The City of Concord’s Rent Stabilization and Just Cause for Eviction ordinance, which was adopted by the City Council on March 5, 2024, will go into effect on Friday, April 19, following a brief pause as some residents tried to gather enough signatures to place a referendum on the November ballot.
On April 18, the proponent notified the City that they are withdrawing the referendum request because they failed to gather the required number of valid signatures (7,204) by the April 18 deadline. As a result, the ordinance will go into effect on April 19.
In January 2023, the City Council expressed its desire to enact tenant protections and reiterated that goal in Concord’s Housing Element. Since then, the Council has held eight public meetings on this topic and has heard from dozens of property owners and tenants.
The ordinance amends Concord Municipal Code Chapter 19.40 Residential Tenant Protection Program and increases the “just cause” for eviction protections, expands the City’s rent registry, and establishes a rent stabilization program.
24 comments
Welcome to Slumville. Why as a landlord should I try to improve my property? Allowable increases, absent in this announcement, do not keep up with increasing cost of repairs and in most years will just cover my increase in property tax .
Why should a renters paycheck cover the improvements on YOUR asset? Do you depend on another mans income to survive? We have a term for that…
Because renters are mostly deadbeats who destroy property of others. Because it costs money to provide for another man what he can’t obtain on his own. But you wouldn’t know anything about that. Not only that, like disgruntled jealous employees, renters have no clue what it takes to keep a business or a rental afloat, pay taxes be responsible. That’s why they rent.
Hey if you depend on another mans paycheck to live thats on you bud. I get my own.
Maybe if parasites stopped scalping housing as a get rich quick while doing nothing scheme, more people would be able to afford buying a house?
I cant think of anything more patriotic than extorting your fellow countrymen for housing.
You’re clearly jealous. Nothing about owning a rental is “get rich quick”. Everyone gets paid from “another man’s paycheck. Do you not understand how money works? If you were a real man you would buy some property and build your own house. Too bad your skinny arms can’t even lift a hammer.
I dont know what kind of person would be jealous of a leech, but I aint the guy. I couldnt look myself in the mirror being dependent on another mans paycheck. You do call your tenants daddy right?
Any landlord who thinks most of their customers are deadbeats should definitely invest their money elsewhere. Sell your rental property so you can invest in something you believe in and let a landlord who feels positive about the rental business buy the property.
Yippie, homelessness will end now, great job Council! Joke, California state laws are enough for all of this, go read them. Although that little registry is really gonna make things awesome for Concord residents. Creating ‘stable rents’, whatever.
From what I’ve read of this ordinance, it reminds me a great deal of the German secret police.
I see condo conversions in Concords future.
Reality for landlords:
https://imgur.com/a/kmD0HHm
Couldn’t get the 7k signatures? Just goes to show that despite the online rage by the same dozen landlords and real estate folks, most Concord residents don’t really care how these tenant protections could cut into the profits of the “housing providers”. For the few landlords who actually live in our community that could be impacted, if they’re being honest when they assert that the costs associated with these protections will somehow break the bank for them, they’re probably in the wrong business anyhow. These units might just be a passive income project for some folks, but for others, it’s their home.
Maybe I haven’t been following this issue enough over time but I think that eventually there will be a lot less rental properties. Homeowners will sell. Apt. rentals will be converted to condos. Hmmm, does that mean lot’s of lower income folks will have to “move on”?
Disagree, it shows that the petition effort wasn’t well planned or organized, it was a spur of the moment reaction. That’s too bad, as the required number of signatures could have easily been raised if there was a semi-pro someone managing the effort.
DAVE,
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It’s more than likely that most voting citizens of Concord don’t know anything about this ordinance, after all, the organizers had to get the necessary signatures from Concord’s registered voters, not Concord’s residents.
…. can’t believe there were enough signatures on the petition??!! ….are homeowners asleep out there?
I’m a Concord homeowner and I’m all for these long overdue protections for my friends and neighbors that rent in our community.
DAVE,
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As you said, you’re a “homeowner,” you’re not a landlord, but should you one day become a landlord, then maybe you’ll understand the position that Concord landlords are now in. It’s easy to be for something when it doesn’t effect you.
The amount of disinformation being pushed by the Council and all the bleeding heart groups pretty much assured where the petition was headed.
The real question is: why are we continuing to only build houses that the majority of Californians cannot afford? Per CA Realtors Assoc., as of Nov. 2023, only 15% of Californians could afford to buy a home in this state.
Because the environmental impact reports and everything else “environmental” that contractors have to deal with in this state is VERY EXPENSIVE. They end up building homes that they can make money on, thus costing more. It’s like our gas. Our gas cost up to two dollars more a gallon than many states. Same with our electricity. An example: Electricity in NC is 13 Cents a KW, and here it is now over 50 cents and another rate increase is coming. I could go down the list of things that cost so much more in this state.
Vote differently if you want change!!
Voting isn’t going to change anything because, as you can see from the majority of the comments here, the voters are trained to think of each other as the enemy instead of evaluating the performance of the elected officials. And this has absolutely nothing to do with the environmental requirements – market rate housing gets built quickly while no affordable housing that the average family can afford gets built at all. We used to get money from the state to develop but Gov. Brown took that away because the elected officials were using it as a slush fund to give money to their friends instead of building housing (imagine if they had actually built affordable homes then instead of waiting until the housing situation was too expensive to fix?). Or how much housing could we have helped build with the trillions going to other countries? If the problem is that the only reason market rate housing goes up is so the developers can make ridiculous amounts of money and that is the policy everyone wants to continue, then people will continue to build their own shelters as more and more get priced out and your neighborhoods will be a disaster. And it will only be addressed when we have another economic collapse. Concord voters will elect all the same people for years and years who endorse all the same people who messed up before all in a giant circle while both the elected officials and their fans blame the problems on every thing except their own votes. I know Concord voters today who think their favorite Councilmember isn’t the problem and will eventually correct the situation even though there is no evidence to support this in any way. Or people who like Steve Glazer even though he didn’t do even one of the things he initially ran on years ago and supports the known corrupt politician Tim Grayson. And take this in – Concord’s current director of economic development is the same person who held that position in Antioch and lost his job there because the economy there was so bad the city couldn’t afford his salary. And all of Concord City Council think he is the best.
If Concord residents want to repeal the City of Concord’s “Rent Stabilization and Just Cause for Eviction” ordinance they can try gathering signatures again in order to put this on the ballot. The next effort by this group will be to defeat Mayor Edi Birsan and Vice Mayor Carlyn Obringer in this November’s election.
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The organizers of this attempted ballot measure didn’t have enough volunteers at enough locations at the needed times to collect the necessary signatures in just 30 days. They had people at the same Safeway everyday, during the slowest part of the day, at least on weekdays. It seemed as if they were waiting for Concord’s voting citizens to come to them to sign the referendum petition and that they weren’t going to the different locations where they could find a wider variety of Concord’s voters. They also needed to collect more than 7,204 signatures, they probably needed about 9,605 signatures to be safe, due to the relatively high percentage of signatures that’re thrown out during the signature verification process.
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Next time they should have more than the rent stabilization/eviction referendum petition, they should also collect signatures to repeal Concord’s 1% permanent sales tax increase from 2020, and another to have the direct election of Concord’s mayor and vice mayor.
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