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1 including complaining of conditions affecting habitability or the reporting of uninhabitable
2 conditions to the appropriate agency, and provides that a lessor may not recover possession of a
3 premises or evict a tenant not in default within 180 days of the tenant exercising these rights.
4 Both affirmative defenses are accordingly fair game in an unlawful detainer proceeding.
5 As demonstrated by the record here, the Carters attempted at trial to raise their
6 habitability and retaliatory eviction defenses on multiple occasions by referencing the factual
7 matters alleged in their answer. But the court erroneously sustained Boyd‟s objection to the
8 court‟s consideration of these matters on the ground of relevance and did not consider them.
9 For example, at the start of trial, Barbara Carter (after being sworn in) told the court that
10 the property: “wasn‟t move-in ready….I paid a substantial amount of money to move on this
11 property, and then I had to pay a substantial amount of money to—for it to be—to live in it.
12 The carpet was filthy. The bathroom is very—oh, it‟s messed up. That‟s where it started ….
13 With the Code Enforcement, Mike [Boyd] sent someone to the house to, I guess, have the
14 bathroom looked at to have it fixed, and the guy said ….” She was then interrupted by Boyd‟s
15 counsel, who objected that these issues “are not relevant to the current case” because these
16 events “transpired six months ago before this case ever started,” a statement that is both
17 factually and legally erroneous. Later, Barbara Carter again tried to explain that “the Code
18 Enforcement, Sunnyvale Police Department came out, and they code tagged the bathroom.”
19 Boyd‟s counsel once again stated that the Carters could not “interrupt an unlawful detainer with
20 those issues. The issue before the court is did they pay the January rent.” The trial court then
21 said to the Carters, “See, the thing is, the kind of rental agreement that you had, it could be
22 terminated” and “[i]t‟s a month-to [sic] month type relationship. So the landowner, upon giving
23 you 30 days notice, has a right to … take possession of the property again. So I‟m trying to
24 figure out what it is you want.”
25 Although the court‟s statement that a month-to-month tenancy agreement can generally
26 be terminated upon 30 days‟ notice is legally correct, where a substantial breach of the warranty
27 of habitability has occurred or the tenant is asserting that the eviction is in retaliation for having
28 exercised legal rights, a tenant is entitled to raise these issues as affirmative defenses in an