Sebastopol City Council to consider just-cause eviction ordinance to protect Woodmark residents

Council will vote on the ordinance at its Nov. 4 meeting

The Woodmark Apartments on Bodega Avenue. (Photo by Laura Hagar Rush)

At last night’s council meeting, the Sebastopol City Council directed City Attorney Alex Mog to prepare an urgency just-cause eviction ordinance to protect the tenants at Woodmark Apartments from imminent displacement.

The council voted 4 to 1 to have the city attorney prepare both an urgency just-cause ordinance and a regular just-cause ordinance, both with three months of tenant relocation assistance. These ordinances would apply only to rental housing with at least 40 or 45 units and would have a one-year sunset clause.

Woodmark is a 48-unit deed-restricted affordable housing project that was funded in part by the US Department of Agriculture for farm-worker housing. Instead, the developer filled the apartments with low-income non-farmworkers at the end of 2024 and is now being required by the USDA to move those tenants out and move farmworkers in. The tenants’ leases, for the most part, expire in December. The developer has offered tenants $10,000 if they move out by the end of October, and $5,000 if they move by the end of November.

The evening began with an interesting introduction to the issue from Sebastopol City Attorney Alex Mog. He began by dismissing the idea that the city should bring a lawsuit against the developer, first, because the city has no obvious standing, and second, even the city found grounds, it would be expensive.

The staff report noted that “California’s Unfair Competition Law (Business & Professions Code Section 17200 et seq.) prohibits unlawful, unfair, or fraudulent business acts or practices, as well as unfair, deceptive, untrue or misleading advertising,” but Mog said that a lawsuit based on this ordinance would have to be brought by the tenants of Woodmark, not the city of Sebastopol. (Although the tenants are being advised by Legal Aid of Sonoma County, no attorney has yet stepped forward to represent them in such a case.)

Dispensing with the idea of legal action, Mog concentrated on the question of whether the city should adopt a just-cause eviction ordinance with tenant relocation assistance.

Interestingly, California has a just-cause provision, but it doesn’t apply to newer buildings (anything built in the last 15 years) or deed-restricted housing, such as affordable housing.

Mog said, “The city is allowed to adopt an ordinance as long as it offers broader protections than what the state ordinance offers.”

According to the staff report, “In Sonoma County, three jurisdictions (Sonoma County, Petaluma, and Healdsburg) have their own local ordinances that provide some level of protection greater than state law. Healdsburg’s ordinance provides greater relocation assistance, while the County and Petaluma’s ordinances both provide greater just-cause eviction protection and relocation assistance.”

In addition to providing just-cause eviction protections, the council decided to include a requirement in the ordinance that the landlord provide relocation assistance in the case of no-fault eviction. Under its ordinance, the State of California provides relocation assistance worth one month’s rent. Healdsburg’s ordinance requires relocation assistance worth two-months’ rent. In council discussions, Mayor Stephen Zollman was the first to suggest that Sebastopol—never to be outdone—raise that to three-times the monthly rent, to which other councilmembers agreed.

Mog did note that many just-cause eviction ordinances have “carve-outs” that prevent them from applying in cases where they would conflict with state or federal law. Sonoma County’s just-cause eviction ordinance applies “except where the application of this article to a rental unit would violate law, regulation, or contractual requirements of the federal government or the state of California applicable to such rental unit.” He suggested that a Sebastopol ordinance should include the same sort of language.

On the face of it, it seems like such a clause would exclude Woodmark—which is bound by contractual requirements with the USDA to rent only to farmworkers—but Legal Aid’s Housing Policy Analyst Caitlin Vejby said that isn’t necessarily the case.

“So what this ordinance could do that wouldn’t be in conflict with the contractual agreement or regulatory agreement for Woodmark would be to say, “If you are required to or able to evict the tenants at Woodmark for no-fault reasons in order to come back into compliance with your contractual agreement with the USDA, you would still have to provide the relocation assistance required by this local ordinance,” Vejby said. “That aspect of it would not be in conflict.”

In regard to this question, Mog said, “Just because a housing project is subject to a regulatory agreement with a federal agency, does not mean that federal laws prohibit the application of local laws. For example, those projects still have to comply with the Sebastopol Building Code. We were unable to find any instance where a local just-cause eviction ordinance was found to be prohibited by federal law or regulation.”

The council also had to decide what kind of apartment complexes a just-cause eviction ordinance would apply to: all rentals in the city or just a small subset, like large developments.

