The shift in eviction paperwork since my early days in the Bay Area
I started doing property management back in 2009 in Oakland, and back then a 3-day notice was basically a one page form you could fill out by hand. Now I swear every unlawful detainer I file requires like 8 attachments, a proof of service with photo ID verification, and the courts in Alameda County still bounce it back if the font is off. The new Tenant Protection Act really changed the game around 2020, adding just cause requirements and relocation fees, so a simple nonpayment case now takes me 2 visits to the clerk just to confirm the filing process. I miss the days when I could draft an answer on a legal pad and the judge would actually read it without a cover sheet. But I get why they tightened it, landlords were doing some shady stuff with self help evictions before I moved to Santa Rosa in 2016. Has anyone else noticed the local rules differ way more between counties now than they did a decade back, or is it just me?
Man, I feel this in my bones. I did rentals in Contra Costa from 2011 to 2018 and the paperwork creep was real. Used to be I could hand a guy a 3-day, he'd pay, done. By the time I left, I was scanning IDs, stapling declarations, and praying the clerk didn't find a typo on page 4. And yeah, the county rules are all over the place now, what flies in Alameda gets you laughed out of the clerk's office in Sonoma. You're not crazy. It got harder everywhere, just in different ways.