Eviction Attorney Rails Against Measure H, Advises Pasadena Landlords to ‘Divest Yourself’

A controversial landlord rights attorney called Pasadena’s rent control Measure H “dastardly” on Tuesday during a seminar presented by the Pasadena-Foothills Association of Realtors. 

Dennis Block spoke in front of a packed audience at Brookside Golf Club. Block is a well-known eviction attorney and an authority in Landlord/Tenant law and rent control who is based in Burbank.

During the seminar, Block said the Pasadena City Council “is stealing your rent,” and the Rental Housing Board’s “fair return” policy for landlords is a “kangaroo court.”

“That’s lip service, it’s pure theft,” he said. 

Along with his condemnation of the City’s rent control measure, which he called “one-sided” and “stacked in the tenant’s favor,” Block walked his audience through much of the Measure’s main points and reminded the landlords and property owners to play by the rules, including regulations regarding Just Cause evictions, relocation policies and allowable rent increases, along with providing information on the City’s Tenant Protection Ordinance. 

A majority of Pasadena voters passed Measure H in November. The measure established a local rental housing board and rolled rent back to the amounts tenants were paying on May 17, 2021.

A judge ruled against the California Apartment Association in a lawsuit to block the initiative. 

“The best thing for you would be to buy property out of the state of California and divest yourself of everything that you own. Because these laws are truly strangling anybody who owns property rights,” Block said.

When reached by Pasadena Now, Rental Housing Board President Ryan Bell said “First of all, it was an election, people voted. It’s like direct democracy. So it doesn’t get much more democratic than that,” in response to Block’s criticism of Measure H. 

Bell said he was not surprised by Block’s dislike of Measure H. 

“There is a constitutional guarantee of a fair return on a landlord’s investment, and since the early days of California rent control in the seventies, there has been case law on it. Birkenfeld versus the City of Berkeley is the primary case in California,” said Bell. “where Berkeley had to create additional regulations or laws to guarantee that fair return so that it would not be a taking of personal property. 

“And so ever since then,” he continued, “rent control laws have provisions whereby a landlord is guaranteed a right to a fair return if they do capital improvements or if for any reason they think that they are not getting a fair return, they can petition.”

The local rental housing board has not set up that mechanism yet, but anticipated having a process for landlords to appeal “by the end of the year.”

Block told the Tuesday gathering that “The state of California has their own statewide rent control, and these local municipalities like Pasadena have created even more onerous laws to further impede a landlord’s ability to get a fair return on his investment.”

“No other industry,” he continued, “from newspapers to bakers or car mechanics, are told what they can charge for their goods and services. …. This is truly a violation of our due process rights that this one industry and this one industry only, has to subsidize individual people without any governmental help or subsidies from the government. Landlords individually have to subsidize tenants.”

Block added, “By starting rent control, what you’re doing is you’re creating higher rent.  That’s been economically proven,” he claimed,  “but it doesn’t make a difference. The politicians love it and tenants feel that they need protection, but the truth is that the landlords need protection from these onerous laws,” Block said.