 ARE YOU COMPLIANT WITH SAN FRANCISCO'S NEW RECYCLING/COMPOSTING LAWS?
San Francisco's MANDATORY composting ordinance goes into effect on October 21, 2009. All residences and businesses are required to have three separate color-coded bins for waste: blue for recycling, green for compost and black for trash.
Fines for almost all residential customers and many small businesses - anyone who generates less than a cubic yard of refuse a week - are initially capped at $100. Businesses that don't have proper bins face escalating fines up to $500.
Recycling and compost bins are free for residential customers, including multi-unit buildings.
You can call Sunset Scavenger at (415) 330-1300 to set up the service. |
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DID YOU KNOW?
Adding Parking For a Tenant is Not Grounds for Increasing the Rent
It's a familiar situation: A parking space becomes available in your building and a hopeful long-term tenant requests the space. You and the tenant would then agree upon a monthly fee for the space. The tenant would start paying for the space in addition to her regular monthly rent. Is this legal?
One would think so, since you are providing an additional service to your tenant in excess to what was originally included in the rental agreement.
However, in a recent conversation with a Rent Board administrative law judge, while doing some research on how to handle a potential problem, I found this not to be the case. Follow the path I listed above and you can be accused of an unlawful rent increase.
The December 2008 SFAA Legal Corner states that "while the rent law does not codify rules for increasing the base rent above allowable increments when such amenity is added, no one would expect parking to be rendered for free. As such, it is probably safe for an owner and tenant to agree upon a fair rental increase to reflect the tenant's acquisition of the benefit."
However, the Rent Board would still consider this an illegal increase.
WHAT DO YOU DO?
When seeking an increase for an added service, file a petition with the Rent Board. While there is no specific form for increasing rent as a result of a new service after the inception of the tenancy, the standard request for rent increase forms can be modified. Failure to file a petition could conceivably enhance the tenant's ability down the road to void the increase.
The administrative law judge did say that in the event that the tenant and landlord come to an agreement on the rental price for parking, a landlord can bypass the petition process and file a motion for an Alternative Dispute Resolution. This is a mediation service offered by the Rent Board. The ADR session would expedite the increase and allow the landlord to get the tenant on record agreeing to the increase and would, therefore, make it more difficult for the tenant to void the increase in the future.
STILL SOUND LIKE A HASSLE?
I would recommend avoiding this situation entirely by renting parking spaces in conjunction with vacant units as much as possible. Apartments rented with parking spaces fetch higher rents than those without, so you get the maximum rent possible at leasing time.
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