Jenny Kye: Hi, everybody. Thank you for joining us for today’s webinar, which is on understanding California’s eviction process. I am Jenny Kye. I will be moderating today’s webinar, which will be presented by Lauren Carden, who is our director of California Housing Advocacy here at Justice in Aging.
So first, we will go over some logistics. Everybody is on mute and if you have questions, please use the questions function. Also, if you have problems with getting onto the webinar, please send an email to trainings@justiceinaging.org. We do record our webinars and the webinar will be posted to our website at the end of today’s presentation. Also, the slides and recording also will be emailed to all registrants. And we would also appreciate your participation in our post-webinar survey that will pop up on your screen after the close of today’s webinar. Also, if you would like to enable the closed captioning function, you can select the CC button from the Zoom control panel.
If you’re not familiar with Justice in Aging, we are a national organization that uses the power of law to fight senior poverty and we work on affordable healthcare, economic security, housing. And since 1972, we have focused our efforts primarily on people who have been marginalized and excluded from justice such as women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, and people with limited English proficiency.
And we believe that to advance justice in aging, everyone should have access to what they need as they age without discrimination and regardless of race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, ability, language, or country of origin. And we push for policies that will ensure that people who are experiencing the greatest barriers to economic security, healthcare and housing can fully access the services and programs that they need.
And if you’ve signed up for this webinar, you’re likely already part of our network, but if you are not or if you know others who may be interested in getting our materials, please encourage them to go to justiceinaging.org and click sign up there, or people can also send an email to info@justiceinaging.org.
And now I will hand things over to Lauren.
Lauren Carden: Yeah, thank you, Jenny. Hi, everyone. So this is a rundown of what we’ll be covering in today’s presentation. So I’m going to set the stage with just some information on why eviction defense is important for older adults. I’ll give an overview of the eviction process and then I’ll discuss how advocates can partner with legal aid attorneys to keep older renters housed and hopefully we’ll also have time for questions.
And just as a reminder, this training is mainly geared towards non-legal advocates and non-attorneys or even newer non-housing attorneys. So if there are any housing attorneys watching, you’re always free to email me or our info@justiceinaging.org email address, if you have more specific questions about the law or you have a case that you’re working on and you need some assistance.
So just to set the stage with some background, so at Justice in Aging, our housing work is focused on older renters who oftentimes find themselves on the brink of homelessness. As you’re likely aware, older adults are the fastest growing population of people experiencing homelessness. There was a UCSF Benioff report that found that 81% of older adults experiencing homelessness entered homelessness from a housing situation. And 35% of those were leaseholders, so they entered homelessness after an eviction notice or a threatened eviction.
There are many reasons older adults can fall into periods of homelessness and I’ve listed a few of the significant barriers to housing stability on this slide. I think these are all things that folks on this call are probably aware of, but I’ll go through these. First, rents are becoming increasingly unaffordable. So even a modest apartment in many parts of the state now exceed what older adults who are living on fixed income can reasonably pay. And rents continue to rise faster than Social Security benefits, which forces many older adults to become cost burden in their living situation.
Second, there’s a severe shortage of affordable housing across the state. The supply just hasn’t kept pace with the growing number of older adults who need low-cost rental units. And long wait lists that are often years long are now the norm in most affordable apartments.
Third, many older renters face significant barriers to accessing housing. So these can include limited mobility, lack of transportation, complicated application processes, discrimination issues, and just difficulty navigating systems that weren’t designed with aging adults in mind.
On top of all this, the overall cost burden is increasing. So older renters are not only paying more for their housing, but they’re also juggling rising expenses for other costs like utilities, home modifications, other care services. So combining all these costs can quickly overwhelm folks who are on fixed incomes.
And then finally, care needs are increasing as people age and our housing system really isn’t equipped to support those needs. So many older renters require in home support, accessible units, or to be close to their services, but these options are really limited and they’re often unaffordable. All these issues create a housing environment where stability is increasingly out of reach for many low-income renters.
