Source: http://costa-hawkins.com/pieri-v-city-county-of-san-francisco-2006-137-cal-app-4th-886/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 06:14:29+00:00

Document:
JACKIE PIERI et al., Plaintiffs and Respondents, v. CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO et al., Defendants and Appellants.
COUNSEL: Dennis J. Herrera, City Attorney, Wayne K. Snodgrass and Vince Chhabria, Deputy City Attorneys, for Defendants and Appellants.
Zacks Utrecht & Leadbetter, Andrew M. Zacks, James B. Kraus and Paul F. Utrecht for Plaintiffs and Respondents.
JUDGES: Rivera, J., with Sepulveda, Acting P. J., and Munter, J., concurring.
RIVERA, J.–The City and County of San Francisco (the City) appeals after the trial court granted the petition for writ of mandate of Jackie Pieri, Lavinia Turner, and Small Property Owners of San Francisco (collectively Pieri), concluding the City’s relocation assistance ordinance on its face violated the Ellis Act (Gov. Code, 1 ß 7060 et seq.). We reverse.
1 All undesignated statutory references are to the Government Code.
Jackie Pieri and Lavinia Turner own residential rental properties in San Francisco which they seek to remove from the rental market. Small Property Owners of San Francisco is an organization seeking to promote home ownership in San Francisco. They filed a petition for writ of mandate on March 2, 2005, alleging the City’s relocation assistance ordinance (ordinance No. 21-05), which required landlords to provide relocation assistance to their tenants when removing property from the rental market (S.F. Admin. Code, ch. 37, ß 37.9A, subd. (e)(3)), facially violated the Ellis Act. The petition alleged the relocation ordinance was not reasonably related to the tenants’ need for assistance, and therefore impermissibly placed a prohibitive price on the right to withdraw property from the rental market. The trial court grant-ed the petition, ruling that the relocation ordinance facially violated the Ellis Act.
Pieri argues, and the trial court agreed, that Channing Properties’s limitation on relocation assistance to lower in-come tenants survived the elimination of the statutory language upon which it was based. We see no basis for such a conclusion. As the court noted in Channing Properties, the intent shown in the wording of former section 7060.1, sub-division (c) was to protect lower income tenants. ( Channing Properties, supra, 11 Cal.App.4th at p. 99.) No such limitation on the legislative intent appears in the current statutory language. The Legislature has shown that it can draft language intended to protect only lower income tenants. In eliminating such language, and in including “persons displaced by reason of the withdrawal from rent or lease of any accommodations” (ß 7060.1, subd. (c), italics added), we can only conclude the Legislature meant what it said.
We are not persuaded otherwise by Pieri’s argument that the Legislature did not express an intent to overturn the rule of Channing Properties. It is true that “it should not be presumed that the legislative body intends to overthrow long-established principles of law unless such intention is made clearly to appear either by express declaration or by necessary implication.” ( People v. Davenport (1985) 41 Cal.3d 247, 266 [221 Cal. Rptr. 794, 710 P.2d 861].) However, even if the court’s construction in Channing Properties of former section 7060.1, subdivision (c) qualified as a “long-established principle of law,” we would disagree with Pieri’s conclusion. We must presume the Legislature was aware of prior judicial interpretations of the law and that in amending the statute, it “intended to change all the particulars upon which we find a material change in the language of the act.” ( Moore v. State Bd. of Control (2003) 112 Cal.App.4th 371, 383 [5 Cal. Rptr. 3d 116] (Moore), citing Clements v. T. R. Bechtel Co. (1954) 43 Cal.2d 227, 232 [273 P.2d 5].) The amendment to section 7060.1, subdivision (c) was clear and unambiguous, and eliminated the precise language relied on in Channing Properties. As aptly stated in People v. Olmsted (2000) 84 Cal.App.4th 270, 276 [100 Cal. Rptr. 2d 755]: “In interpreting statutory language, a court must not ‘insert what has been omitted, or … omit what has been inserted.’ (Code Civ. Proc., ß 1858.) This is particularly true where, as here, the term in question previously appeared in the statute but was subsequently omitted. We decline to insert a word the Legislature has removed.” (See also Estate of McDill (1975) 14 Cal.3d 831, 838 [122 Cal. Rptr. 754, 537 P.2d 874] [it is not the court’s province to insert language into statute].) We likewise decline to insert language the Legislature has omitted, and reject the argument that section 7060.1, subdivision (c), as amended in 2003, limits relocation assistance to low income tenants.
