The Oct. 28th Voice of San Diego report by Jon Hinch regarding the Chula Vista City Council’s unanimous vote to considering modifying the city’s tenant protection ordinance is a frustrating read for the well informed tenant, and claims made by Councilmember Inzunza and Molly Kirkland of the Southern California Rental Housing Association (a landlord-oriented, anti-renter advocacy group) regarding eviction laws are unfounded and politically motivated.
Chula Vista City Council meeting at the Chula Vista Council Chambers on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025. /Vito Di Stefano for Voice of San Diego
SCRHA encouraged the City to reconsider the tenant protections because of violence at rental properties like Casa Lago Eastlake that they claim make it difficult for property owners to address nuisances and safety issues. “Reconsidering tenant protections” is a strange way to allegedly “protect innocent tenants,” but for the profit-oriented landlord, contradictions of this sort can easily be dressed up with sensational narratives. So can lies.
The Oct. 28th report by Jon Hinch regarding the Chula Vista City Council’s unanimous vote to considering modifying the city’s tenant protection ordinance is a frustrating read for the well informed tenant, and claims made by Councilmember Inzunza and Molly Kirkland of the Southern California Rental Housing Association (a landlord-oriented, anti-renter advocacy group) regarding eviction laws are unfounded and politically motivated.
SCRHA encouraged the City to reconsider the tenant protections because of violence at rental properties like Casa Lago Eastlake that they claim make it difficult for property owners to address nuisances and safety issues. “Reconsidering tenant protections” is a strange way to allegedly “protect innocent tenants,” but for the profit-oriented landlord, contradictions of this sort can easily be dressed up with sensational narratives. So can lies.
The first lie is that Chula Vista’s Tenant Protections Ordinance has anything to do with how quickly landlords can evict someone who has stabbed another person or otherwise engaged in “nuisance activity,” as is alleged of the tenants at Casa Lago. These are “at-fault” grounds for eviction, meaning that tenants have allegedly done something wrong, and under Chula Vista Municipal Code 9.65.060 state law (Code of Civ. Proc. 1161) applies to “at fault” grounds for eviction. Chula Vista’s Tenant Protections Ordinance really only creates tenant protections against “no-fault” evictions—in other words, evictions in which landlords are taking advantage of tenants they can’t even allege did anything wrong.
The second lie regards the typical turn-around time for an eviction case. Evictions are expedited proceedings, the quickest possible legal proceeding in California. The majority of eviction cases end in default, meaning after the landlord serves eviction papers the tenant doesn’t answer within 10 days and the landlord wins automatically. If the tenant does answer, a landlord can file a request to set trial and under state law the trial must be set within 20 days under Code of Civil Procedure § 1170.5. Again, Chula Vista’s Tenant Protections Ordinance has nothing to do with this timeline.
Unfortunately for Inzunza and the SCRHA, our country’s constitution guarantees us a little something called “due process of the law” that seems to be a thorn in the landlord’s side.
As mentioned in the article, SCRHA helped bring a bill to the state assembly regarding evictions that would bypass the court process entirely, empowering landlords to team up with police officers to forcibly remove people based entirely on the word of the landlord, without any hearing or judicial process. This bill rightfully didn’t make it far as it blatantly undermines the right to a fair hearing that is one of the most important pillars of any democracy. Policies like this are an attack on all tenants’ basic rights.
While those interviewed rhetorically distinguish good and bad tenants, that doesn’t stop them from pursuing policy changes that would negatively affect all tenants. According to the SCRHA, they are now specifically asking that the tenant protections not kick in on the first day of tenancy. This change would have zero impact on the ability to pursue an at-fault eviction, but it would significantly increase the ability of landlords to evict tenants without just cause.
In the midst of record homelessness and unaffordability, tenants already face enough hurdles in securing the internationally recognized right to housing. That the SCRHA and Councilmember Inzunza would opportunistically use this to further erode tenants rights, is unfortunately expected from those who care more about passive income than people’s housing security. That VOSD would uncritically publish this narrative of widespread tenant lawlessness is disappointing.