BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 2485
Page 1
CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS
AB 2485 (Dickinson and Ridley-Thomas)
As Amended August 4, 2014
2/3 vote. Urgency
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|ASSEMBLY: |71-0 |(April 24, |SENATE: |32-0 |(August 20, |
| | |2014) | | |2014) |
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Original Committee Reference: JUD.
SUMMARY : Re-establishes pilot authority, which sunset last
year, for continuation of the controlled substances-related
eviction program pursuant to Civil Code Section 3486.
Specifically, this bill :
1)Re-establishes authority, which sunset last year, for
continuation of the Civil Code Section 3486 pilot program that
conditionally allows the city attorney and prosecutors in
participating cities to bring eviction proceedings against
tenants for committing nuisance violations involving unlawful
drugs or controlled substances, as specified.
2)Revises specified information and data required to be reported
annually by Sacramento to the California Research Bureau
(CRB), and requires the CRB to submit a brief report
evaluating the merits of the pilot program to the Senate and
Assembly Judiciary Committees by specified dates in 2016 and
2018.
3)Declares that this is an urgency statute to protect public
safety and makes findings that a special law is necessary to
limit application of the law only to specified jurisdictions.
4)Authorizes the City of Sacramento to participate in the pilot
program, and establishes a January 1, 2019, sunset date for
the pilot program.
The Senate amendments :
1)Require a court hearing an unlawful detainer action pursuant
to the pilot program to enter a specified order depending on
whether grounds for an eviction or a partial eviction have
been established, and allows the court discretion to order
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immediate eviction or stay the eviction if the tenant can
demonstrate hardship, as specified.
2)Provide that a property owner shall only be required to pay
the costs of investigation, discovery, and reasonable
attorney's fees upon acceptance of assignment and filing of
the unlawful detainer action by the city prosecutor or
attorney.
3)Increase the reporting requirements to include two additional
pieces of information regarding the tenant against whom an
action is filed, and condition the authority to file an
unlawful detainer pursuant to this program upon a good faith
effort by the participating jurisdiction to collect and timely
report all information to the CRB, as provided.
4)Authorize the City of Oakland to participate in the pilot
program.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations
Committee, pursuant to Senate Rule 28.8, negligible state costs.
COMMENTS : This bill seeks to re-establish pilot authority for
continuation of the controlled substances-related eviction
program pursuant to Civil Code Section 3486. With respect to
the City of Sacramento, authority for its participation in the
program was first established by AB 530 (Krekorian), Chapter
244, Statutes of 2009, but that authority lapsed on December 31,
2013, pursuant to the sunset date in that bill when no statute
was subsequently enacted to continue the program without
interruption. According to the bill's sponsor, the City of
Sacramento, this bill is needed to correct that unfortunate
legislative oversight and ensure continued implementation and
evaluation of the program - which Sacramento plays a key role in
by virtue of its active participation and reporting of data.
As recently amended, the bill now additionally authorizes a
second city - the City of Oakland - to participate in the pilot
program, and conditions authority to file an unlawful detainer
pursuant to this program upon a good faith effort by both
participating jurisdictions to collect and timely report all
information to the CRB, as provided, for further study and
evaluation of the program by 2019, when the pilot program is
scheduled to sunset.
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According to the author, the pilot authority under the Civil
Code Section 3486 program has been and continues to be an
important tool needed to protect public safety. The author
states that the bill will allow city attorneys to assist
landlords who are intimidated from bringing eviction proceedings
against tenants engaged in drug-related crimes and illegal
possession of weapons or ammunition on the premises.
Participating cities (including Sacramento) have had tremendous
success prosecuting evictions against persons possessing
controlled substances and illegal weapons. These measures are
important components of cities' efforts to improve neighborhood
safety. Many cities have found this program helpful in making
their neighborhoods safer and this program should be renewed for
an additional four years so that further information can be
gathered to evaluate its overall effectiveness."
The Civil Code Section 3486 pilot program authorizes city
attorneys and prosecutors in participating jurisdictions, rather
than the landlord or property owner, to initiate eviction
proceedings against tenants for committing nuisance violations
involving controlled substances. This special statutory
authority is unusual because traditionally only the landlord has
authority to file an unlawful detainer against a tenant for
recovery of possession of the property.
Under the pilot programs, a city attorney or city prosecutor may
file an unlawful detainer action against any person for creating
a nuisance on the property by using or allowing the premises to
be used for a controlled substance purpose. The city's action
would be predicated on its belief that a specified controlled
substance offense has occurred on the subject real property
based upon an arrest report or other law enforcement report.
In any unlawful detainer action brought by the city prosecutor
or city attorney under the pilot programs, the public prosecutor
must first give 30-calendar days of written notice documenting
the alleged nuisance or illegal activity to the landlord and the
offending tenant. This notice is designed to give the landlord
the first opportunity to file an unlawful detainer action
against the offending tenant. The landlord may then either file
the action or assign the right to bring the unlawful detainer
action to the public prosecutor. If the landlord fails to file
an unlawful detainer action, or fails to prosecute such an
action diligently and in good faith, the city attorney or city
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prosecutor may file the action and may join both the landlord
and the offending tenant as co-defendants. Recent amendments to
the bill provide that a property owner shall only be required to
pay the costs of investigation, discovery, and reasonable
attorney's fees upon acceptance of assignment and filing of the
unlawful detainer action by the city prosecutor or attorney.
As recently amended, the bill requires a court hearing an
unlawful detainer action under the pilot program to enter a
specified order depending on whether grounds for an eviction or
a partial eviction have been established. Specifically, the
court has discretion to: 1) dismiss the action; 2) order
immediate eviction or partial eviction; or 3) stay the execution
of an eviction order for a reasonable time if the tenant can
show, by clear and convincing evidence, that immediate eviction
would pose extreme hardship that outweighs the benefit to the
community.
Participation in the program also requires the city attorney to
report specified information to the CRB about city attorney
involvement, property owner response, court processing, and
tenant reaction. The law requires CRB, in turn, to evaluate and
report the merits of the program to the Legislature. As
recently amended, the bill provides that the authority to file
an unlawful detainer pursuant to this program is conditioned
upon a good faith effort by the participating jurisdictions to
collect and timely report all information to the CRB, as
provided.
To allow for better study and evaluation of the program, the
author has adopted several recommendations from the CRB to
revise the data items currently required to be reported.
According to the CRB, these revisions are intended to facilitate
information reported at the individual case level (i.e., for
each instance a notice is provided to the tenant) rather than at
an aggregate level, and to also make reporting less burdensome
by requiring data to be uniformly reported in a template
designed by CRB.
The bill contains a sunset date of January 1, 2019, for all
participating jurisdictions, which allows the CRB four more
years to collect data and examine still unresolved research
questions about the program's effectiveness and implementation.
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Analysis Prepared by : Anthony Lew / JUD. / (916) 319-2334
FN: 0004414