Legal Corner

By Eric Andresen

January 1, 2001, has brought a large slate of new regulations, procedures and requirements for all of us to deal with. Listed below are the most important ones, and resources for obtaining more information.

Minimum Wage: Effective January 1, 2001, California’s minimum wage will increase to $6.25 per hour. It will rise again on January 1, 2002, to $6.75 per hour. Each of you will need to review all of your employment agreements and make adjustments to the number of hours worked either for free rent or for fixed salaries. PPMA will be making the necessary changes to its employment agreement and should have that information available by the beginning of January. For more information you can look at the California Industrial Welfare Commission’s Website: www.dir.ca.gov/IWC/iwc.html; browse the California Apartment Association’s Website at www.caanet.org; or contact your employment law attorney

5-Day Service by Mail: You must now provide an additional five days to respond or make effective any change or deadline imposed when a notice required to be served upon a tenant is delivered by mail. In other words, 30-day rent increase notices that are mailed must now be mailed at least 35 days in advance, a 30-day notice of change of terms of tenancy must be mailed at least 35 days ahead of the change date, etc. Failure to follow these guidelines could result in nightmarish consequences, voidance of a notice or excessive delays in effective dates.

60-Day Notice Rule: Any time that rent is to be increased 10% or more within a one-year period, the notice of increase must be given no less than 60 days prior to its inception. You must also add on five days if the notice is going to be served through the mail. This is effective throughout the state, not just in San Francisco, and will apply to all forms of rent increase (operating and maintenance, capital improvement, comparable,etc.).More information can be found by reading California Civil Code Section 827 at www.caanet.org.

Pest Control Notification: All tenants must be given a copy of the required Pest Control Disclosure that you are to receive from your pest control operator. The new requirement is actually geared toward informing new tenants of the disclosure, but caution would dictate that you obtain a new disclosure from your pest control operators and send a copy of it to all existing tenants as well as attaching it to new rental agreements. PPMA’s tenancy agreement (at least the form on disk) is being reviewed to see if we can help each of you remember to get this notice out. More information can be obtained from the CAA Web site at www.caanet.org, or from your licensed pest control operator.

Independent Contractor Reporting: We must now report to the Employment Development Department (EDD) any time we anticipate paying an independent contractor $600 or more. This applies only to individuals whom we pay as independent contractors, not to companies or corporations. EDD has created Form DE542, which can easily be downloaded from their Web site at www.edd.ca.gov/txicr.htm. This site also has a great deal of information regarding compliance. You can also get more information from the CAA website: www.caanet.org.

Identity Theft: Assembly Bill 2246 was passed in response to concerns of private, personal information being found in garbage cans and other easily accessible areas. The bill requires that when we dispose of personal records such as tenant applications or credit reports, we destroy such records by shredding or erasing them or by ensuring that personal information is unreadable or undecipherable. It is also important to note that we should make arrangements to store such records with sufficient security (locked file cabinets, for example) until such time as they are destroyed. We are required to hold most such information for a minimum of three years, so security is just as important as ensuring complete destruction of personal records before disposal. Further information can be found at CAA’s Website: www.caanet.org, or by reading California Civil Code Section 1798.8 at www.leginfo.ca.gov/calaw.html.