing and homelessness crises the city faces.
"San Diegans who are paying their rent and abiding by their lease should not live in fear of eviction," Elo-Rivera said. "Sadly, too often, San Diego renters are being evicted despite following the rules. These evictions cause massive financial and emotional distress to families and can lead to displacement and put people at risk of homelessness. This ordinance provides the protections that San Diego renters need and deserve."
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The ordinance took input from tenants rights advocates and the Southern California Rental Housing Association and will bring the city's laws up to those set by the rent-capping Assembly Bill 1482 — in some cases surpassing it, the mayor and council president said.
"This ordinance will help address the reality that we have people becoming newly homeless faster than we can get people housed," Gloria said. "I'm extremely grateful to have had the active participation and input in crafting this framework by rental housing industry stakeholders to ensure it's feasible and will meet the objective of making housing more secure for thousands of San Diegans at risk of becoming homeless."
The draft ordinance would apply protections from day one of a lease with exemptions for short-term leases, offer financial assistance to tenants from landlords when a tenant's lease is terminated through no fault of their own and have accountability measures to punish those violating tenant protections. It would require landlords to pay tenants two months rent if they are evicted at no fault of their own.
On the other hand, landlords are also allowed to evict for renovation reasons as long as they have proper permits and post a 30-day notice.
Some "mom and pop " landlords call the proposed ordinance costly. One told NBC 7 the new policy overreaches
and wouldn't have allowed him to quickly fix an asbestos problem in a building he just bought.
"Had this policy been in place at the time, we would have had to wait six to eight months for permits to abate the issue. In the meantime, families and kids and pets would have been living in the units. Without this in place, we did no-cause eviction. We overpaid the tenants and gave them three months rent because we thought it was the right thing to do to remediate the asbestos," the landlord said.
In March 2023, 832 people were housed while 1,260 people entered homelessness for the first time, officials said. For more than a year in San Diego, the number of people becoming homeless has outpaced those finding homes.
"This report shows our region has reached a sobering milestone: March 2023 marks one year since we've had a month where more people were housed than experienced homelessness for the first time," Regional Task Force on Homelessness CEO Tamera Kohler said when the task force's monthly report came out Monday. "Even as we continue to house people every day, with March seeing our highest housing numbers in seven months, it's clear that we are not keeping up with the influx of new people entering homelessness.
"We need to do much more to meet the need and fit the scope and scale of our response to fight homelessness in our community," she added.
