Sonoma Valley, county tenants fall through holes in eviction ‘safety net’

It was bad enough when Ken Brown’s wife of 31 years died of cancer in August 2020 as the pandemic raged. But now, the former Sonoma mayor and longtime city council member is facing another crisis: Eviction from his home of more than 10 years.

On June 15, Brown was served with a 60-day notice to vacate. His predicament underscores what many people don’t realize: The current state and county COVID-19 eviction bans have gaping loopholes that many tenants will fall through.

Sonoma County had the third-highest number of residential lockout evictions per 10,000 households in the nine Bay Area counties during the period between July 2020 and the end of March 2021, according to data from nonprofit news site CalMatters. The county had seven such evictions per 10,000 households, as did Napa County.

“We estimate housing-related calls have tripled during the pandemic,” said Suzanne Dershowitz, a housing policy attorney at Legal Aid of Sonoma County. Her agency received 1,827 housing-related calls from July through December 2020. Between January and March 2021, the agency fielded 713 such calls – many of which came from tenants facing eviction.

Statewide, residential lockout evictions increased dramatically in the first three months of 2021 — 3,675, compared to 4,002 in the last six months of 2020.

Eviction by a landlord to withdraw a property from the rental market is a loophole – a giant hole in the safety net the eviction restrictions are supposed to create, Dershowitz said.

The law doesn’t define what “withdrawing a property from the market” means. Worse yet, there are no penalties for a landlord who falsely makes the claim.

“The county enacted strict restrictions on evictions in February, but the landlord move-in exemption is a gap that threatens to swallow the whole rule,” the attorney said.

The reason for Brown’s eviction is murky. “Kimberly told me (the landlord) wants to do something else with the property,” Brown said, referring to Kimberly Buchanan, a property manager with Sonoma Management Inc., the company that served Brown with the 60-day notice.

Sunshine Radtke, a friend of Brown’s who started a GoFundMe page on his behalf, said, “If the management company evicts him, they can get higher rent from another tenant. Sonoma Management likes turnover because they can hike the rent.”

Buchanan declined to comment for this story.

Reached by telephone, when asked for the reason for Brown’s eviction, Brown’s landlord Frank Iavarone of San Francisco responded, “I don’t have the time now,” and refused any further comment.

The Sonoma Valley Housing Group, an affordable housing advocacy organization, sent a letter to Iavarone June 24 asking him to give Brown as much time as needed to find a new place. Iavarone has not responded, according to David Ransom, who chairs the organization.

Brown, a three-time mayor and council member for more than 16 years who stepped down in 2016, isn’t fighting the eviction. He’s actively looking for a place to live.

Dershowitz says this isn’t unusual. What she calls “lockout evictions” performed by the sheriff are only a small percentage of evictions, the attorney said.

“Many tenants simply leave when they get the notice – they self-evict,” she said.

That means that the 3,675 lockout evictions in the first three months of 2021 are only the tip of the iceberg, Dershowitz said.

Another flood of evictions may be on the way in the Sonoma Valley, according to Ransom.

“Many undocumented immigrants in the Sonoma Valley, in the Springs, maxed out their credit cards and borrowed from family members to pay their rent during the pandemic,” Ransom said. “Now they are up to their necks in debt.”

They might have been afraid to pursue rent relief for fear of alerting the authorities’ attention and ending up deported, Ransom said. Another possible reason is that some didn’t know they had legal protections from eviction for nonpayment of rent due to COVID-19.

“The state law on nonpayment of rent due to COVID-19 applies, but tenants have to submit declarations to be protected. We have been doing everything we can to get the word out,” but not everyone has gotten the news, Dershowitz said.

Information is available on the organization’s website, legalaidsc.org and via its hotline, 707-542-1290.

Dershowitz and Ransom’s groups are advocating for changes they hope will close the Ellis Act loophole and establish permanent local “just cause” ordinances.

The Ellis Act allows landlords to evict tenants to take a property off the rental market. Tenants’ groups complain that there is no regulation or enforcement mechanism to prevent landlords from using the Ellis Act to evict tenants and then quickly re-rent the property at a higher price.

Just cause ordinances establish that landlords can only evict tenants for specific reasons, like non-payment of rent or lease violations.

The Petaluma City Council voted June 28 to prioritize the adoption of a just cause ordinance and clarify what it means to take a housing unit “off the market.”

As tenants’ advocates scramble to close the loophole, people like Ken Brown are left looking for a home.

Brown said he has paid July’s rent, but paying his bills is a struggle, adding, “Jewel (Mathieson, Brown’s late wife) paid the rent with her business, Sonoma Patient Group.”

Currently, his only income is Social Security, plus a small amount from his daughter Eden Brown, 19, who lives with him and is employed part-time.

Radtke said, “In this super-tight housing market, it’s terrible to do something like that (eviction) to someone who obviously has been struggling.”

Brown has seen an outpouring of support from the Sonoma community. Lauren Cotner, chef and chief executive of Delicious Dish restaurant, said on Radtke’s GoFundMe page, “I reached out to Ken Brown 10 years ago when my business was struggling to find a location to cook out of.

“He came over to my home, not even knowing me, and gave me a list of contacts and suggestions on where to go and what to do,” Cotner added. “Were it not for Ken, we would not have secured our space and grown our business into what it is today.”