Owner move-in eviction requirements in Los Angeles

The ground is available to the owner, or the owner's spouse, children, parents, grandparents or grandchildren, or a resident manager, and family in the everyday sense is wider than that list: a cousin, an in-law or a partner's relative may well not be on it. The ownership test is two different shares rather than one. For the owner to move in themselves, they have to hold title or a beneficial interest of at least 25%. For a family member to move in, a natural person has to hold at least 50%. Both are checkable, because the deed is public, and a property held by a company rather than by a person raises the question sharply: a corporation cannot move in.

The two shares are the part most easily got wrong, and they cut the other way from how people assume. A smaller stake is enough for an owner to move in themselves than for them to move a relative in, because the second is the claim that is easier to make and harder to check.

If a relative is named on your notice, two questions follow from that sentence. Is the relationship one on the list, and does the person who owns the building hold enough of it. Both are answerable: the relationship is a fact and the deed is public.

One owner, one unit, is the shape of the rule, and there are limits on using this ground repeatedly across a building. An owner who has moved a relative into one unit and then serves the same notice on another is worth asking about.

The person named has to move in within 3 months of the unit becoming vacant, and has to intend to occupy it as their primary residence for at least 2 years. Both are conditions on the claim rather than good intentions: an owner who never moves in, who moves out early, or who re-rents the unit inside that period has not used this ground lawfully.

The requirement exists because the alternative is obvious. Without it, an owner move-in is simply a way to empty a stabilized unit and re-let it at market rent, and the paperwork costs a few hundred dollars. With it, the owner has to give up the rental income for the minimum period, which is what makes the claim expensive enough to be genuine.

So the two questions that decide whether an owner move-in was lawful are asked after the tenant has gone: did the person named move in, and did they stay. An owner who never moves in, who moves in briefly and leaves, or who re-rents the unit soon afterwards, can be liable to the tenant who was displaced.

Good faith is a requirement in its own right, not only an outcome. The intention has to be genuine at the time the notice is served. Evidence that it was not is often circumstantial and often public: a listing for the unit dated before the tenant left, a remodel permit, a sale in progress, or the same owner having served the same notice elsewhere.

This is why a former tenant should keep watching the unit. A rental listing for an address you were told the owner's mother was moving into is the clearest evidence there is, and nobody else is going to look for it.

Some tenants cannot be moved out on this ground at all, rather than simply being owed more. A tenant who has lived in the unit for at least 10 years and is either 62 or older or disabled is protected. Both halves of that have to be true: the length of the tenancy on its own is not enough, and neither is the age on its own. A tenant who is terminally ill, certified by a physician, is protected whatever the length of the tenancy.

This is a different kind of protection from a larger relocation payment, and the difference is worth being clear about. A qualified tenant is owed more money. A protected tenant is not supposed to receive this notice in the first place.

Note what the long-tenancy protection actually asks for. It is both halves together: ten years in the unit and being 62 or older or disabled. Ten years on its own does not do it, and being 62 after two years in the unit does not either. The terminal illness category is the one that stands alone, and it carries no length of tenancy at all.

This site does not list exceptions to those protections, and that is deliberate rather than an omission. An exception stated here that the ordinance does not contain would hand the argument straight back to the landlord. If you are told one applies to you, ask the LA Housing Department what it is and where it is written.

If you think you are in a protected category, say so in writing as soon as the notice arrives, keep a copy, and ask LAHD the same day. A protection nobody was told about is a protection that is easy to lose by silence.

A notice that says only that the owner intends to occupy the unit is not enough. It has to name the person who is moving in and state their relationship to the owner, and it has to state the ground plainly enough that the tenant knows which set of rules applies.

That requirement exists precisely so the claim can be checked afterwards. A named person can be looked for at the address later; an unnamed intention cannot. A landlord who will not put the name in writing is declining the one thing the ordinance requires.

The notice also has to deal with the relocation payment, which is due within 15 days of the notice rather than after the tenant has moved, and it has to run the right period counted to the date the tenancy is said to end.

Keep it. Between the stated reason, the named person and the date, the notice is the document every later question turns on, and it is the one piece of evidence a tenant always has.

Start with the deed. Ownership records are public at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder, they name the owner as the owner is legally constituted, and they carry the dates. If the person named on the notice is not an owner, the relationship claimed is the thing to check; if the owner is a company, ask how a company intends to occupy a home.

Then look at the timing. A recent purchase, a pending sale, a remodel permit or a listing all sit in public records and all of them are dated, which matters because good faith is judged as at the date of the notice.

Write everything down as it happens. The date the notice arrived and how, every conversation and who was in it, anything you were offered to leave sooner, and what you paid and when. An offer of cash for keys made alongside an owner move-in notice is worth comparing with the relocation assistance the notice already owes you before you answer it. A contemporaneous note is worth more than a recollection a year later, which is when this usually matters.

Photograph the unit when you leave, and leave a forwarding address in writing with the landlord and with the LA Housing Department. Then watch the address. A listing or a new tenant inside the minimum occupancy period is the fact the whole claim turns on, and the person best placed to notice it is the one who used to live there.

If it does not add up, take it to LAHD rather than to the landlord. Non-payment of relocation assistance and a bad-faith move-in are both things they take complaints about, and a complaint costs nothing and is on the record.