6
requirements on a notice to terminate tenancy and require that a copy of the notice be
filed with the [local rent board].” (Rental Housing, supra, 171 Cal.App.4th at p. 762.)
The court rejected an argument that these provisions were procedural for purposes
of Birkenfeld’s preemption analysis: “The warning notice requirements [in the ordinance]
limit a landlord’s right to initiate an eviction due to certain tenant conduct by requiring
that the specified conduct continue after the landlord provides the tenant written notice to
cease. These notice requirements thus regulate the substantive grounds for eviction,
rather than the procedural remedy available to the landlord once grounds for eviction
have been established. If the tenant ceases the offending conduct once notified by the
landlord, there is no good cause to evict. The requirements for a warning notice are
therefore not preempted by the unlawful detainer statutes. As the court stated in
Birkenfeld, a city, pursuant to its police power, may place substantive limitations on
otherwise available grounds for eviction, but not procedural ones. [Citation.] Unlike the
certificate of eviction that was invalidated in Birkenfeld, the warning notice requirements
of [the ordinance] do not involve prefiling review by a local administrative agency or
impose ‘elaborate prerequisites’ on the commencement of an unlawful detainer
proceeding.” (Rental Housing, supra, 171 Cal.App.4th at pp. 762–763, fn. omitted.)
Rental Housing is instructive. The ordinance imposed an indisputably procedural
requirement—prior written notice with specified content. Although the court did not
discuss the impact on timing in its preemption discussion, this notice requirement
imposed an inherent delay on a landlord’s unlawful detainer remedy. (Rental Housing,
supra, 171 Cal.App.4th at p. 763 [ordinance did not specify the time a tenant must be
allowed to cure; rent board regulations provided a minimum of 7 days].) But this
procedural requirement was imposed in order to “regulate the substantive grounds” for
certain evictions, where tenants continue prohibited conduct after notification from the
landlord, “rather than the procedural remedy available to the landlord once grounds for
eviction have been established.” (Id. at p. 763.)
The Ordinance is significantly less procedural than the ordinance upheld in Rental
Housing. Unlike that ordinance, the Ordinance does not impose any procedural