Evicting someone in California

In My Humble Opinion
1

My sister and family live in San Diego. She’s on disability for a couple of reasons, and she says she’s recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. She lives with her ‘husband’ (The Man) and their almost-18-year-old son. And a shrieking harpy.

I think The Harpy is related to The Man. Cousin or cousin-once-removed or something. She is physically and verbally abusive to my sister and The Man. My nephew is about as round as he is tall, pre-diabetic, and has a systolic blood pressure of 145. The constant stress is taking its toll on him too. Today I called my sister and The Harpy answered. I casually said I thought she’d moved out. She didn’t yell at me, but I could hear her yelling at someone after my sister got on the phone. Apparently she did not care for my comment, and my sister has been told she’s not allowed to talk to me. The Harpy needs to be removed. But my sister and The Man can’t seem to do it. The Harpy gave ‘verbal notice’ (worth the paper it’s written on) last Friday that she is moving out in 30 days. I don’t believe her, and I told my sister and The Man to give her a written 30-day notification of eviction. (The Harpy has been there since November, so 30 days ought to do it.)

For the sake of my sister and nephew, I want The Harpy out of the house. The only person on the deed is my sister, and she doesn’t need an abusive person under her own roof. I’ll talk it over with Mrs. L.A., RN, tonight, and I think Adult Protective Services might be getting a call.

Anyway, is there anything I, personally, can do to get rid of this person? Is there anything I can do for my sister to help her get rid of The Harpy?

2

Does the Harpy pay rent?

3

She does.

4

Let me caution you from personal, and painful, experience with eviction in California.

Before I begin, I advise you to seek professional legal advice. The law changes rapidly and if you don’t have up-to-the minute legal advice, you can get burned, as I was.

Hint: although things may have changed, 20 years ago there was a doctrine called an “Arietta,” named from case law, that made eviction impossible if anyone – anyone in the world of legal age – made a claim of residence at the rental site (yes, random people were bribed to provide this). It’s not difficult to avoid this claim if you know how, but it illustrates the legal pitfall an inexperienced landlord can make. So…Don’t try an eviction without professional help.

5

My experience watching Judge Judy tells me if you lock her out you’ll have to give her back her rent. If you put her belongings outside they’ll disappear and you’ll have to pay her for those. The Man has to give her written notice and wait out the 30 days to do it legitimately. Don’t harass her.

6

Rent isn’t necessarily a criteria in CA. Occupancy can establish tenancy.

Johnny L.A., with your sister’s permission, there is probably a lot you can do, but first you need to find out if you have it. If you do have it, you’ll need her to grant you rights to act as her agent in this matter. Whether she wants to grant you power of attorney or make you her property manager is up to her. If she has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, this might be the right time to discuss POA options in any case.

Different parts of CA have vastly different tenant protections. I’d start with the City she’s in and do some research. You want to look for San Diego Renter’s Rights or Agency or San Diego Landlord’s Rights from the San Diego City Webpage and start working it from there. Also look into San Diego tenant eviction and start researching the process. You are correct that written notice needs to be given, but it usually needs to be given it a specific matter such as hand delivery or certified mail, so you’ll need to find that out. You also need to find out what time frame is mandated by the City or County where she is living. Some places are 30 days. Some are much, much longer.

Secondarily, you should also have a talk with your sister and then the Sheriff’s Department about her safety. It may be that she can/should get a restraining order against The Harpy. Candidly, I do not know how it works when you get a restraining order against a tenant who lives with you. Something to ask them. You may want the Sheriff’s Department to do a welfare check on her and just do their own assessment. They can also likely point towards some of the right agencies to work with as this moves along.

I’m also going to suggest that you make a trip down there. I know the missus was just sick, but it sounds like the sort of situation where you might need to take an in-person look see, make sure the right groups are involved, file & sign any needed paperwork while you’re down there, and so on.

This sounds like a bad situation. I’m sorry to hear it. Best wishes.

(I was a landlord in CA for several years. I’ll throw out advice as I can.)

7

Seems obvious to me that either they want that rent money, or “The Man” doesn’t want to kick out this “kin”. Seems weird that you would get involved from the opposite end of the coast.

This has nothing to do with your case, but, yeah, California is a landlord’s Hell.

My family used to own apartments and single-family homes for rent in California. Nearly impossible to get someone out who didn’t necessary want to go. Couldn’t get them to pay, either. :rolleyes: A real asshole could damn near live for free for a very long time in California, with almost no recourse from the landlord. I was only a kid when we owned all that shit, but my old man had to file papers with the Sherriff and do all kinds of bullshit. I only got involved at the very last step, when I had to pack up and store all the scum-bag’s shit.

We shit-canned them all, bought nice stuff in Nevada and haven’t had a problem much since. Nevada rocks. Don’t pay your rent, and you can be on the street in 72 hours, or less.

8

You don’t go into detail, nor do you need to, but if by “physically abusive” you mean she is engaging in battery, aggravated assault, destruction or vandalization of personal property, or otherwise creating an environment where other occupants have serious concern about their physical safety due to domestic violence, your system can apply for and obtain a temporary restraining order (TRO) with a request for a Move-Out Order. Although as noted by others California law is very biased toward tenant’s rights, it is also very liberal about issuing TROs if there is clear evidence of threat or harm, and they will supersede any rights one has to tenancy. California Department of Social Services (which oversees APS) should have recommendations for lawyers to consult and may be able to facilitate an emergency TRO if there are sufficient grounds (and APS has a lot of experience with this) but don’t rely on CDSS to provide long term follow through; if you have to go the restraining order route, you need to retain your own attorney to formalize the order as a permanent injunction.

