Updated Sept. 14, 1:29 p.m.
The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday declined to move forward with a proposal aiming to strengthen renters’ protections from harassment by landlords.
The decision came about a month after a similar tenant anti-harassment ordinance failed to get enough support from a Sacramento City Council committee.
If passed, the proposal would create county rules prohibiting landlords from threatening tenants with physical harm, refusing to accept rent payments, removing housing services to try to cause tenants to move and retaliating against renters for asserting their rights under the ordinance. The draft ordinance proposed allowing renters in unincorporated areas to sue landlords for $2,000 to $5,000 per violation and an additional $5,000 if they are over age 62.
Like they urged in city hearings, landlord and real estate groups asked supervisors to reject the proposal. They argued state laws cover many of the issues and the ordinance could lead to unnecessary lawsuits.
But tenants rights organizations and renters shared experiences of landlords violating existing laws, such as refusing to make repairs to units considered legally unlivable. They added a county ordinance would only affect landlords who harass or retaliate against renters, not those who follow the rules.
Supervisor Patrick Kennedy said he proposed the ordinance after seeing and hearing about issues of apartment landlords not fixing air conditioning, towing renters’ cars from their parking spots and threatening to bring in Immigration and Customs Enforcement. None of the other supervisors seconded his motion to approve it.
“These are not just isolated incidents; these are happening in all five of our districts,” Kennedy said during the meeting. “And I hope this will really start a community conversation that needs to be had so that we can really protect those who are most vulnerable in our community.”
Supervisors Sue Frost, Pat Hume and Phil Serna said they could not support the proposal. They called it duplicative of state laws and repeated concerns raised by representatives from the Sacramento Realtors Association and California Apartment Association.
Multiple renters who spoke at the meeting claimed supervisors who have accepted campaign donations from the two organizations had a conflict of interest. Hume reported accepting $5,000 from the apartment association in 2022, CapRadio found in a partial review of finance filings. The apartment association also donated $2,350 to Frost in January 2020, but Serna hasn’t reported receiving contributions from either organization between June 2023 and January 2020.
“You can make whatever allegations about campaign contributions you'd like, but you know, I've been on the side of property management,” Hume said. “And just as you cannot paint a broad brush and say that all landlords are bad, you cannot use the same broad brush to say that all tenants are good. And so if you put these regulations into place, there's just as much of an opportunity to be abused on the other side.
Supervisor Rich Desmond referenced the recent city of Sacramento discussions over a tenant anti-harassment ordinance and called for a consistent county-wide effort around renters’ rights education, resources and laws. He requested county staff, including the District Attorney’s and Sheriff’s offices, hold a workshop on the subject before the end of the year.
Council member Caity Maple proposed the draft ordinance at the city level. In August, the law and legislation committee voted for staff to work on other tenant policies instead of her proposal. Maple’s Chief of Staff Ryan Brown said the office is trying to negotiate a timeline for the proposal, but couldn’t give further details on Wednesday.
The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, or ACCE, advocated for both the city and county tenant anti-harassment ordinances. The city proposal was stronger because it would require landlords to pay renters’ legal fees and wouldn’t set a limit for how much money tenants could win in court, ACCE organizer Monica Madrid said in an interview after the board discussion. But the county version had more robust rules on retaliation.
Madrid pointed out the majority of the roughly 30 people who gave public comments on Tuesday urged the board to support the ordinance.
“It does not seem like the Board of Supervisors really cares about the tenants in Sacramento County,” Madrid said.
The board could revisit the proposal for a tenant anti-harassment ordinance at any time, county spokesperson Kim Nava said in an email.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect whether the California Apartment Association has donated to Supervisors Sue Frost and Phil Serna between 2020 and 2023.
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