County supervisors move ahead with residential tenant protections

The tenant protections bolster those included in California's Tenant Protection Act, but only apply to specific types of housing in unincorporated areas.

photo credit: Noah Abrams/KRCB
Daysi Carreño (left) and Kathleen Holcomb (right) speak outside the Sonoma
County Board of Supervisors chambers following the second reading and full
passage of a slate of residential tenant protections for unincorporated renters.

Tenant advocates and rural renters rejoiced on Tuesday morning, when Sonoma County supervisors gave final approval to a collection of protections for renters in unincorporated areas of Sonoma County.

Patrick McDonnell, a housing attorney with Sonoma County Legal Aid, said the new protections have a particularly important section for rural Sonoma County residents.

"An emergency disaster ordinance that is essentially based on the protections the tenants had during the pandemic," McDonnell said.

McDonnell said the Covid-era rules limited evictions to cases of non-payment unrelated to Covid, threats to health and safety, and removal from the marketplace for an owner to move in.

"Rather than try to create that tool again from scratch when the hills are on fire or when we might have another pandemic, whatever the next disaster looks like; the Board of Supervisors has created an ordinance that basically when they declare an emergency and they decide that this emergency tenant protection ordinance needs to be brought into place, they have that lever already there that they can pull," McDonnell said.

McDonnell and other tenant advocates believe the disaster protection for renters is the first of its kind in the nation.

Some local landlords are none-too-pleased about the new regulations though, which include a provision allowing tenants to pay rent up to a month late, twice a year.

Jill DeProto with D&G Equity, a property management group in West Sonoma County, said it leaves landlords vulnerable as well.

"Once a tenant falls behind in rent, like at the end of the 30 day period, they can't catch up," DeProto said. "So what that does, that leaves a property owner subject to penalty fees and paying their mortgage late, especially if they depend on that rental income."

The new protections apply only to renters and landlords under county jurisdiction, not Sonoma County's nine cities.

They take affect in mid-October, but renter advocates say single family homes, which make up the bulk of the rural rental stock, are mostly exempted from the new rental rules.