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

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the timing of all evictions would appear to be preempted by the unlawful detainer
statutes. Such an ordinance would not be imposed in order to regulate any substantive
grounds for eviction, like the Ordinance. The Ordinance does not impose such a blanket
requirement independent of any substantive defenses to eviction. Instead, the Ordinance
is a substantive defense with an impact on timing.4
       Accordingly, we conclude the Ordinance is not preempted by the unlawful
detainer statutes.
II. The Ordinence is Not Preempted under Tri County and Channing
       The Property Owners also rely on two cases, Tri County Apartment Assn. v. City
of Mountain View (1987) 196 Cal.App.3d 1283 (Tri County) and Channing Properties v.
City of Berkeley (1992) 11 Cal.App.4th 88 (Channing). These cases primarily involve
state statutes other than the unlawful detainer statutes, and therefore do not employ the
procedural-substantive framework established in Birkenfeld. Instead, they stand for the
general proposition that various state laws preempt the field of the timing of landlord-
tenant transactions.
       Tri County concluded that an ordinance requiring landlords give 60 days’ notice of
rental increases in month-to-month tenancies was preempted. (Tri County, supra, 196
Cal.App.3d at pp. 1289, 1298.) The court discussed a state law, Civil Code section 827,
which provides that a landlord may change the lease terms of a month-to-month tenancy
with 30 days’ notice, and concluded the ordinance “adopts the same purpose as the
statute, i.e., appropriate notification, but then changes the statewide chronology to suit its
own agenda.” (Tri County, at p. 1296.) The court continued: “[Civil Code] [s]ection 827
represents only one part of the legislative expression about when landlords and tenants
may assert their rights and must meet their obligations.” (Id. at p. 1297.) After setting