So why eviction defense matters for older adults? When we talk about eviction defense for older adults, we’re really talking about protecting older adults’ stability, their health, and their long-term financial security. We just talked about housing issues facing low-income older renters often lead to housing loss, damaged credit, and homelessness. An eviction at any age can be destabilizing, but for an older adult, the consequences can be even more impactful and have long-lasting effects. Losing your housing can trigger a cascade of financial harm that makes it even harder to then secure safe, affordable housing in the future.
Older renters often face unique barriers in the court system also. Older adults may experience mobility issues, transportation limitations, or health conditions that make it difficult to go to court or to navigate a complex legal process. Some may even face age-related cognitive challenges or just lack access to technology that is now needed to access the court. And all these barriers lead to older adults having a significant disadvantage when they’re trying to defend their rights in court.
Advocates, and when we’re talking about advocates, we’re talking about non-legal advocates, play a crucial role in preventing housing instability and displacement by educating older adults about their tenant protections and then connecting older renters to legal assistance. Advocates can really help ensure that older adults remain safely housed. And legal support can be really the difference between an older adult losing their home or maintaining the stability they need to age with dignity.
So I just wanted to do one more background slide before we get into the court eviction process. We know sometimes there’s a misunderstanding about the types of housing we are thinking of when we think of older adult housing. So for purposes of this presentation and a lot of the work that we do in the housing program at Justice in Aging, when we talk about older renters and where they live, we’re really talking about the full range of rental options that’s available to all renters. So this includes the types of housing listed on this slide. It can include private rental housing, which includes local rent-controlled units and housing covered by the Tenant Protection Act. It should also include older adults who live in mobile home parks. And then many older adults also live in housing subsidized by the federal government, like HUD subsidized housing or low-income tax credit units or private housing with a Section 8 voucher.
Okay. We’re going to get into the unlawful detainer process in California eviction process. So in California, an eviction court case is called an unlawful detainer. Sometimes we shorten this to UD. I mean, I probably will end up using these terms interchangeably throughout the presentation, but know that I’m talking about the same process regardless of the terminology.
So the eviction court process in California, it’s a summary court proceeding. So it happens on an accelerated timeline or it just happens more quickly than a normal civil court case. This accelerated timeline can give many advantages to the landlord who’s the plaintiff in the case. It has a shortened summons timeline, we’re going to talk about all these as we go through the presentation, and accelerated trial setting, shorter discovery timelines. However, in exchange for getting this shortened process, the landlord has to strictly follow the legal process for evicting a tenant, or generally the tenant would have a defense to the eviction case.
And I included the citation for where you can find this in the Code of Civil Procedure if anyone is interested in that.
Okay. So this is a flow chart, is a very wordy flow chart of the eviction process start to finish. We’re going to be going through this process in the slide, so I’m not going to go through the chart now, but it’s just included for your reference later, because I’m going to be giving a very high-level overview and this slide has a few more details.
Okay, so the eviction process generally starts when the tenant receives a notice to terminate their tenancy. So that notice has to be in writing and it’s provided to the tenant. The law requires that specific content be in the notice. So depending on the type of housing or how long a tenant has lived in a unit, the landlord has to follow certain requirements exactly or the notice will not comply with the law. If the notice does not comply with the law, the tenant generally has a strong argument to win the eviction case and stay housed, but we’ll talk about how a tenant would do that in more detail in a few slides. But this is really the first point in the process where it’s helpful for non-legal advocates working with older adults to identify that there might be a legal issue and refer the older adult to a legal aid attorney.
The notice period must expire before a landlord can file a UD lawsuit in court. So a referral at this time gives the older adult as much time as possible.
One second. Apologize. I have a little bit of a cough today, but we’re going to get through this together.
So yeah, again, the theme of this presentation is just as early as you can refer someone in the eviction process, it’s really the most beneficial for the older adult.
Okay. Again, the type of notice a tenant is entitled to receive will depend on a variety of factors and this can include what type of housing they live in, how long they have lived there, and the alleged reason for the termination. Many notices can be broken down into two categories listed here, so there’s for cause notices and no cause notices. This just means notices where, for cause notices, notices where the landlord is alleging the tenant did something wrong, or for no cause notices, notices where the landlord is not alleging that the tenant did anything wrong but is still terminating their tenancy.
