NBC Bay Area just released an impressive investigative report suggesting that 25% of all San Francisco owner move-in and relative move-in evictions are bogus. The owners aren’t living there. The relatives aren’t living there. Instead, rent-controlled tenants were evicted so that the landlord could move in new tenants paying exorbitant market rate rents.
Perpetrating a wrongful eviction can be very lucrative for a landlord because of the huge increase in rents the landlord can collect, but it is also extremely risky. San Francisco wrongful eviction lawsuits are frequently valued in the mid-six figures, and sometimes much higher. Similar results are also possible in Oakland and Berkeley. The leading appellate case for a San Francisco wrongful eviction upheld a judgment of $1.54 million. (Chacon v. Litke (2010 181 Cal.App.4th 1234.) The amount of monetary damages will depend on how long the tenant had lived in the unit, how far below market rate the tenant’s rent was, how long the tenant expected to live in the unit, and how egregious the landlord’s actions were, among other factors.
Additionally, tenants who moved into units that were recently emptied pursuant to an OMI or RMI may be able to have their rent significantly reduced. Under a recent amendment to the San Francisco Rent Ordinance, if a landlord rents a unit within five years after an OMI or RMI, the new tenant’s rent must be set at what the evicted tenant was paying, subject to the modest annual increases allowed by the Rent Board. A tenant can research the eviction history of their unit by contacting the San Francisco Rent Board.
We have seen a dramatic increase in bogus OMIs and we are actively suing quite a few landlords for wrongful eviction. We often hire private investigators to determine the current residence of the owner and to determine who is actually residing in the tenant’s former unit. If you think you may have been wrongfully evicted, call our office at (415) 294-4111 to talk to an experienced tenant lawyer about your case.