Ellis Act relocation rules in Los Angeles

The Ellis Act exists because rent stabilization would otherwise force a landlord to stay in business. It is the state's answer to that: an owner may always stop being a landlord. What it is not is a general eviction power, and almost every dispute about an Ellis notice is a dispute about that distinction.

The withdrawal covers the entire property. Every rental unit on it leaves the market at the same time, including the ones whose tenants the owner would have been happy to keep. An Ellis notice aimed at one unit in a multi-unit building is worth questioning on that basis alone.

The city administers what happens next. The Ellis Act gives the right to withdraw; the Los Angeles Municipal Code sets the notice periods, the relocation amounts, the filing the owner has to make with the LA Housing Department and the restrictions that follow the building afterwards. So there are two bodies of rules in play, and the city's are the ones with the dates and the money in them.

Because the owner has to file, there is a record. LAHD knows which properties have been withdrawn and when, and that record is the reference point for everything in the later sections: the rent restriction, the right of return and the liability window all run from the withdrawal date rather than from the day you moved out.

A withdrawal runs 120 days for most tenants, and one year where a tenant is 62 or older or is disabled and has lived in the unit for at least one year. The longer period is not automatic: the tenant has to give the owner written notice that they qualify within 60 days of the owner's notice of intent to withdraw, and a tenant who does not keeps the shorter period.

The longer period is the part worth acting on. It is not automatic in practice: a tenant who is a senior or is disabled generally has to tell the landlord, in writing and within a window that starts when the notice is served, and a tenant who does not claim it inside that window can lose it. Nobody is obliged to guess that you qualify.

So the first thing to do with an Ellis notice, before anything else, is to work out whether anybody in the household qualifies, and if so to say so to the owner in writing straight away and keep a copy. The window to claim it is a fraction of the period it buys, and nobody is obliged to tell you it is running.

The period runs to the date the tenancy ends, and it is counted from service rather than from the date typed on the notice. Keep the envelope.

Relocation assistance is owed to every displaced tenant, on the same schedule that applies to any other no-fault termination in the city. A stabilized unit is paid on the RSO schedule, which varies by how long the tenancy has run and whether the tenant is in a qualified category; a unit outside the RSO but inside the Just Cause Ordinance is generally calculated from the rent instead.

The relocation assistance calculator works it out from the tenancy rather than from the ground, because the ground does not change the amount. What it changes is the timetable around it.

Payment is due within 15 days of the notice rather than when the tenant moves, and a landlord who disputes the amount can pay into escrow instead of withholding it. A withdrawal that reaches its date with no payment made and nothing in escrow is not a withdrawal that has been done properly, and non-payment is a defense to the eviction itself in many cases.

Each displaced household is owed its own payment. In a building being withdrawn as a whole this is easy to lose sight of, particularly where tenants are negotiating separately and comparing offers that are not comparable.

A withdrawal is not a pause. The city attaches conditions to the property that outlast the tenancies, and they are the reason an owner cannot use the Ellis Act as a way to clear a building and re-let it at market rent.

Three windows run from the withdrawal itself rather than from the day anybody moved out. A unit put back on the rental market within 2 years makes the owner liable to the displaced tenants for actual and exemplary damages. An action for those damages has to be brought within 3 years. A unit re-rented within 5 years may only be rented at the rent the displaced tenant was paying when the building was withdrawn, rather than at market. And for 10 years the displaced tenants have a right of first refusal: if the unit comes back, it has to be offered to them first.

The right of return is the one that needs an action from you. A displaced tenant who wants to be told if the unit comes back generally has to give the landlord a forwarding address and keep it current, and an offer sent to an address you left is an offer you never hear about. Put the address in writing when you leave, send it again if you move, and tell LAHD as well as the landlord.

The rent restriction is what makes the right worth having. Where a withdrawn unit returns to the market inside the restricted period, the rent is generally limited to what the displaced tenant was paying rather than reset to market, which is the whole point: the restriction removes the profit in a withdrawal that was really a re-rental.

All three run from the withdrawal rather than from the day you moved out, so the date to ask LAHD for is the date the withdrawal was filed. That is the date every one of these windows is counted from, and it is on the record because the owner had to file it.

The Ellis Act is expensive, slow and hard to reverse, which is why a genuine withdrawal usually looks like one. Several things suggest the opposite.

It names one unit in a building with several. The withdrawal is of the property, so a notice for a single apartment is either wrong or is not really an Ellis withdrawal.

The building is being marketed, or a sale is in progress. A new owner taking a building with tenants in it is ordinary; a withdrawal timed to deliver it empty is a different thing, and the timing is visible in public records.

Permits inconsistent with going out of business. An owner leaving the rental market and an owner pulling permits to remodel the same units are doing different things, and Building and Safety's permit history is public.

Some tenants are offered cash for keys to leave quietly before any notice arrives. A buyout is lawful and is regulated in its own right, but a buyout offered under the shadow of an Ellis notice that has not been filed is worth slowing down rather than accepting.

Units re-appearing for rent shortly afterwards. This is the one the re-rental restrictions exist for, and it is also the one a former tenant is best placed to notice.

None of these prove anything on its own. What they do is tell you which questions to put to LAHD, and LAHD can say whether a withdrawal was actually filed for the property and when.

Keep the notice and the envelope it came in, every letter and email either way, proof of what you paid and when, and anything showing a claim you made: a senior or disability claim, a forwarding address, a request for the relocation payment. Photograph the unit when you leave.

The LA Housing Department is the place to take a problem with any of it. They hold the withdrawal filing, they set and enforce the relocation amounts, and they run the appeal if you think the amount is wrong. A complaint is free and it is on the record, which is worth something later even if nothing happens immediately.

Get advice early rather than at the end. An Ellis withdrawal has more moving parts than any other no-fault ground in the city, and most of the things that go wrong for a tenant are deadlines that passed rather than arguments that were lost.