CBPA's California Legislative Update 8/28/2020
- GOVERNOR ANNOUNCES NEW REOPENING GUIDELINES
- ALMOST OVER! THREE DAYS LEFT!
- UNLAWFUL DETAINER / EVICTION – COMPROMISE REACHED
- CBPA 2020 CALENDAR
GOVERNOR ANNOUNCES NEW REOPENING GUIDELINES
California has a new blueprint for reducing COVID-19 in the state with revised criteria for loosening and tightening restrictions on activities. Click here to find out how businesses and activities can open in your county starting this Sunday, August 31st.
The new “blueprint for reducing COVID-19 in the state” has revised criteria for loosening and tightening restrictions on activities. However, individual counties can be stricter.
The new plan includes sector-based tiers for reopening, including shopping malls, offices, and restaurants. Here is the matrix with the sector specific criteria.
CBPA and the CA Retailers have worked closely with the Governor’s office over the past few weeks to help advise on the safety protocol commercial properties are undertaking to assure safety of our tenants, and guests, with a specific focus on retail centers and shopping malls. The hope is that this new plan will make more sense, allow more spaces to be opened safely, and provide clear and transparent guidelines on how properties/companies can reopen their doors and get back to normal. Click here to read more.
The initial state reopening saw a huge increase in cases. We hope the lesson’s learned from that experience applied by the governor and industries across the state will allow economic activity to re-start while mitigating the spread of COVID-19 within the state.
ALMOST OVER! THREE DAYS LEFT!
Just three days left of one of the craziest legislative sessions CBPA has ever seen. Today is the last days bills can be amended, and legislators will work over the weekend on last minute committee hearings. Monday, the session ends at the stroke of Midnight.
The year started out normal enough, but once around mid-March the COVID shutdowns began and the Cursed Year of 2020 kicked in full-bore. Aside from a Worldwide pandemic, we are now challenged with raging wildfires, a prolonged shut-down of the economy, split roll property tax on the November ballot, and basic tools of our business being removed from use by judicial fiat and local ordinance.
Lots of major bills are still being discussed, but our industry anxiously awaits the final outcome on Eviction Moratorium bills (see below), wildfire measures, and a slew of bills aimed at employers, many of them relating to COVID 19.
This has been a long strange trip, and not a very fun one. We are happy to see this session come to a close and will bring you a full report next week on what passed and what didn’t.
UNLAWFUL DETAINER / EVICTION – COMPROMISE REACHED
After tense negotiations the past week, a compromise has been reached on the statewide eviction issue. The final bill should be in print tomorrow, Saturday, in preparation for a Judiciary committee hearing.
The final bill does not include commercial real estate, meaning the non-residential side of the industry will start getting back to normal a little more quickly than those with residential portfolios.
The deal points on the bill extend only to January 2021, and gradually get the industry back to operations prior to the Governor’s COVID-19 executive order in March and the California Judicial Council’s cessation of processing Unlawful Detainer actions shortly thereafter.
Beginning in September, under the deal, tenants must be able to show COVID-19 related hardship to receive continued rent forbearance; as well nuisance tenants will no longer be protected by a blanket statewide order. The bill provides some protections to small landlords by extending the Homeowners’ Bill of Rights’ anti-foreclosure measures to most owners of four units or less.
The agreement also tries to tackle the patchwork of local ordinances up and down the state, requiring some to expire and others to pause on local actions until February. Its not the statewide pre-exemption that we had hoped the state would take, but it will bring some consistency to more ordinances.
Our friends at the California Apartment Association have provided an “Explainer” that lists all the major points of the compromise. We thank CAA for their work on this. Click here to see the summary of the deal.
Finally, the L.A. Times has a story out this afternoon with some more info about the deal that has come together. Click here to read the full story.
Again, we want to reiterate that commercial properties are not included in this measure. And that is due to the massive education effort we all put forth to defeat SB 939 earlier this year. We argued that the business-to-business nature of commercial transactions does no merit a heavy handed one-size-fits-all statewide ordinance and such a policy would actually prolong the economic recovery.
The bill is not in print yet and still must receive a 2/3s vote majority in both houses. But the general consensus is that this measure will have the votes and be enacted into law by the Governor.
CBPA 2020 CALENDAR
NOTE DUE TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC EVENTS ARE BEING ADJUSTED TO TELECONFERENCE OR PENDING SHELTER-IN-PLACE ORDERS BEING LIFTED
Thursday, November 5: CBPA Board Meeting – via Zoom
For more information on any of our events, please contact Melissa Stevens at 916-443-4676 or mstevens@cbpa.com.