Common for cause notices include three-day notices to pay rent or quit and a notice to cure a lease violation or quit. The no-cause notices could be a 30-day notice, a 60-day notice or a 90-day notice. We see a lot of no-cause notices and properties covered by the Tenant Protection Act. And we recently did a training that goes into the specifics of those notice requirements in more detail, so that should be available on our website if you want more information on those types of notices.
So summons and complaint. Once the notice to terminate, the tenancy has expired. So the full term of the notice ends, the landlord can file an unlawful detainer lawsuit in court and serve the tenant with a summons and complaint for unlawful detainer. In a UD case, again, the landlord is the plaintiff and the tenant is the defendant. So as the tenant, they have to respond to the lawsuit because they’re the ones being sued.
And just a note when you’re issue spotting these cases, after a UD is filed, the court will generally send a notice of filing. And I apologize, I did not include a picture of what this looks like. But sometimes this is the first thing a tenant will receive about an eviction case, and it can be pretty confusing for a renter because they haven’t received any kind of court documents yet. It’s just this notice. If you’re working with an older adult who receives this, you can refer the tenant to an attorney at this time, because this likely indicates that they’re going to be served with a UD lawsuit soon.
But it’s service of the summons and complaint that actually triggers the timeline for the tenant to respond to the lawsuit as the defendant. Proper service of the summons and complaint includes what’s listed here, personal service, substitute service or posting and mailing. I’m not going to go into the specifics of each of these, but I guess it’s generally good advice that if you’re working with a tenant and they have the summons and complaint in their hand, they probably need to be referred to an attorney for assistance in just understanding their legal rights and potentially responding to the lawsuit.
So two slides with just copies of what these documents look like. So this is a copy of the judicial counsel summons form. This is obviously not filled out. Usually there’s a court stamp at the top and then obviously the defendant and plaintiff would be filled out. The name of the defendant or the tenant would be at the top. And then it says in small print here, which is probably too small for folks to read on the call, it just says that the defendant has 10 days not counting Saturdays and Sundays and judicial holidays to file a response in court. So if you see any document like this, that’s when a referral would be made to an attorney.
And then this is an example of a potential complaint for unlawful detainer. It’s also a judicial counsel form. So a lot of landlords or plaintiffs will use this form to file their complaint. That’s not required, so you might have a tenant who has a complaint that looks different. It could still be valid and that tenant should be referred to an attorney.
So filing a response, this is probably the most important timing period when we really want to connect older renters with legal assistance. So after the UD is served on the tenant, again, that triggers the timeline to respond to the lawsuit, and a tenant or the defendant only has 10 days not counting weekends and court holidays to respond to the lawsuit.
The most common response and you may have heard is called an answer. So in the answer, a tenant can raise defenses. For instance, a defense saying the notice to terminate the tenancy didn’t comply with the law. Many times a tenant’s going to need legal assistance to fill out and file an answer, especially if they want to include all their potential defenses in this answer. The legal assistance they receive could either be from a legal aid attorney, we’re going to talk about that later, or it could be through the self-help center. Hold on.
One note on the self-help center, not all courts in California have a self-help center that can help tenants with filing answers on a daily basis. So it’s really important to know what happens in your county to know where tenants can be referred to.
This deadline is so important because I guess failing to file a timely response, so you file something after the 10-day deadline, that can mean that the landlord can win automatically. They can get a default judgment and win the court case, whether or not the eviction was technically lawful. So this timeline is really important to get tenants their day in court and make sure that they are asserting their legal rights.
I’m obviously going through this very quickly, but I wanted to just give an issue spotting overview for folks who are working with older renters. If anyone wants any more specific details, you can always email me.
So after a response is filed, either party can request the case be set for trial. Usually, the landlord does this to keep the case moving quickly. Once a trial is requested, it is set within 20 days. So this, again, this is the accelerated trial setting timeline. Depending on the courthouse, this can move even more quickly, a trial could be set within a week or two. In many courts in California, the trial’s a bench trial. This just means there’s no jury and the parties are presenting their case to the judge who makes a decision on the case.
