City of Beverly Hills this month declared a state of emergency and adopted an eviction moratorium that would put the break on residential evictions for non-payment of rent (and even prevent no-fault evictions when otherwise allowed by law). This Tuesday at 2:30 pm city council will consider revising that moratorium to make it much more burdensome for tenants to qualify for forbearance.
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Governor Gavin Newsom has issued an executive order imposing a statewide moratorium on residential and commercial evictions for non-payment of rent. Effective March 27th, and extending through May 31st, the order compliments an earlier order that only allowed localities to prohibit evictions for non-payment. Beverly Hills was among the earliest in the Southland to do so. What does the statewide moratorium say, and how does our local moratorium compare?
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One year ago Beverly Hills city council formally created a new Rent Stabilization Commission to discuss changes to the rent stabilization ordinance and to decide certain disputes between tenants and landlords. Standing up the new commission signaled city council support for the rent stabilization program, but more immediately it heralded the next step in our ongoing three-year process to revise the ordinance. We anticipated commission appointments soon but then the city erroneously sent out letters announcing it. Here is a look at who will be appointed next Tuesday.
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Beverly Hills city council has unanimously agreed to impose a moratorium on residential rental evictions for non-payment of rent if coronavirus can be demonstrated to be a contributing factor. The process for adjudicating whether a factor is or is not material has yet to be established but for now the prohibition is effective immediately. Symbolically it puts Beverly Hills in the company of cities that put the welfare of tenants first. We thank Mayor John Mirisch for making sure that this key protection was considered by city council during its unprecedented emergency council meeting today.
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South Crescent Drive homeowners last week petitioned to restrict visitor parking on their block. A split commission agreed: residents there accommodate visitor parking and that means inconvenience for the petitioner because he can’t park in front of his home. The test for the commission was to balance the petitioners’ interests against negative impacts to nearby residents and in our view the commission failed. Here is why that matters.
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Homeowners are petitioning the city to modify the preferential parking permit zone on the 200 block of South Crescent. Their objective is to prevent any visitor from parking on their street. While the proposed ‘No Parking Anytime, Permit Q Exempt’ designation could benefit fewer than 40 homeowners, it would make curb parking more difficult for hundreds of multifamily households south of Wilshire. Street parking is already a challenge. This new designation would make it worse by pushing day & nighttime parking demand from Crescent to our blocks.
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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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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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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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