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VACANCY CONTROL BY STEALTH
You have a right to get out of the rental market under the Ellis Act. The Rent Board has already made that as hard as possible by imposing the toughest and most expensive relocation rules in the state, but it continues to push an even more extreme agenda.
On March 17th the Board asked our City Council to look at restrictions that mean you or your heirs can't return a property to the rental market without being punished for their change of plans.
The proposed rules:
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Charge punitive damages to owners who change their plans within two years;
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Implement vacancy control by stealth for five years after a property is taken off the rental market, even though the residents of Pasadena voted against vacancy control in November's Prop 33 ballot;
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Create an unfair burden for property owners to track former tenants for ten years, when even the IRS only requires records be kept for seven years;
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Block the redevelopment of ageing housing stock in Pasadena, by placing unreasonable burdens on replacement construction for five years.
None of this is fair. If tenants are moved out to take a property off the rental market, you must already compensate them with relocation payments that can exceed $38,000. If circumstances force you to return your property to renting, you could be fined thousands of dollars, and the former tenant gets to live in the refurbished place for the same rent as before, even though you paid them relocation!
The Council will be considering this again in April. Write to the City Council or to your Council member to remind them that this tenant "double dip" is yet another unfair burden on housing providers, while it also makes it hard for us to return property to the rental market while we're in a housing crisis.
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