Tenant`s belongings after eviction / Santa Rosa, CA

[Mikhail Petrenko]

Hi everyone!

I evicted non-paying tenants in March right before COVID.

I moved their belongings (obvious crap, like 20 yo sofa or non-flat screen TVs) to the local storage (spent over $1200 to do that and notified former tenants properly) and started to rehab the house (spent $15k up to date!).

They declined to pay all costs (and complained that I should not charge for moving/transportation costs, just for costs of the storage). 

California CIV 1965 (b) (1) states clearly:

So, 60 days passed since they were evicted, they wrote me a bunch of crap texts/ threats, etc.

I am going just to haul away this junk from the storage and do not pay storage fees anymore.

They complain now I could not do it because their sh** worth more than $700.

Any ideas of what to do?

[Brian Burke]

There is a specific process that you have to go through, unfortunately.  If the stuff is worth less than the threshold amount you can dispose of it.  But you'd better be prepared to justify your valuation.  Maybe have a thrift shop appraiser write up a valuation or something similar.

If it is worth more than the threshold amount, you are required to store it for a period of time (you've done that already) and if the owner of the "stuff" doesn't reimburse you for your costs in that period of time you'll have to conduct a public auction.  From the auction proceeds you first reimburse yourself for the costs, and anything remaining goes to the evicted tenant.  I have no data to support this, but if I were a betting man I'd put my money on landlords recovering less than their expenses 99.9% of the time, meaning the tenant gets nothing.

It's important that you do it right.  I know that sounds ridiculous but one time I did it exactly right and still got sued.  I won the suit which was a total shakedown lawsuit but it cost my insurance company a million dollars to defend the lawsuit and we were in jury trial for six weeks.  This was in Santa Rosa as well so I'm not talking about some far-off incident that doesn't apply to you.

For ultimate protection, hire an attorney to advise you.  If you are a do-it-yourself'er you can read the civil code sections related to disposing and auctioning of the abandoned property and follow it to the letter. 

And there is another option--you settle.  Maybe you agree to turn over all of the property for $X, even though it's less than you've paid, in exchange for a general release.  It reduces your risk and is better than just throwing the stuff away, in which case you get $0, plus a trash hauling bill.