It’s a regular civil trial, all the rules of court and rules of evidence apply. So it’s not like small claims court where people are just representing themselves and it’s more informal. And this is really what makes it very difficult for tenants to represent themselves in court, especially because most landlords are represented by an attorney. So a tenant going in to represent themselves, there’s a big power imbalance that can negatively affect the older renters.
So this slide is tiled After Trial, but this is really just the potential common outcomes of a case. So first, the ideal outcome is tenant to win the case, the tenant wins, they’re generally allowed to stay in the home and continue with their tenancy. Second, the landlord to win the case. If this happens, the landlord is entitled to possession of the property and can request the sheriff post a notice to vacate to deliver possession of the unit. And we’re going to have one slide about that just right after the slide.
But maybe the most common outcome of an eviction case is that the case doesn’t go to trial, but instead it settles either before the day of trial or many times in the hallway before the case is heard before the judge. A settlement can have a variety of terms. It’s essentially whatever the parties want to agree to. So some common settlement types are listed here. I’ll just go through them quickly. The tenant could agree to pay the back due rent and the landlord could agree to let the tenant stay in the unit. The parties could agree to pay back due rent and the tenant could move out, or the parties could agree to have the tenant move out and the landlord would waive the rent.
Again, these are just examples of what settlement agreements could look like, but it’s really whatever the parties want to agree on to resolve the case. And again, having an attorney here on the tenant side, so representing the older renter, can be very helpful for that tenant to get better settlement terms.
Okay, this is the last slide on the eviction process and it moved quickly. But the sheriff’s noticed to vacate is the notice that actually removes the tenant from the unit. So this is in a situation where the tenant lost at trial or has a judgment against them, the landlord has to get the sheriff to remove the tenant from the unit so do the actual lockout. The notice is posted on the tenant’s door and gives the tenant five days to vacate. And then after that fifth day, the sheriff will come, I think it’s actually written as this is the time the sheriff will come do the lockout. So on the date of that notice, the sheriff will come and conduct lockout.
You might meet with older renters who are at this point in the process and it’s still helpful to refer them to an attorney because there are certain motions that can be filed to extend or stop this lockout. But an important thing to advise tenants if they’re at this point in the process is really to remove all their important documents and medicine, take anything important with them in case they are not able to get legal assistance before the lockout, or the attorney they’re working with is not able to stop the lockout. We just want to make sure that the renters have all those important documents, medications that they would need if they are locked out.
So again, that was just a high-level overview of the eviction process in California. We have that chart that’s there and we’ll obviously send the slides out after this presentation. But again, this whole process could take as little as a month to complete. So again, it’s really important to connect all the renters with attorneys as early as possible, but really if they’re at any point in the process.
So now I’m going to talk a little bit about the legal services landscape in California. I’ve already mentioned this a few times, but to reiterate again, when renters and older renters go through the eviction process without an attorney, there’s a huge power imbalance. I believe this data is from the Legal Services Corporation, but if anyone wants more specifics, they can put it in the chat and I can find that out later.
In eviction cases, landlords are represented by an attorney in roughly 81 to 90% of cases, whereas tenants are represented in roughly 3% to 10% of cases. So many times in an eviction case, it’s a landlord’s attorney going against a self-represented tenant. But data shows that legal representation is extremely effective for tenants. Tenants who have full representation from an attorney win or favorably settle their eviction cases roughly 96% of the time. So that’s kind of why I’m so adamant about making these referrals to an attorney because it really does make a huge difference for the older renter.
We’ve talked about these also, but I just want to reiterate them again. In addition to this power imbalance in the court system, older renters can also face barriers to accessing the court system, barriers that an attorney could help them overcome. So these barriers could include an inability to get to court due to mobility, transportation, disability, or illness. Older renters may have lack of access to technology, they could be in rural areas without reliable internet. And then the accelerated timeline obviously is challenging, but the additional barriers plus the accelerated timeline can mean that many older renters fail to respond to the eviction lawsuit in time, again, leading to that default judgment, which just means the landlord can win automatically. And then the time period from notice to lockout is a lot shorter.
So just again, a broad overview of the legal aid landscape in California. When I’m talking about connecting older renters to an attorney, I’m really talking about the landscape of free legal services for low-income older adults in California. So these services are delivered through what we call legal aid organizations or legal services organizations. They’re nonprofit law firms that provide free legal assistance to individuals who qualify for their services.
