NEW LAW CAN ONLY HURT APARTMENT TENANTS, OWNERS.

Byline: Chuck Hoffman and Michelle Niznik Local View

STATE law and common courtesy mean that residents and apartment owners have certain duties and obligations to each other.

Owners have a duty to be responsive to residents, to provide a clean, well-maintained house or apartment and to respect their residents' privacy. Residents, on the other hand, have a duty to pay their rent on time, to respect the owner's property and to be considerate of their neighbors and fellow residents.

The system is designed to balance the needs and obligations of residents with the needs and obligations of apartment owners. It works well, and it has provided housing for millions of Californians.

That system is under attack, however, by a well-meaning piece of legislation before Gov. Gray Davis that would threaten residents' privacy, compromise their safety, harm the quality of life of apartment residents, and, ironically, make it that much harder to families to find an affordable place to live.

The legislation is Senate Bill 985 by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Los Angeles.

Under current law, residents can move out or apartment owners can ask residents to leave by each giving the other 30 days' notice. In practice, that means residents are unencumbered by long-term obligations if they need to move or change jobs. It also means that landlords are able to protect their property and the quality of life enjoyed by apartment residents by being able to evict problem residents.

Sen. Kuehl's bill creates a three-year test program in Los Angeles, West Hollywood and Santa Monica. It would harm both good residents and good landlords by making it harder - much harder, in fact - for owners to rid apartment complexes of problem residents by eliminating the 30-day notice provision for property owners and replacing it with a 60-day notice.

Today, with the 30-day notice provision in place, a problem resident can delay their departure by as long as 4 months. Imagine the problems it would create if loud or abusive or violent residents were allowed to remain in place for five or six months. How could a good apartment owner protect his or her residents under the circumstances?

Under the current system, residents typically pay two months rent to move in. It's not quite that simple, but for the sake of argument, call it ``first and last.'' In a situation where both parties have to give 30 days' notice, apartment owners have some protection against a resident's failure to pay rent, and thus are able to take more risk on a resident with less- than-perfect credit.

If the law were to change to 60 days' notice, owners would face significant new financial exposure. They would now be at risk for an additional month's rent. Market forces being what they are, property owners could only respond in two ways - raise everyone's rent to cover the risk of lost revenue, or severely tighten credit checks to make sure only residents with excellent credit were able to move in.

Supporters of the 60-day-notice provision suggest that apartment owners already have all the authority they need to protect their apartment complexes. They say owners could just issue three-day notices to problem residents ordering them off the property.

Unfortunately what the law says and how the law works are two different things.

Most of the time, a three-day notice to a resident is like a ``fix-it'' ticket issued by the police. If you fix a broken turn signal or headlight, for example, you don't have to pay a fine. The same holds true for most three-day notices. If an apartment owner issues a three-day notice to a resident for overdue rent or bothering his neighbors or even threatening violence, residents can fix the problem (``cure'' it, in legal terms) just by paying back rent or promising to do better.

Property owners can claim that residents can't fix or cure the problem, but the burden of proof is quite high, and often requires that residents testify against each other. Why should good residents be put in the risky position of testifying against their neighbor? In those cases, residents often refuse to testify because they don't want to put themselves in harm's way.

Who can blame them when there is a better alternative?

Keep the 30-day notice in place. Give good residents and good apartment owners the tools they need to protect their homes and protect their property.

Please tell Gov. Davis that you oppose this well-meaning but ill- thought-out measure. SB 985 will cause far more problems than it will cure.