A Means & Method Plan is required by City of Beverly Hills whenever construction work will significantly impact tenants. The purpose of the plan is to inform tenants about the work and to protect tenants from construction impacts. The Plan must be approved by the rent stabilization office before the property owner can obtain the necessary permit. But the Means & Method Plan process works better in theory than practice. Let us explain!
Candidates Julian Gold, Lili Bosse and Lori Greene Gordon kicked-off their campaigns at 11 a.m., noon and 12:30 p.m respectively. (The other two candidates on the ballot did not hold a kick-off event.) Tightly-scheduled and even overlapping campaign events are the rule for these kick-offs and thankfully they are often in the flats so the only challenge is to time one’s arrival with time to graze, catch the speech and then move on.
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Ringing in a new year is an opportunity to look back over the past year and it started with a bang: four city council study sessions to finalize the rent stabilization ordinance. But it ended with a whimper. Council created a Rent Stabilization Commission but today it exists only in an ordinance. We’re still waiting on it. Let’s take a look back at 2019 for the past year’s developments in rent stabilization.
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On March 3rd voters in Beverly Hills will go to the polls to fill two available seats for city council. The outcome will affect the final rent stabilization ordinance and that makes this an important contest! But it differs from past elections in another way too: the state’s recent California Voter Participation Rights Act has ushered-in innovations like an 11-day voting period and a new electronic ballot-marking device that will change how we elect candidates.
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A Means & Method Plan is required by City of Beverly Hills whenever construction work will significantly impact tenants. The purpose of the plan is to inform tenants about the work and to protect tenants from construction impacts. The Plan must be approved by the rent stabilization office before the property owner can obtain the necessary permit. But the Means & Method Plan process works better in theory than practice. Let us explain!
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The State Civil Code is clear that “clean and sanitary” premises is a responsibility shared by both landlords and tenants. The tenant must keep her reasonably clean, of course, and the landlord, according to the law, must keep the common areas “in every part clean, sanitary, and free from all accumulations of debris, filth, rubbish, garbage, rodents, and vermin.” As many tenants know that is not the case when basic maintenance goes wanting.
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The Beverly Hills Bar Association Barristers today organized a free landlord tenant legal seminar at the Roxbury Park community center. Billed as a ‘pro bono legal clinic’ the event was more a presentation of relevant rental housing regulations punctuated by by audience questions. For tenants with specific questions there were individual consultations. This was not a city event. However it was timely given the coming changes in state law that will affect tenants. Here’s the recap.
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Beverly Hills landlord Stephen Copen’s properties are often an object lesson to fellow landlords: When we neglect to repair our residential rental property the inevitable result will be deterioration, decay, and ultimately, a hazard we visit upon our community. That’s the lesson we can all take from 156 South Reeves today. Just take a look at that overhead garage door that fronts on Charleville. It has deteriorated so significantly that it now sags and menaces passersby with exposed, rusty nails. How did it come to this?
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Beverly Hills voters will elect two councilmembers at our upcoming municipal election scheduled for Tuesday, March 3, 2020. For residents who rent this is an important election. Because the rent stabilization ordinance has yet to be finalized, the incoming councilmembers will have real influence over key aspects like the allowed annual rent increase and relocation fees and more. But many other aspects of rental housing regulation are affected too. It is crucial we have a city council that is supportive of tenants’ interests. After all we are more than half of all city households! Here is a look at the announced candidates.
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City of Beverly Hills held its second landlord education workshop and on the agenda were the city’s Mills Act historic preservation incentive and the rent stabilization ordinance’s rent adjustment process. The Mills Act is a tool our city can use to encourage the maintenance and preservation of local register-eligible multifamily apartments. The rent adjustment allows a landlord to petition for a rent increase higher than would otherwise be allowed.
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This Tuesday evening City Council will hear a request from Metro to allow construction (specifically station pilings) to continue throughout the holiday period, prior to Thanksgiving and extending through New Years Day. The issue is whether to require Metro to adhere to the schedule already formalized in a memorandum of understanding with the city, or to grant a waiver to allow that work to continue — and if so under what conditions. Will you be affected?
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City of Beverly Hills recently divided the community education workshop into separate tenant and landlord sessions. We recapped the August 12th tenant session and here we look at the September 12th landlord session, RSO Basics and Updates for Housing Providers. With two additional landlord sessions in coming months focused on specific topics like rental unit registration, turnout for this basics session was pretty light
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