Quote from @Becca F.:
Does this rent control apply to Oakland SFH or if it's a 2 unit or more?
Case law:
https://cases.justia.com/california/court-of-appeal/2020-a15...In Owens, the landlord owned and lived in a single-family
home located in Oakland, California, and rented individual rooms in the
home to three unrelated tenants. One of those tenants filed a petition
pursuant to Oakland’s Rent Adjustment Program complaining about
disruptive construction work and hazardous conditions at the premises.
The tenant alleged that the landlord did not provide her notice about
the Rent Adjustment Program and terminated her lease when she sought a
reduction in rent due to the construction work. The landlord responded
that the lease was not subject to the Rent Adjustment Program since the
rental was for “sole use of one or more rooms and shared use of common
areas (such as a kitchen) in the residence,” which was a single-family
home.
In its decision, the court focused on the definition of a “dwelling
unit” as used in the exception found in Civil Code section
1954.52(a)(3)(A), which provides that “an owner of residential real
property may establish the initial and all subsequent rental rates for a
dwelling or a unit about which the following is true…It is alienable
separate from the title to any other dwelling unit….” . While the
landlord defined the dwelling unit as his single-family home; the court,
after analyzing the statutory definitions of the term, the determined
that the dwelling unit at issue was the separate room being rented to
the tenant.[2] As a result, the landlord had converted his single unit
dwelling into a multi-unit dwelling that was subject to Oakland’s Rent
Adjustment Program since the individual rooms were not alienable
separate from the title to any other dwelling unit.
Under the court’s decision, tenants in Oakland renting rooms in a
single-family home or a condominium are entitled to the protections
provided by Oakland’s Rent Adjustment Program. By extension, other
California tenants living in municipalities that have rent control laws
are likely protected to the extent the landlord was relying on the same
Costa-Hawkins exception as the landlord in Owens and operating
under a similar leasing arrangement. It is important to note that the
court here did not consider the landlord’s argument that the tenant was
in actuality renting and sharing the entire home, and not just a room
because the landlord raised this argument for the first time on appeal.
My advice now: never rent out anything in oakland. I've heard of house hacking cases where the tenants essentially evict an owner with false complaints to the rent board.
