California landlord group launches opposition to rent cap bill

Days before a bill that would lower a statewide cap on rent increases is scheduled for a review by a Senate committee, the California Apartment Association (CAA) has launched an opposition campaign, arguing that the legislation would slow down renovations. 

Earlier this year State Sen. Maria Elena Durazo of Los Angeles proposed the bill, intended to help low-income renters and alleviate homelessness. 

“The bill … would make it more difficult to evict a problem tenant and significantly limits the ability to renovate older rental units,” a release from CAA says. “This would make it harder to invest in and maintain older housing and to make important seismic and environmental renovations.” 

Durazo’s bill, SB 567, would strengthen the existing California Tenant Protection Act of 2019. That law, which went into effect in 2020 with a 10-year sunset, applied to buildings that were at least 15 years old and, among other provisions, introduced “just-cause” eviction protections and an annual rent cap of 10 percent or 5 percent plus inflation, whichever is lower.

SB 567 would lower the state rent cap threshold to either 5 percent or the inflation increase, whichever is lower. It would also strengthen just cause provisions to apply to tenants’ first year in the unit, close other just cause loopholes and add options for tenants to address violations. 

Durazo, a former trade union official who represents a Central and East L.A. district, argues the measure will help address the state’s vexing homelessness emergency. 

“This is an urgent humanitarian crisis,” she said during a news conference in the Eastside L.A. neighborhood of Boyle Heights last month. “As we drive around Los Angeles, we see tents under the freeways, on the sidewalks and on the storefronts. It has become part of the city.” 

Durazo introduced the legislation in February, and it’s scheduled for a hearing in the state Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. 

Various tenant and homelessness prevention groups supporting the BILL. CAA, California’s largest statewide landlord group, is urging “all rental housing providers to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote no.” 

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