Councilmember Jill McLewis, skittish about this proposal from the start, first proposed a minimum of 35 units then raised that to 40 as the discussion wore on. She noted that none of the owners of these large apartment complexes in Sebastopol were in attendance that evening. She asked if the city had reached out to large apartment owners “to see how this might adversely affect them?” Mog said they had not.

Mayor Zollman asked how many hours it would take Mog to write a just-cause eviction ordinance, with the details the council had discussed. Mog estimated 10 hours for both an urgency and regular ordinance and said that would be within his already budgeted allowance.

Why an urgency ordinance?

The other decision the council had to make was whether to do a regular ordinance or an urgency ordinance—or both.

“The normal process for adopting an ordinance is, as the council knows, a first reading, second reading, and then it goes into effect 30 days later. So that would mean the ordinance would be in effect in mid-December—I think Dec. 18,” Mog said. In other words, too late for some tenants at Woodmark.

An urgency ordinance, on the other hand, goes into effect immediately after just one reading. The only requirement is that the council has to make a finding that the urgency is required to preserve public health and safety.

An urgency ordinance also requires a 4 out of 5 vote, while a regular ordinance just requires a 3 out of 5 vote.

Mog suggested creating both an urgency ordinance and a regular ordinance at the same time, so that if the findings of the urgency ordinance are challenged, the regular ordinance will have already gone into effect by the time that challenge has been heard.

Councilmember McLewis and some public commenters balked at the idea of an urgency ordinance.

“I just wanted to say I’m deeply empathetic to the situation here, but based on my questions earlier, I have deep concerns about an emergency act,” McLewis said. “I would not be supportive of that tonight, because, based on my years of attending these meetings, I’ve never really seen great things resolved when the council has done these types of things quickly without being fully informed and also the community not being fully informed. I have a lot of concern about the number of property owners here who aren’t in the room and the impact that this could have on them and the long-term unintended consequences.”

Hinton also expressed some discomfort with the speed of this decision and the danger of unintended consequences.

In public comment, Robert was even more blunt: “Every bad decision that the city council’s made in the last three years started like this with ‘Gee whiz, it’s an urgent problem. We’ve gotta rush and solve it. Let’s pass an ordinance, or let’s agree to a partnership, or let’s do a Homekey project’—and they’ve all turned out to be costly, difficult, awful decisions, and this one’s kind of moving in that direction.”

Oliver Dick, while expressing sympathy for the plight of Woodmark’s tenants, said he was concerned that more restrictions on landlords would end up with them taking their properties out of circulation, thus exacerbating the city’s already tight rental market.

The tenants plead their case

The council also heard public comment from a long line of tenants from Woodmark—a now familiar sight at city council meetings. Tenants’ rights organizations, including Legal Aid Sonoma County and the Sonoma County Tenants Union, echoed the Woodmark tenants’ call for three things: a just-cause eviction ordinance, relocation assistance worth three months’ rent, and the right to future legal action.

Woodmark tenant Melissa Page, whose lease ends on Dec. 14, said, “The other night, my nine-year-old said he wanted an ordinary life. And when I asked him what he meant by that, he said, ‘A life where we could stay at our home and not have to leave and die on the street.” This is just one example of the damage and stress that Aperto and Pacific Companies has caused.”

Sixty-five-year-old Galena Leslie said, ‘When I got this place, I thought I had found my forever home where I could live right around the corner from my cousin, and I could have affordable rent for the remainder of my life. And now I’m finding myself having to sell my possessions in order to go someplace, and I have no idea where. I’m going to have to live in my car. There is no place else.”

Several community members, including June Brashares and Jeanie Bates, spoke in support of the tenants’ requests for protection.

The vote

In final counsel comments before the vote, McLewis said she would not vote for an urgency ordinance—though she said she might vote for a regular ordinance with a sunset clause that would apply to apartment complexes with a minimum of 40 units.

Councilmember Hinton ultimately made the motion to direct the city attorney to prepare two just-cause eviction ordinances (one urgency, one regular) with 3x relocation assistance and a one-year sunset clause. Maurer seconded that but withdrew her second when Hinton wouldn’t agree to add a mandatory review of the ordinance three or four months before it sunsetted. Zollman stepped into the breach and seconded the motion. (Zollman’s position had been pretty clear all along, when earlier in the evening, he said, “Developers—I don’t even know how they live with themselves.”)

The motion carried 4 to 1, with McLewis dissenting. It will return to the council at the Nov. 4 Sebastopol City Council meeting for a final vote.

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