In California, we have a variety of programs that may be available in your county to provide these free legal services for older adults. Probably the most well-known to folks that are on this training are the legal aid organizations that receive the Older Americans Act funding. Each county should have a designated organization that serves older adults with civil legal issues. And most of these organizations take on eviction cases at least to some extent.
In addition to these OAA funded programs, there’s also the network of organizations that are funded at the federal level through the Legal Services Corporation. These organizations, they don’t only help older adults, but they can and do help many older adults through their federal funding. I think all of the LSC-funded organizations in California do help with eviction cases.
The next two here, we also have the P&A agencies and fair housing agencies. These organizations may not help with an eviction case, but they can provide assistance on specific issues that may be related to an eviction case, like the need for a reasonable accommodation to stay housed or another discrimination related reason for a tenant being terminated. I didn’t list it here, but there may be other state bar-funded legal aid organizations in your area that can also help with eviction cases.
The website, lawhelpca.org is a really great resource for finding legal aid organizations in your county that can help with these housing issues. So you can just click on your county and search housing issues and a bunch of, well, hopefully multiple organizations will pop up, but that’s not always true in all the counties.
I want to spend a little bit of time on the next two slides, if we have time to do it and still answer some questions. So legal aid attorney work, just in general, legal aid attorneys are really crucial for helping older renters who are based an eviction and can’t afford a private attorney. A lot of what they do is just making sure people understand what’s happening and what their rights are. In many cases, counsel and advice from a legal aid attorney can be enough. So this is when the legal aid attorney just talks with the client about their situation and explain the eviction process in plain language. This can really help with demystifying the process, and also helps the client understand where they are in the eviction process and help them figure out what is the landlord claiming and what steps come next.
So counsel and advice is the lowest touch service. So one step up, legal aid attorneys can also provide short-term help, so that’d be helping clients to respond to the lawsuit. Again, if the tenant doesn’t respond on time, they can lose automatically, so this is that crucial period where legal assistance is really helpful. And many legal aid organizations are really set up to prioritize filling out answers for tenants at this point in the process, making sure everything gets filed correctly and on time.
And then another step up from short-term help, in some cases, legal aid attorneys can take on a client’s case and represent them in court. So this means they are their attorney of record. They stand beside them, they speak on their behalf and they make sure the judge is hearing their defenses and understands their situation.
Part of this representation could also be negotiating with the landlord, most likely the landlord’s attorney. A legal aid attorney can help the client work out an agreement that lets them stay or gives them more time to move. The goal is really just to get the best possible outcome for the client. And again, really helpful to have an attorney going through this negotiation process with the older renter.
For clients who have disabilities, a legal aid attorney can also ask landlords for reasonable accommodations. This could mean getting someone extra time to gather paperwork, allowing a support animal, or adjusting a policy so the person can stay safely housed in their unit. And then overall, legal aid attorneys are just there to make sure people aren’t pushed out of their homes unfairly and that they have someone in their corner asserting the rights during what is really a stressful time for all renters and especially older renters.
So obviously there’s a large amount of work a legal aid attorney can do, but we want to set expectations around the scope of their work. So first, I feel like this one comes up a lot, legal aid organizations and legal aid attorneys cannot accept every case. There’s just more people who need assistance than there are attorneys available. So legal aid organizations really have to make this prioritization to help with the most urgent legal matters. I think that’s why you will find a lot of organizations help tenants with filing the answer because avoiding the default judgment is so crucial. And that’s really a point where an attorney can step in and help an older renter through the legal process.
But I think this kind of resource allocation aspect can be frustrating from a partner’s perspective, especially someone who’s making referrals to legal aid and then they may hear back that the person wasn’t able to get assistance. So I think it’s really helpful for the community-based organizations to help set the expectation for the prospective older renter client. Having a warm handoff situation or relationship with the legal aid organization in your area can help older adults and can help your organization better understand the level of service org can actually offer at that particular time before a referral is made. It’s really those partnerships that can help with ensuring that an older renter is understanding what is available and what’s actually feasible for their case in terms of getting legal assistance.
