8
The court went on to conclude that the local rent control law’s restriction on the
grounds for eviction did not conflict with general law. The court explained that the
charter amendment provided for eviction for numerous reasons, including a violation of
the tenant’s duties to the landlord, such as the duty to pay rent or not to use the premises
for illegal purposes, the landlord’s good faith intention to withdraw the unit from the
rental market, and the tenant’s refusal to execute a written renewal of the lease, on
materially the same terms, upon expiration of the lease. (Birkenfeld, supra, 17 Cal.3d at
pp. 147–149.) These grounds, the court noted, appeared to “cover most if not all of the
grounds that would otherwise be available except that of termination of the tenancy,” and
the prohibition of eviction upon expiration of the tenancy was a “reasonable means of
enforcing rent ceilings by preventing landlords from putting out tenants because of their
unwillingness to pay illegal amounts of rent . . . .” (Id. at p. 148.) The court rejected the
contention that this prohibition conflicted with the unlawful detainer law, under which a
landlord may recover possession in summary proceedings if a tenant continues in
possession after the expiration of the term of a lease. (Id. at pp. 148–149; Code Civ.
Proc., § 1161, subd. 1.) The court explained: “The purpose of the unlawful detainer
statutes is procedural. The statutes implement the landlord’s property rights by
permitting him to recover possession once the consensual basis for the tenant’s
occupancy is at an end. In contrast the charter amendment’s elimination of particular
grounds for eviction is a limitation upon the landlord’s property rights under the police
power, giving rise to a substantive ground of defense in unlawful detainer proceedings.
The mere fact that a city’s exercise of the police power creates such a defense does not
bring it into conflict with the state’s statutory scheme.” (Birkenfeld, 17 Cal.3d at p. 149.)
Following Birkenfeld, our high court in Fisher, supra, 37 Cal.3d at pp. 699–700,
705–709, concluded that another provision of Berkeley’s rent control ordinance—
allowing a tenant to withhold rent and providing a defense to unlawful detainer if the
tenant believed in good faith that the landlord had not complied with certain