Come January, Marin County will launch its just-cause pilot program, which aims to reduce rental instability by requiring landlords to provide a reason when evicting a tenant. The two-year ordinance will also create a registry of rental properties to track data such as monthly rent and occupancy status in order to gain a clearer picture of Marin’s rental landscape. As Supervisor Damon Connolly said during a merit hearing on Tuesday, the conversation around just-cause first began in 2015. After a unanimous vote from the board, the program will go into effect on Jan. 17. It will not apply to many properties in West Marin, however, as the policy will apply only to rental properties with three or more units. County planner Leelee Thomas said the restriction was added in order to align with the county’s code compliance program. Still, fair housing advocates have praised the ordinance. “It’s not just a matter of tenant protections for individual tenants, but the importance of keeping our communities whole,” Suzanne Sadowsky, associate director of the San Geronimo Valley Affordable Housing Association, said at Tuesday’s meeting. “We know in West Marin the situation is even more critical: there are even fewer and fewer multi-family homes and nearly all rentals are in single houses or duplexes [or] in-law units.” Ms. Sadowsky urged the board to consider expanding the registry  to include properties with fewer than three units so that the data would capture the rental situation in West Marin. County planner Deborah La Rue explained that the purpose of the registry is to capture “information on rental increases and rates in Marin County and also [get] more information on lease terminations. We’ll have a better understanding for the causes for which tenants are evicted and causes for turnover.” The ordinance does not prohibit evictions outright; it offers six “for cause” reasons that a landlord can use to evict a tenant, including a failure to pay rent, nuisance behavior or a threat of violent crime. There are also three “no-fault” termination provisions, such as if the landlord plans to move into the unit or otherwise take it off the market. Landlords and property owners have criticized the ordinance, arguing that it will make it more difficult for them to remove problematic tenants. David Walton, a real estate broker, said the new policy was akin to “swatting a fly with a sledgehammer” and will be “handcuffing the landlords and 90 percent of the tenants that live in these buildings who will be subject to the tenants you can’t get out.” Some critics have said the ordinance could in fact cause more instability in the rental housing market if property owners decide to convert their units to short-term rentals rather than deal with the new eviction restrictions. Although Supervisor Dennis Rodoni voted to move forward with the ordinance, he voiced concerns about the ways in which the policy skirts his district. “I’m concerned that 90 percent of West Marin doesn’t qualify for this ordinance because of the small size of the rental units; we have very few of three or more,” he said. He added that he hoped to further the discussion about extending the registry to properties excluded from the ordinance, something Ms. Thomas said staff could revisit after the registry goes live on April 1.