Sonoma County Bankruptcy Lawyer Blog

This is an experiment. Most tenants can't afford to pay hourly for representation. Lawyers can't afford to be obligated to do full representation with no guarantee of payment. There are a few UD cases I'll take because attorneys fees may be available and the tenant qualifies for low-income assistance, but for the most part tenants, like any other clients, have to pay the bills.

So here's an alternative approach, which keeps in line with how Legal Aid works. We start with a $99 special - A hard-hitting package of information that explains the unlawful detainer process in Sonoma County and other non-rent-control areas, the various legal maneuvers available to you and how to conduct discovery PLUS a 40-minute initial consultation.

After that, we'll handle your tenant matter on a limited-scope basis, in which you represent yourself in the matter, but we handle document preparation and appear in court on a "special appearance" basis. If the matter gets to the trial date, we'll "substitute" in to handle the trial.

You pay a flat-fee for services as-you-go, so you know what things cost, and if you ever feel like you can't afford to go forward with representation, you can carry the matter forward on your own.

I'll post more about this soon

I have met several clients recently from Santa Rosa, to Sebastopol and Monte Rio, even calls from San Francisco who really have no idea of how the eviction process works in places like Sonoma County. San Francisco, Alameda and a few other locations in the Bay Area are different. Rent control and strict local rules controlling landlord-tenant law apply. In the rest of the state. So here's a basic guide to eviction procedures for landlords and tenants.

Notice - There are several kinds of notice depending on circumstances, but notice needs to be legally sufficient. That means that a letter saying "I'm giving you 30 days notice" is not sufficient. It needs to be clear and unambiguous. The most common types of notice:

• Three-day notice to pay rent or quit. Notice the choice: "pay rent" or "quit." Landlords trying to get the rent money need to offer that choice. And here's something to be on the alert for. Partial payment of the rent, even $1, probably satisfies the notice unless it explicitly included nonwaiver language: "acceptance of partial payment does not constitute waiver of the notice."

  
  

• 30-day or 60-day notice. In non-rent control counties, landlords can simply decide to have a tenant move on for no stated reason. If the tenant has been there less than a year, a 30-day notice is all that's needed; if more than a year, 60 days are required.
• 90-day notice for tenants in foreclosed, non-owner occupied homes. Under state law, tenants renting homes that have been sold at foreclosure sale are entitled to 60-day notice, regardless of their time in the home. Under the federal Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act, tenants get 90 days or the remaining time on the lease.
• 3-day notice to cure covenants or quit/3-day notice to quit. Finally, if the tenant has broken the rules of the lease agreement, the landlord can either give them three days to address the problem, or if the breach cannot be "cured," simply given them three days to leave.

All of these notice terms can be altered by contract. In the next day or two, I'll look at the defenses that are available when different notices are used.

Continue reading "Sonoma County eviction, part 1: Notices." »

From the New York Daily News:

Rosemary Shelton, 49, says she and her children are in a homeless shelter after Samantha Zangrillo (in photo), a Long Island nail salon owner, allowed raw sewage to seep into their two-bedroom Springfield Gardens flat.

Shelton's lawyer Alexander Urbelis says the two-story home also mysteriously caught fire days before an August court hearing.

No criminal charges have been filed.

Urbelis mocked Zangrillo's claim that she doesn't have the money to repair the two-family home's boiler or pay the electric bill.

He said Zangrillo's online Web profile suggests otherwise.

"Despite her repeated claims of abject poverty, on one such profile, respondent has listed her interests as partying and shopping," Urbelis writes in court papers.

Anyone who's tried to get a loan mod through HAMP (Home Affordable Modification Program) knows it's mostly a joke. The program is so voluntary for banks, that somehow most people wind up not qualifying. And then going into foreclosure.

But Bankruptcy Courts around the country are trying to use the power of the judiciary to force banks to modify loans. In Rhode Island and New York, courts have loss mitigation programs that require banks to be transparent in their loan mod programs, according to John Rao, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center in Boston.

"These programs do not require servicers or lenders to implement a particular loss mitigation option," Rao said. "Instead, they set a standard for transparency and accountability in the foreclosure process that is often lacking without this intervention."

"We've known for some time that the large loan servicers play all sorts of games to slow down and derail the modification process, and earlier this month learned that they are playing fast and loose with the foreclosure process itself," Whitehouse said at the hearing, held at Rhode Island Housing's downtown offices.

Hmm, perhaps a similar program could be started in hard-hit California...

It's well known that Los Angeles has been cracking down on its dispensaries for a while now. Recently the city took a new tack - threatening landlords with legal action for renting to illegal dispensaries.

Now a L.A. Superior Court judge has issued an injunction blocking the city from taking threatened legal action including daily fines, jail time and loss of the occupancy permit, the L.A. Times reports.

Continue reading "Landlords of Illegal pot dispensary tenants protected, CA judge says" »

Santa Rosa, CA - If you're in foreclosure and your home is about to be sold at auction, here's what you need to know. Once the auction takes place, there's a new owner of the house - either the foreclosing bank or a third-party buyer. And that new owner is going to serve you with a three-day notice to quit.

Does that mean you have to git in three days? Hardly. Case in point is a case I just settled. As you should be aware, a notice is just the first step in an eventual eviction. (First comes the notice, then an unlawful detainer lawsuit, and finally the sheriff eviction).

My clients were served with a lawsuit brought by Fannie Mae in early October, evicting them from their Rohnert Park home. They desperately wanted to be able to stay through the end of November. I attempted to call FNMA's attorneys numerous times; I never got through.

My response was to file a "demurrer" attacking the sufficiency of the complaint. It was a very brief complaint that claimed compliance with the foreclosure statutes but didn't detail any of the foreclosure steps. Even so, it was probably sufficient but worth making an argument over.

On the eve of the hearing on the demurrer, I was miraculously able to get the lawyer on the phone - the same lawyer who had not responded to any of my prior calls - and they agreed to settle the case giving us until not only the end of November but through the first weekend in December. No attorneys fees or costs. Just a stipulation for entry of judgment and a promise to leave the place "broom-clean."

Unlike in standard landlord cases, where a wide range of facts could provide solid defenses to unlawful detainers, in foreclosure cases there's little opportunity to stop an eviction after foreclosure. (More on that later.) But a little litigation engagement can result in very useful settlements.