All Forum Posts by: Beverly Hong

Work on getting rid of her.  Why do you keep renewing her lease every year?  If she's not on an annual lease, then give her notice.  Tell her if she can't keep control of the dog, then it needs to go. Having ESA paperwork doesn't mean the pet can do whatever it wants.

Start talking to a lawyer about your options.  It will cost you to get her out.  As someone else said ask about options of moving in a family member for a year or major rehab.

As you likely know CA has sb1482 so you cannot simply terminate the tenancy (no amount of notice suffices even if on month to month lease).   In addition there are areas in Los Angeles that have stricter rent control than the state wide rent control.  I do not have knowledge of Los Angeles local rent control ordinance but statewide the “no fault eviction” (terrible name) has only a few valid reasons.  The most common is to move in family or a rehab extensive enough that unit cannot be occupied.  Abatement would qualify.  Does the unit have textured ceilings and over 50 years old?  Remove the ceiling texture in that instance is an abatement issue.  State wide this requires one month rent to tenant and at least 60 days notice in your case.   Note local rules could be more extreme.  

You should have provided a new lease when you took over.  By sb1482 there cannot be a substantial change in lease terms but requiring notice to introduce animals, requiring keeping public/common areas free of junk, requiring her animal to be leashed in public/common areas, to require instant pet pick up in public/common areas are all reasonable terms, require the animal to not be a nuisance to other tenants (jumping on definitely is a nuisance, but I usually mean this to mean the dog cannot have excessive barking) and would be difficult for tenant to state are substantial change of terms as all those are reasonable requirements. 

Now to address the ESA…  have an ESA policy.  1) use petscreening.com to screen out bogus ESAs.  They probably flag a small percentage of bogus ESA authorizations but just using them discourages bogus ESAs 2) require all ESA authorizations be AB468 compliant.  I require the medical provider to explicitly state they are aware of AB468 requirements.  The implication is that the provider reads AB468 and understands the punishment associated with bogus ESA authorizations (even if no one has ever been charged) 3) meet the ESA.  If it is not behaved such that you would not accept it as a pet, reject it.  Let them do something about it as the ESA rules are not intended to accommodate misbehaved or vicious animals. 

I also suggest you be leery of following well intended guidance from those unfamiliar with the rules of your jurisdiction/state (and why I address statewide rent control ordinance but state I do not know if your jurisdiction has more extreme rules).  

Address this issue and learn from it.  

Good luck