The deteriorating relationship and late rent from tenant

[Johnson Best]

Hello Bigger Pocket Experts,

I am facing unprecedented situation with my tenant I am under California law.

1. The relationship between us are at at its bleakest point, they were not happy I didn’t fix things in time (I was sick) and past month I have gear up the effort and fixed all of the major stuff and spent over 10 grand cash on it.  

2. Shockingly on my last visit there to monitor and wrap up the repipe work, the tenant stormed out of their house and curse me out and threaten to hit me very raw display of attitude, and I try to deescalate things down as it can probably been heard his screaming 4 houses down.  He even go, don’t you dare to walk away from me.  This has sadden me and made me realized even I am work on the issue there is no point of return and they are more mad.  I prefer to change a tenant.

3.  They have missed May rent not paid, paid June and July and now late or withheald the August rent until I fixed the remaining of the smaller stuff that they have complaint to the city.  I am truly running out of funds due to the massive repair mentioned above and they occupy my biggest house now owe almost 5 grand in rent.  I am not even sure they can come up that much money at once or just now dragging things out.

4.  They been here since Jan 2018 I have not raised rent once and the rent is unbelievably under value.  With the severe situation I double they would accept the rent hike or more than absolute min. At best another reason I want to change a tenant.

How should I go about this?  Obviously, the main goal is to be able to collect the almost 5 grand of rent they owe (2 months of rent) and later either successful hike the rent to the max allowed in CA or just find a way legally in CA to get rid of them.

Thank you for any feedback.

Johnson

[Dan H.]

These types of questions often require local knowledge to provide the correct local information.

All units in San Diego county currently fall under the Covid eviction moratorium. This is the most strict moratorium in the country.  Currently you can only evict a tenant for health and safety items.  You cannot evict for lack of payment or breaking of lease that does not have health and safety consequences.  You cannot evict to move into the unit.  You cannot evict to rehab a unit.  The eviction moratorium also prohibits rent increases.  This eviction moratorium hopefully will expire soon or be found to be illegal.  This extreme of a moratorium is very hard on Landlords and should not be a long term moratorium.  My sister in law has a tenant that has a plethora of cats in a no pet unit and is over $10k behind on rent even though she is a city employee who has received every paycheck.  The odds my sister is able to collect on missed rent is very small.  This cannot go on much longer   

You do not indicate if this is a single family residence or a unit in a multiplex.  In CA it is very critical distinction because multiplex units (with a few exceptions) fall under CA rent control. 

If the unit is not rent controlled, I suggest at the expiration of the eviction moratorium you provide 2 months notice to raise the rent to market rent plus a few hundred (the bad tenant rate) on a month to month basis.  I suspect tenant will provide notice.  They give notice and is less likely to result in claims of retribution, etc.  

if the unit is rent controlled, the options are less.  The Rent control is 5% plus local CPI, capped at 10%.  Local CPI was over 5%, so max increase is 10%.   Give tenant 2 month notice of 10% rent increase on a month to month lease.  If they are below market rent, this may not be sufficient to get them to give you notice.  Unfortunately, rent control units have few options if they do not give notice, but being month to month gives you as much flexibility as possible.  If they do not give notice, you have some options to get them out.  1) move family member into the unit 2) rehab the unit.  Rehab has to be extensive enough that tenant cannot live in unit.  Any abatement issue should suffice. 3) give notice and hope tenant does not know that notice does not apply to rent control units (hope tenant is ignorant of their rights - note this may not be legal and likely is not ethical) 4) cash for keys (I hate this option, but it is a legal option).  

Good luck