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A San Francisco ordinance giving renters who face eviction more time to meet their property owners' requirements has been struck down by a state appeals court, which said California law requires compliance within three days.

The ordinance, approved by the Board of Supervisors in February 2022, said that before someone can be evicted for failing to pay rent on time or several other reasons — such as severely damaging the property, using it for illegal purposes, violating other lease conditions or refusing to allow the owner to enter for inspection — the renter must be given an additional 10 days to remedy the problem. That was in addition to the three days already allowed by state law.

Supervisor Dean Preston, author of the ordinance, told other board members that "all too often, three days really flies by and tenants are in a position where they could have come up with rent money or otherwise solved the dispute with the landlord but they simply don't have enough time to access the resources and help they need."

The measure was challenged by the San Francisco Apartment Association and the Small Property Owners of San Francisco Institute. Superior Court Judge Charles Haines ruled in July 2022 that the state's three-day limit applied to evictions for missing rent payments but left the city's 10-day extension in place for other evictions.

On Wednesday, however, the 1st District Court of Appeal said cities lack legal authority to extend the state's deadline for evictions.

A local government can pass laws to protect renters from some types of evictions, Justice Tara Desautels said in the 3-0 ruling. She cited past appellate decisions that upheld a San Francisco ordinance that barred evictions of families with school-age children during the school year unless the families had violated rental conditions, and affirmed a 2022 Oakland ballot measure requiring "good cause" for evictions.

But those laws were "substantive," limiting the grounds for evictions, and did not conflict with state laws, Desautels said. She said San Francisco's 10-day extension was entirely "procedural" and contradicted the timetable expressly set by state law.

Andrew Zacks, attorney for the property owners' organizations, said he was pleased that the court "established clear limits on the ability of cities to further undercut the rights of housing providers to access the courts."

Under longstanding California court rulings, Zacks said, "cities have a right to regulate evictions, but they do not have a right to regulate procedures that have been used to restrict tenancies." He said San Francisco's 10-day extension, which has been in effect until now, has not caused serious problems, but if it had been upheld "it would be carte blanche for the city to make that period any amount they wanted, 30 days, 60 days or more."

Preston said the state should change its law.

"It's more important than ever that the California Legislature extend the state's outdated and cruel three-day notice law to give tenants more time to work out disputes before an eviction proceeds," the supervisor said by email. "Eviction should be a last resort, not a starting point, and California is out of step with other jurisdictions from Alabama to Vermont to Washington D.C. that give tenants a more reasonable amount of time to address issues before facing an eviction notice."