While most of the post-Prop G attention on evictions has focused on Ellis evictions as a way to replace the OMI loophole, the most dramatic increase has slipped under the radar—"pretext" evictions.
 The dictionary defines pretext as "an ostensible purpose...an excuse."
 And with the OMI loophole now gone, landlords are combing their rental agreements and dissecting the 14 just causes looking for an excuse to evict their tenants paying affordable rents.
 The classic pretext eviction in the recent past was the elderly Mission District couple who had lived in their home for over thirty years with a pet canary for over twenty of those years. Their rental agreement allowed pets but their landlord took advantage of a clause in it to change it to no pets. He then issued them an eviction notice for violating their rental agreement  because they had a pet bird. The Rent Board ended up stopping this eviction because the motive was so clearly wrongful: the issue was not the pet bird, it was clearly to evict and raise the rent.
 The big pretext these days is roommate replacement. Technically, replacing a roommate is a sublet, though few people besides lawyers think of it that way. Most tenants have a rental agreement which prohibits subletting or allows it only with the landlord's consent. Thus this has been fertile ground for pretext evictions.
 For example, 2 roommates have lived together for 8 years and one gets a job in LA. Unable to pay the rent by herself, roommate A decides to get a new roommate. She doesn't even anticipate it will be a problem as the rental agreement says two people and it's only logical that one would have the right to replace roommates.
 She may never realize it's subletting and get a new roommate without the landlord's prior written permission, as the lease stipulates for subletting and the landlord evicts her for violating her rental agreement. Or, she may realize and will go to the landlord for permission and the landlord says "no, you can't have a roommate anymore." In which case she gets evicted for non-payment when she can't afford the rent alone or gets evicted for violating the rental agreement.
 As with the canary case, the landlord's interest is not—even by the most vivid stretch of the imagination—whether or not she has a roommate as she always has. The landlord's interest is to find a reason—a pretext—to evict a tenant paying affordable rent.
 Subletting evictions, for example, have soared since Prop G passed, in fact they've more than tripled. While Ellis has been on the front pages, the fact is that more tenants are evicted for roommate replacement each month than are evicted for Ellis.
 The other big rise in evictions has been for violating the rental agreement. Evictions for pets, for example, used to be about one every two or three months; now they're 5-10 every single month. Hardly ever are they related to situations where the tenant snuck in a pet. Invariably, the landlord has had clear knowledge and granted permission for the pet. Coincidentally, these pet evictions are invariable long-term tenants with affordable rents.
 Largely, though, it's landlords studying their long-term tenants' multi-page rental agreements to find the slightest possible violation for which they can evict. Then they issue eviction notices for the slightest lapses—notices which they would not issue to their tenants paying market rents nor would have issued three years ago when rents were flat and vacancies were many.
 The Leno legislation will close a big pretext but the pretexts are as numerous as greedy landlords and tenant advocates will need to remain vigilant in identifying and closing the most common of these pretext evictions.