Different Bay Area cities have different eviction protections. San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley provide for more eviction protection than many other communities, resulting in more cases of wrongful eviction.
For example, San Francisco has 16 just causes for eviction, and if a landlord evicts you without having one of those just causes, that landlord has most likely violated the law. This would allow the tenant to file a lawsuit for wrongful eviction. The 16 just causes that allow a landlord to legally evict a tenant in San Francisco are the following:
- Failure to pay rent;
- Breach of lease;
- Committing a nuisance;
- Using the premises for an illegal purpose;
- A tenant has refused to execute a written extension or renewal of the lease under materially similar terms;
- Refusing landlord lawful access to the rental unit after written notice to cease;
- The tenant holding at the end of the term of the oral or written agreement is a subtenant not approved by the landlord;
- “Owner Move-In” and “Relative Move-In” evictions;
- “Condominium Conversion” evictions;
- The landlord seeks to recover possession in good faith in order to demolish or to otherwise permanently remove the rental unit from housing use;
- The landlord seeks in good faith to remove temporarily the unit from housing use in order to be able to carry out capital improvements or rehabilitation work and has obtained all the necessary permits;
- The landlord seeks to recover possession in good faith in order to carry out substantial rehabilitation and has obtained all the necessary permits;
- The landlord wishes to withdraw from rent or lease all rental units within any detached physical structure (“Ellis Act” evictions);
- The landlord seeks in good faith to temporarily recover possession of the unit solely for the purpose of effecting lead remediation;
- The landlord seeks to recover possession in good faith in order to demolish or to otherwise permanently remove the rental unit from housing use in accordance with the terms of a development agreement entered into by the City under Chapter 56 of the San Francisco Administrative Code;
- Expiration of a tenant’s “Good Samaritan Status.”
The most common wrongful eviction cases that we see are fraudulent owner move-in evictions. One of San Francisco’s just causes for eviction is for “owner move-ins.” For this type of eviction to be legal, the owner must intend to occupy the property and reside there as a principal place of residence for at least three years.
These wrongful eviction cases can be flagrant and sometimes the landlord doesn’t attempt to comply with the actual move-in requirement. Occasionally, they will not actually move in and put it back on the rental market, or they’ll move in for a short period of time and then rent it out again.
Another type of wrongful eviction case we see frequently is when the landlord simply doesn’t follow the eviction process prescribed by law. Whether the landlord is unfamiliar with the formalities or just doesn’t care, they must file the proper paperwork and give the tenant proper notice of the eviction.
For example, we’ve seen instances where the landlord just gives their tenant a piece of paper informing them that they have to move out — maybe because the landlord wants to sell the property which would be more valuable if empty, or they want to raise the rent in excess of the rent-controlled limits. Those evictions are in violation of the law and the rental agreement, giving rise to a case for wrongful eviction.