Barring of Hardship Defense Devastating to Poor Tenants, Legal Group Argues

By Jorge Casuso

Fearing a "devastating" impact to poor and low-income tenants, a legal group has asked the California Supreme Court to depublish a recent Beverly Hills decision that bars evicted tenants from having their leases reinstated due to hardship.

"If courts do not have the discretion to relieve from forfeiture tenants who are facing grave hardship, our clients are likely to suffer profoundly," attorneys for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles wrote in an Oct. 7 letter to the State Supreme Court.

The foundation attorneys argued that in its far-reaching August 24 decision, the Appelate Divison of the Superior Court had incorrectly ruled that under a month-to-month tenancy - which applies to most rent-controlled units - a court could not order relief from forfeiture because "there was no lease which could be forfeited."

"The word 'lease' refers to a legal relationship," the lawyers wrote, citing a 1991 Court of Appeal decision in favor of the Santa Monica Rent Control Board.

In that decision, the court ruled that "the landlord-tenant relationship is created by a contract between the parties. This contract, known by a variety of names, may be oral or written and express or implied."

In addition, the foundation argued that "any rent control ordinance gives the tenant a right to continue in possession absent conditions set out in the ordinance."

"From a policy standpoint," the foundation attorneys wrote, "if this decision were published, it would be devastating to poor and low income tenants throughout the state, who are most disadvantaged and most in need of this relief."

The foundation estimates that there are 43,000 Unlawful Detainers filed every year in Los Angeles alone. A sample of client records showed that less than one percent of low-income tenants in eviction cases had leases. Filing extreme hardship, the foundation concluded, is a tenant's only recourse to avoid eviction.

Prior to the Superior Court's decision, Municipal Courts often granted relief to tenants who showed they were "indigent, elderly, disabled, have resided for a long time in the unit, or will otherwise suffer extreme hardship such as homelessness or disruption of children's education," the attorneys wrote.

If the decision remains published, it could have a particularly adverse effect on rent control cities like Santa Monica, the attorneys predicted.

"Given the realities of the marketplace: the current affordable housing crisis, vacancy decontrol and the inequality of bargaining power in the residential-landlord relationship," the foundation concluded, "most tenants in (rent control) jurisdictions are unable to demand that their landlords enter into written rental agreements or renewals of expired written leases."