Critics push to weaken rent bill
SACRAMENTO — Lawmakers and landlords are haggling over how much California housing to carve out of a tenant protection bill that would cap rent increases and require a just cause for evictions.
In a state Senate committee Tuesday, AB1482 faced continued opposition from groups representing apartment owners, developers and real estate agents that could sink the measure in the final weeks of the legislative session.
The proposal has struggled to win support from legislators amid concerns that imposing new restrictions on landlords would discourage housing construction during a historic shortage.
AB1482 narrowly passed the
Assembly in May, only after proponents reached a lastminute agreement with the California Association of Realtors to scale down the bill. But that organization was back to opposing the measure this week, telling lawmakers that the legislation had not been sufficiently amended to reflect the changes the group negotiated in the spring.
In its current iteration, AB1482 would prohibit landlords from raising rents by more than 7 percent plus the regional cost of living increase, or a maximum of 10 percent, in a year.
The bill exempts owners of housing built in the previous 10 years and landlords who own 10 or fewer singlefamily homes. The law would expire in 2023, though lawmakers could renew it.
A study by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley found that even with the exemptions, the cap would extend rent protections to 2.6 million to 4.6 million more households in California.
Assemblyman David Chiu, a San Francisco Democrat who is one of the authors of the bill, said the measure would protect tenants “without compromising the ability of landlords to make a healthy profit.”
But representatives of the California Apartment Association and the California Rental Housing Association told legislators Tuesday that the proposal was too restrictive and would scare developers away from the state.
They asked for additional exemptions for owners of 10 or fewer multifamily units, such as duplexes or condominiums, and housing built in the previous 30 years, as well as a preemption of new local rent control ordinances going forward. The California Association of Realtors has sought similar amendments.
Chiu said he would be open to a discussion about exempting owners of few multifamily units. But preempting local ordinances is anathema to the tenants’ rights groups that are sponsoring the bill.
Language from a companion measure requiring landlords to provide a just cause when evicting a renter, which was abandoned in the Assembly, was also recently added to AB1482.
Just causes would include a tenant failing to pay rent, breaching a rental agreement, creating a nuisance or engaging in criminal activity. The protection would not kick in until a tenant has been in a rental for a year. Renters evicted through no fault of their own, such as when a property is taken off the market, would receive relocation assistance from landlords equivalent to one month of rent.
Supporters argue that eviction protections are needed to make the rent cap effective. Otherwise, they say, landlords could just kick out tenants and raise rents by as much as they want. Landlords counter that thousands of available units are sitting idle because the owners would rather withhold them from the market than be stuck with a bad tenant they cannot evict because of local justcause laws.
“We will be taking a step backwards with a policy that discourages development of new housing and will further worsen the housing crisis for Californians,” Sid Lakireddy, president of the California Rental Housing Association, said in a statement.