Rental property.

(1) Under the Ellis Act, public entities generally are prohibited from adopting any statute, ordinance, or regulation, or taking any administrative action, to compel the owner of residential real property to offer or to continue to offer accommodations in the property for rent or lease. The act defines accommodations subject to the act to mean either residential rental units in any detached physical structure containing 4 or more residential rental units or, with respect to a detached physical structure containing 3 or fewer residential rental units, the residential rental units in that structure and in any other structure located on the same parcel of land. Existing law declares that it is the intent of the Legislature in enacting the Ellis Act to supersede any holding, or portion of the holding, of a specified case, to the extent that the holding, or portion of the holding, conflicts with this chapter, so as to permit landlords to go out of business. This bill would define, for purposes of the act, "to go out of business" to mean to discontinue in the business or occupation of being a landlord. (2) Existing law authorizes, subject to specified provisions, any public entity that has in effect any system of rent control to require the owner to notify the entity of an intention to withdraw those accommodations from rent or lease. This authorization provides that the rent control system may establish the date on which the accommodations are withdrawn from rent or lease 120 days from the delivery in person or by first-class mail of that notice to the public entity, unless the tenant or lessee is at least 62 years of age or disabled and has lived in his or her accommodations for at least one year prior to the date of delivery to the public entity of the notice of intent to withdraw, in which case the date of withdrawal of the accommodations of that tenant or lessee is required to be extended to one year after the date of delivery of that notice to the public entity. Existing law specifies that this one-year extension occurs only if the tenant or lessee gives written notice of his or her entitlement to an extension to the owner within 60 days of the date of delivery to the public entity of the notice of intent to withdraw. This bill would, instead, specify that the rent control system of a public entity may require that the one-year extension applies to all tenancies in the applicable accommodations if a tenant or lessee who is at least 62 years of age or disabled has lived in the accommodations for at least one year prior to the delivery of notice to a public entity and gives the required 60-day notice to the owner. This bill would require an owner, as applicable in these circumstances, to notify all tenants of the one-year extension. This bill would make conforming changes to related provisions.