Barring that, they have to go through the process of evicting a tenant which can be particularly difficult if the tenant can claim some particlular claim to tenancy, e.g. was “promised” tenancy in perpetutity, has contributed to the maintenance and improvement of the structure without due compensation, et cetera. Musicat is correct that a lawyer should be consulted with the particulars of the case before proceeding with any actions toward eviction, and no steps should be taken to remove the tenant or her property until all of the other requirements have been fulfilled lest your sister and her family be held culpable for any damages or loss due to illegal eviction. This is an arduous process even for landlords who do not have other medical or emotional issues to deal with.

Good luck to all of you in dealing with this problem.

Stranger

9

Bwuh…huh?? You mean that if I’m delinquent on my rent, all I have to do is say “I LIVE HERE!” and there’s nothing nobody can do about it? I’d like to hear more about this.

So I guess the whole possessions-piled-up-on-the-sidewalk-like-garbage thing (as seen in the Michael Moore film Roger & Me) is also a myth?

10

SEE LAWYER!

Rent control and lawful evictions are a nightmare.

SD is more conservative than most other areas of the coast, but anyone with $500 for a schlock lawyer can make a joke of “GTFO of my house”.

I did not have a problem evicting the renters in the house I bought in SF (1983).
That was due entirely to the “renters” were about to complete their own hose and were not at all adverse to getting out of the dumpy “Student Housing” nightmare - with wallpaper peeling of, an original 1918 kitchen, etc.

I think they were most happy to be rid of the illegal sub lease creep in the basement.
(I found his Polaroids)

11

The usual rule is a Sheriff’s Deputy will do a simple eviction (the personal property on the curb deal)

But this is CA.

Trying to convince the cop that a person who has been there X years has, all of a sudden, become a physical threat just may be a problem.

If the Harpy has a record of living there she may put up a fight - esp if her current rent is a sweetheart deal.

A court case is more than a remote possibility

Welcome to CA - where everybody wants to live - even if they can’t afford it.

12

Yep, that’s about it, at least in California in the 1980’s. I hope things have changed since.

I was a landlord and leased a single-family home to a couple. The renters installed a walk-in industrial freezer contraption in the back yard without my permission and rewired the electrical box to support a business which did auto spray painting (this was a residential neighborhood). Since I lived next door, I didn’t much like the clouds of spray paint that drifted over and the auto-body noise generated.

When I confronted the tenants, they told me they were just doing this for a few weeks, but it continued after that. When I reported the zoning and safety violations to the housing authority, they said they would issue a citation to the landlord, which would fix everything. Whoops…I just reported my own violation, so I backed off.

Then the tenants stopped paying rent.

The only thing left was eviction. After getting a Nolo Press self-help eviction manual, I filed the proper legal papers, ignoring the book’s advice, “if you are reading this book more than 2 years after the copyright, it is obsolete – get an attorney or a newer edition.”

The tenants were more legally hip than I was. They asked a friend, who never stepped foot in the house, to sign a paper saying he was a resident. When that paper was shown to the judge, he dismissed the eviction action, citing a recent case called an “Arietta.”

I had to start over again with the eviction. A court clerk, off the record, gave me some advice. Instead of naming only the parties on the lease, I should include a line like “…and any additional parties who might be residing at this address.” The clerk said all attorneys were using this kind of wording to avoid my fate.

Apparently there was a case (sorry, can’t cite it) when some innocent sublettor was evicted when the renter defaulted, and she threw herself on the court’s mercy, claiming not to know about the default. The court saw the logic, and ruled against the landlord, setting a precedent.

I found out later that this inspired a thriving business (perhaps short-lived, until the loophole was closed) in making fictitious names available to renters who were fighting evictions. Anyone 18 or older, anywhere in the world, could sign a statement claiming to live there, and the eviction process would halt. Sure, it couldn’t be proved; the claimant can’t be found (since he’s in South America anyway or a fictitious name), but it takes months to determine that and to exhaust the legal safeguards.

There are people who do this for a living. Rent a home or apartment, don’t pay, play the game for as long as you can, then move out and start it again. If you do this skillfully, you can live rent-free for months or more. My tenants got about 9 months rent free and I had to fix the damage they caused, which was substantial.

13

Arrieta v. Mahon, 644 P.2d 1249 (Ca 1982).

14

Thanks, Bricker! I looked for it years ago, pre-Google, and couldn’t find it. Now you have proved my memory to be not-faulty! I’m just curious…did my mention of “Arietta” help you find it, or did you use another search method?

15

The stuff may not even disappear. The former tenant just never comes to get their worthless crap and then when they sue they claim it was gone and it was worth a fortune. And the landlord usually just throws the stuff away but the tenant claims they were locked out of the house and didn’t get a chance to get their belongings.

16

I seem to recall we had to legally store the dead-beats shit for some period after finally booting them out or risk getting further butt-fucked.

17

I see nightmare written all over this. Been there back in Vermont years ago and that is exactly what it was with a determined person that not want to leave.

18

I called Adult Protective Services and told them I was concerned for my sister’s safety. I called my sister afterward to tell her to expect a call today, and she said The Harpy was spending the night somewhere else.

19

Good opening move - but don’t expect the Service to get into a contested eviction.

They may offer testimony (written) that, in their opinion, Harpy’s presence constitutes an adverse living situation.

Just make sure she doesn’t get sister to marry her…

20

Yes. Eviction will cost about $5000 and take up to six months.

It will be far cheaper to bribe her out- payable only after she is out and you have the keys.