Legal aid organizations also cannot assist with non-legal issues. They don’t really find housing for older renters, they can’t complete applications for benefits. They don’t really assist with locating medical providers. There’s obviously exceptions to this as some legal aid organizations employ social workers, but I think that’s more of the exception than the norm. Obviously, these needs are really important, but they kind of fall outside the scope of legal services. So again, partnerships between legal aid organizations and other community-based organizations can really help bridge this gap in services.
And then finally, legal aid organizations can’t really offer longer-term support to help clients maintain housing stability. Again, their role is really limited to the specific legal issue and then once that issue is resolved, they have to move on and help other clients. Again, creating the partnerships between the legal aid providers in your community can be really essential to ensuring that the needs of older renters can be met.
And I don’t have this here, but we are always a resource for helping to make that connection if you found there’s been any difficulty with trying to set up that partnership in your community. So you’re always free to email us if you need any assistance with that.
I think we have questions now. Just want to reiterate again, you can email me, my email address is here, if there’s any more specific questions about a case or something that’s happening in your community.
Jenny Kye: Thanks so much, Lauren. And we do have some questions and I also wanted to add that Lauren will also follow up with people after the webinar to answer questions that we don’t get to right now.
So Lauren, we had some questions about the specific notices, like when can a landlord file a no-cause notice. Can you talk more about the other training you did that you referenced earlier and where people can find more information on this topic of the specific notices?
Lauren Carden: Yes. Maybe with our follow-up email, we can maybe resend that presentation. But again, the no-cause notices, it really depends on where you’re living and how long you’ve lived there whether your landlord can even terminate your tenancy with a no-cause notice. For folks in properties that are covered by the Tenant Protection Act, there’s specific allowable reasons that a landlord can terminate a tenancy for a no-fault or no-cause reason.
I’m not going to get into each specific reason right now because that may be more confusing, but we did have a presentation on that. I believe the slides and the recording are on our website. And that presentation goes into a lot of detail about even with a no-cause reason, what content the notice has to have in it, what the allowable reasons are, and I guess whether there’s anything the tenant can do in response to receiving that notice.
So yeah, we should be able to get that. I don’t think we can find the link right now, but we should be able to get that to you all maybe in the post-webinar email.
Jenny Kye: Thanks, Lauren. We also got some questions about whether this eviction process applies to residential care facilities and long-term care facilities.
Lauren Carden: I don’t want to say anything incorrect. So we also have a webinar specifically on evictions from residential care facilities and nursing homes, I believe. But from my understanding, the part that may be different is the notice period part or the notice requirement part. Generally, once an unlawful detainer is allowed to be filed, that court process will flow the same way each time. But it’s really just what the requirements are before you get to the court process that may be different. So again, we also have a few, I believe, trainings on evictions specifically from RCFEs.
Jenny Kye: And we also got a question about, are there statistics about older adult renters or older adults experiencing homelessness who have mental health or behavioral health disorders?
Lauren Carden: Outside of the eviction process or the connection between eviction and older adults who are experiencing homelessness with mental health conditions?
Jenny Kye: Yeah, possibly the latter or just in general.
Lauren Carden: I mean, I believe the report that I know that’s the most detailed would be the UCSF Benioff report. I think there’s a data gap in terms of connecting things to eviction cases because, and I didn’t really go over this, but a lot of the eviction data can be sealed so it doesn’t become public sometimes. And then it’s going to be housed at each individual courthouse, so it’s hard to gather and there are organizations who are working on this. I believe there’s even a bill for more transparency in eviction data. But I think that’s where the gap is, it’s really hard to get information about the specifics on each eviction case. So then creating that connection to folks who are experiencing homelessness can be hard. But I think the UCSF Benioff report is probably the best report that I know that we have right now, but folks know of other reports, please let us know.
Jenny Kye: Thanks, Lauren. So I think that is all the time that we have for today. So again, Lauren will be following up with other questions by email. And of course, as she mentioned, you’re always free to email her as well. So thank you so much everyone for joining. And if you can, please complete the post webinar survey as well because your feedback is very helpful for us. Thanks so much.