Pieri contends, however, that the City’s relocation ordinance violates the Ellis Act by placing a prohibitive price on a landlord’s decision to go out of business. We cannot conclude–and Pieri does not argue–that the imposition of relocation assistance payments must inevitably place an undue burden on a landlord’s right to withdraw from the rental business. In stating that it neither diminishes nor enhances the power of public entities to mitigate adverse impacts on dis-placed tenants, section 7060.1, subdivision (c) clearly contemplates that public entities have some such power under existing law.
5 In Bullock v. City and County of San Francisco (1990) 221 Cal. App. 3d 1072, 1099-1102 [271 Cal. Rptr. 44], Division Four of the First Appellate District concluded a city ordinance that conditioned issuance of a per-mit to convert residential hotel units to tourist use on the owner’s either providing replacement units or making a substantial “in lieu” payment to a fund maintained by the City, from which tenants could apparently receive re-location assistance, violated the Ellis Act. The court rejected the argument that the ordinance merely mitigated the adverse impact on displaced tenants, stating: “It is one thing to require the owner of a residential hotel to provide mitigation to tenants actually displaced by a conversion [citing section 7060.1], but it is something en-tirely different to require the owner to make expenditures that benefit society at large.” ( Bullock, at p. 1101.) The payments in question here would directly benefit tenants, not society at large.
The question of whether the payments required by the relocation assistance ordinance are reasonable remains to be decided. Several cases have established that a public entity may not impose a prohibitive price on a landlord’s exercise of the right under the Ellis Act to go out of business. The court in Javidzad v. City of Santa Monica (1988) 204 Cal. App. 3d 524, 526 [251 Cal. Rptr. 350], considered a city law that denied a removal permit to landlords who could make a fair return on their property unless the units were uninhabitable or unless the landlord intended to develop new rent controlled units. Noting that the denial of a removal permit precluded the redevelopment of the property, the court con-cluded the measure imposed a prohibitive price on the exercise of the rights under the Ellis Act. ( Id. at p. 531.) Other cases have concluded local measures violated the Ellis Act where they denied a permit for demolition of a residential building unless it would not be detrimental to housing needs and it would either remove a hazardous structure or would be necessary to permit construction of the same number of housing units ( First Presbyterian Church v. City of Berkeley (1997) 59 Cal.App.4th 1241, 1252-1253 [69 Cal. Rptr. 2d 710]); denied the right to demolish buildings unless the own-ers agreed to restrict the use of the land for themselves and their successors for 10 years ( Los Angeles Lincoln Place Investors, Ltd. v. City of Los Angeles (1997) 54 Cal.App.4th 53, 64 [62 Cal. Rptr. 2d 600]); and denied the right to elim-inate or demolish residential hotel units unless the owner either provided replacement units or paid the city 80 percent of the cost of replacement housing ( Reidy, supra, 123 Cal.App.4th at pp. 589, 593). Thus, in each of these cases, the local law on its face imposed a significant restriction on the landlord’s use of the property.
Pieri contends the City’s relocation ordinance on its face puts a prohibitive price on the decision to go out of the res-idential rental business. In considering a facial challenge, we consider “only the text of the measure itself, not its appli-cation to the particular circumstances of an individual.” ( Tobe v. City of Santa Ana (1995) 9 Cal.4th 1069, 1084 [40 Cal. Rptr. 2d 402, 892 P.2d 1145].) Thus, we can only invalidate the relocation ordinance if it presents a ” ‘ “total and fatal conflict” ‘ ” with state law. ( Ibid., quoting Arcadia Unified School Dist. v. State Dept. of Education (1992) 2 Cal.4th 251, 267 [5 Cal. Rptr. 2d 545, 825 P.2d 438].) We cannot conclude that the relocation ordinance on its face violates the Ellis Act. While the amount of the compensation is higher than that approved in Kalaydjian, Briarwood Properties, and H & H Properties, it is not so disproportionately higher–especially in light of intervening inflation–that it is necessarily beyond that contemplated by the Legislature in enacting and amending section 7060.1, subdivision (c). In the circumstances, we must reject Pieri’s facial challenge to the relocation ordinance. 6 In doing so, we express no view on the merits of any challenge that might be brought to the application of the ordinance in any particular situation.
6 In any event, the present record does not show that the relocation ordinance has made it prohibitively expen-sive for anyone to leave the rental market. While the pleadings in the record refer to declarations in which Pieri and Turner apparently state it would be a hardship to pay the relocation compensation, there is no evidence that they will, in fact, be unable to withdraw from the rental market.
Sepulveda, Acting P. J., and Munter, J.,* concurred.
A petition for a rehearing was denied March 16, 2006, and respondents’ petition for review by the Supreme Court was denied June 21, 2006, S142897.

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