San Francisco Apartment Assn. v. City and County of San Francisco (2018)

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authorize further extended notice requirements. The City’s six-month notice requirement
is preempted by the [Ellis] Act.” (Channing, at pp. 96–97, fn. omitted.)
       Roble Vista Associates v. Bacon (2002) 97 Cal.App.4th 335 (Roble Vista)
distinguished Tri County. The ordinance in that case required landlords to offer new and
renewing tenants a one-year lease and established the failure to do so as a defense to
eviction of that tenant. (Roble Vista, at p. 338.) The appellate division of the superior
court found the ordinance preempted under Tri County, characterizing it as effectively
“ ‘requir[ing] a one-year notice to quit rather than the thirty days provided by state
statute.’ ” (Roble Vista, at pp. 340–341.) The Court of Appeal rejected this
characterization: “In our view, the [o]rdinance requires that a landlord offer a one-year
lease, thus addressing the duration of the lease. The [o]rdinance does not specify the
amount of notice that must be given to terminate a tenancy. Accordingly, the present
case is readily distinguishable from Tri County.” (Id. at pp. 340–341, fns. omitted.)
Thus, while the ordinance in Roble Vista had an impact on the timing of landlord-tenant
transactions, that impact was incidental to the regulation of lease terms, an area the court
found to be within the municipality’s police powers. (Id. at p. 341.)6
       The Property Owners argue that the Ordinance, like the preempted ordinances in
Tri County and Channing, “requir[es] landlords to wait longer to recover possession than
allowed by state law,” pointing to Civil Code section 1946.1, subdivision (b), which
requires 60 days’ notice of termination to tenants with month-to-month tenancies. But
unlike the ordinances in Tri County and Channing and Civil Code section 1946.1, the
Ordinance does not specify an amount of notice required to terminate a tenancy. Instead,
as discussed above, it establishes a permissible substantive defense to eviction that (like