August 2014
How Oakland Landlords Fight Rent Control
One longtime tenant's battle against rent increases sheds light on the unfair advantage landlords have in rent board disputes — and the procedural loopholes they can manipulate.
Last year, Sherman's landlords, Harold and Diane Michelsen, filed a petition with the Oakland Rent Board alleging that the property should not be subject to rent control restrictions because it became a residential unit after 1983. Properties built after that year — or ones that were not previously residential — are exempt from Oakland's rent control law.
The petition surprised Sherman, because he knew his apartment had been occupied by tenants in the 1970s. To prove it, he provided Oakland Rent Board officials with phone book records and tracked down two former tenants who submitted official statements for his case confirming that they had lived at his Occidental Street address during the 1970s.
But a hearing officer for the city's Rent Adjustment Program, which mediates disputes and enforces the city's rent control law, dismissed the evidence that Sherman presented and ruled in favor of the Michelsens. And the Oakland Rent Board, which reviews appeals, upheld the decision in favor of the landlords in July and is expected to finalize its ruling in September.
"The exemption was improperly given because of the serious errors that the hearing officer made," said Leah Hess, a private, Oakland-based housing attorney also representing Sherman. "There was very strong evidence that there might be something amiss with what the landlord was claiming."
It was at Sherman's appeal to the rent board, however, that the flaws in the process really became clear, his attorneys said. Sherman returned with a new letter from the former tenant signed under penalty of perjury and a second sworn letter from another former tenant who said he lived at the address in the 1970s. But the rent board declined to consider the new evidence, and decided not to overturn the hearing officer's decision or even send it back for another review.
The rent board is made up of six members — two tenant representatives, two landlord representatives, and two others who are supposed to be neutral. Those latter two members, however, are generally homeowners who often side with landlords in controversial cases, according to tenants' advocates. (The mayor nominates candidates and the city council approves them). In Sherman's appeal, only the two tenant representatives voted in his favor.
This was despite the fact that Richard Illgen, an Oakland deputy city attorney who advises the board, stated at the hearing that administrative officers have in the past accepted as evidence letters that were not signed under penalty of perjury. Connie Taylor, the city's Rent Adjustment Program manager, also noted at the hearing that Moroz arbitrarily accepted an unsworn declaration the landlord presented (the email from a city official), but rejected the similarly unsworn statement of the tenant (the former resident's letter).
"There is no rhyme, no reasoning behind why she treated them differently," Taylor said, according to a transcript provided by Sherman
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/how-oakland-landlords-fight-rent-control/Content?oid=4054586
