SAN JOSE — A group of tenants is suing their landlord, alleging she evicted them from their rent-controlled apartments under false pretenses, and in violation of a new city ordinance.

The residents of a fourplex in San Jose’s Santee neighborhood received notices to vacate their apartments last year, after their landlord, Kim Tran, said she needed to move her family into the building, according to a lawsuit recently filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court. But the plaintiffs’ lawyers claim Tran’s family never moved in, and instead Tran brought in a crop of new renters at a higher price.

Tran says intended to move her family into the apartments until her dad got ill with cancer, and that she paid the relocation expenses of the tenants.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs claim the move, which they say violates the eviction ordinance San Jose enacted in 2017, is another example of local landlords circumventing the region’s tenant protections.

As a result, four families — some of whom had lived in that building for more than a decade — were kicked out of their homes and forced to find new, more expensive apartments they now struggle to afford, their lawyers say.

“Tenants are really the most vulnerable people when it comes to the housing crisis, especially low-income tenants,” said Nadia Aziz of the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, who represents the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “So it’s really important that these laws are upheld. And if landlords aren’t going to follow the law, it’s important that there’s some kind of enforcement.”

Tran said she intended to move her 71-year-old father into the building from his home in Orange County, as well as her mother, brother and sister, so they could take care of him. Tran’s father lived in San Jose for 10 years and had always wanted to return, Tran said. Last fall, after she’d already moved out her tenants, Tran said she found out her father had cancer. He couldn’t make the move up from Orange County, and neither could she or her family, who also live there, because they needed to look after him.

“I don’t know what to do,” Tran said in an interview. “I got to take care of my dad.”

Tran said she brought in new renters to help cover her mortgage.

“I have no choice,” she said. “I am not rich to the point where I can just leave it for years without renting it.”

Tran said she does plan on moving her brother into the building next week. But she won’t be moving in herself. If a landlord evicts a renter to move in a family member, San Jose requires the landlord to live in the building too.

In San Jose, as in a handful of other Bay Area cities including San Francisco and Oakland, landlords may only evict tenants for one of a specified list of approved reasons — including if the tenant fails to pay rent, or if the landlords want to move in or move in their family members. But tenants rights advocates say landlords often evict tenants from rent-controlled units under false pretenses, with the intention of bringing in new renters who will pay more. That’s because owners of properties subject to rent control can only raise their rents a set percentage each year — unless they have a new tenant.

“It is a problem,” Aziz said. “We see it a lot.”

San Jose officials require the owner’s family member to move in within three months of the prior tenants moving out, and then live there for at least 36 months. But Aziz said three months after her clients moved out, lawyers went to the building and knocked on the doors, and found new tenants living there who were not related to Tran.

Tran gave her tenants 60-day notices to vacate in May, and told them they needed to move out so her family could move in, according to the lawsuit. In July, Tran re-issued the notices to include owner move-in as the official cause of eviction, per San Jose statute. She paid each household about $10,000 in relocation assistance, as required by the city.

Alejandra and Fernando Ruiz had lived in a two-bedroom apartment in the building for 15 years, raising their two daughters there, volunteering at the girls’ schools and developing close ties to their community. They paid $1,215 a month. In August, the family moved out, honoring Tran’s notice to vacate. Now Alejandra Ruiz, her husband and their 25-year-old daughter struggle to pay $2,000 a month to share a one-bedroom apartment.

The move was devastating, Alejandra Ruiz said.

“It was my home since I got to San Jose,” she said in Spanish. “It was the only home that I knew. And to leave all of my memories, all of my friends, all of my community — and without a just reason — was hard.”

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New Oakland renter protections attacked in court The lawsuit also accuses Tran of harassing her renters and demanding entry into their apartments after 9 p.m.

Tran denies harassing her tenants, or coming to their apartments at night without an invitation. She said she did what she could for them when they moved out.

“I’m so sorry,” Tran said, “but I did pay them. I did offer them whatever the city required me to do for them to move out.”