1. AB 2050 (Lee and Carrillo) Ellis Act – Sponsored by C.A.R. and signed into law in 1985, the Ellis Act prohibits local government agencies from forcing property owners to continue operating their private properties as rental businesses. AB 2050, which is basically a reintroduction of AB 854 (Lee and Carrillo), weakens the Ellis Act by, among other things, forcing property owners to stay in the rental business for at least 5 years before seeking to use the Ellis Act to go out of business.

    

   AB 2050 is scheduled to be heard in the Assembly Judiciary Committee on April 19^th.

    

2. AB 2469 (Wicks) Statewide Rental Registry – AB 2469 establishes a mandatory statewide rental registry that forces most housing providers to submit, whenever a lease is initiated, altered, or terminated, proprietary intrusive business information to the California Department of Housing and Community Development. Those housing providers who fail to submit this information would be unable to raise the rent or evict a tenant – even an unscrupulous tenant engaged in criminal activity.

   AB 2469 is scheduled to be heard in the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee on April 20^th.

3. AB 2710 (Kalra) Residential Real Property: Right of First Offer – This bill, which applies to any residential multifamily property and any single-family home or condo that currently has a tenant, prohibits rental property owners from selling their property to someone other than a so-called “qualified entity” for up to almost one year. The rental property owner who wishes to sell their property must first provide a “disclosure package” to each “qualified entity.” Depending upon circumstances such as the type of property and the entity’s ability to secure financing, the bill provides that this process could potentially take anywhere from several months to up to almost 1 year.

          AB 2710 is scheduled to be heard in the Assembly Judiciary Committee on April 19^th.

   The last bill proposed to create a huge new bureaucracy which would have within its ambit the power to create, build, and acquire housing including government owned and operated housing.  A sense of the potential cost of such an agency can be taken from the housing agency for the City of New York which currently spends approximately 1.4 billion dollars on personnel costs alone to administer the city’s housing department.

4. AB 2053 (Lee) Social Housing Act – AB 2053 proposes to establish the Social Housing Act and would create the California Housing Authority (Authority) to produce and acquire all types of housing developments (including market rate ownership housing) on behalf of the authority, local housing authorities, and other non-profit housing providers. C.A.R. opposes AB 2053 because it seeks to create a new and expensive statewide Housing Authority that will have vast unintended adverse consequences for the housing market. The bill fails to create home ownership opportunities and creates a new state bureaucracy with very broad rights to participate in the housing market as it sees fit to accomplish its wide mission that permits its interference in all levels of rental housing, while also having the authority to remove market rate housing from the ownership market.

AB 2053 is scheduled to be heard in the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee on April 20^th.