A budget crunch in Sacramento has hamstrung state affordable housing programs, but lawmakers continue to propose new tenant protections according to a report presented to the Rent Control Board last month.
At the April 11 meeting of the Santa Monica Rent Control Board, legislative advocate Brian Augusta presented key bills making their way through state government pertaining to rent control and tenant protection.
Augusta noted that in contrast to prior years, the state legislature is faced with "big gaps" in state funding in contrast to past surpluses that allowed funding to go into affordable housing. Much of the conversation, he said, was focused on the state budget and "staving off cuts" related to housing and rent control programs, adding that it would be "not surprising" if cuts to housing programs occur despite the importance of the affordable housing conversation at the state level.
Despite the strict budget and this year’s lack of bills with a direct impact on local rent stabilization policies, such as last year’s session which included bills amending both the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act and the Ellis Act, there are still a number of bills aimed at protecting tenants. The first "big theme," Augusta said, was a number of legislators putting in bills in the broad category of "tenant screening," encompassing things like application fees, security deposits and "front-end requirements" for renters, things that can be a "barrier" for achieving housing.
Under this theme are bills like AB 2304, which extends existing "eviction masking law" to mobile home cases and unlimited civil cases. This bill aims to further protect tenants that are victorious in eviction cases, as those cases won’t show up on a renter’s credit report or rental history.
Other bills would prohibit a landlord from charging a prospective tenant a screening fee if they do not have a unit available, and would also prohibit a landlord from collecting more than one screening fee from a prospective tenant in a 30-day period if that prospective tenant is applying for multiple units owned by the landlord. Similarly, AB 2785 proposes requiring landlords to limit tenant screening fees to no more than $50, and would require a screening fee to be returned to a prospective tenant if they are not selected for the unit.
Another prospective bill deals with rental security deposits, making a number of changes including requiring a landlord to provide photographic evidence of necessary repairs and proof they were completed, prohibiting security deposit money from being taken away from a renter due to routine cleaning of a unit.
"There’s a lot of abuse in that area, some believe that landlords assume that they’re going to get most of the security deposit back, they’re going to retain most of the security deposit at the end of a tenancy," Augusta said.
The second theme of the 2024 legislative session is "information sharing," including AB 2187 which aims to establish an Office of Tenants’ Rights within the state’s Civil Rights Department for the purposes of maintaining an up-to-date list of statewide tenant protections "in an understandable format." Another force for tenant knowledge comes in the form of AB 2278, which would require the state’s Attorney General to publish allowable rent increases under the Tenant Protection Act for each metropolitan area (including Los Angeles) online by August 1 of each year.
Finally, the state legislature is looking to tackle corporate ownership of housing with several bills. One proposal, SB 1212, would prohibit real estate investment trusts from owning single-family homes in the state, while another, AB 2584, would prohibit corporate entities that own more than 1,000 single-family homes from acquiring and offering for-rent additional single-family homes. The latter bill, Augusta said, targets increased corporate ownership of rented-out units.
"We hear a lot from renters in those units that corporations, not surprisingly, don’t make the best landlords and are very aggressive about raising rents," Augusta said.
Another proposal, SB 1201, increases renter knowledge base by requiring the disclosure of the beneficial owners of an LLC or corporation that owns rental housing, which Augusta stated would be an important advancement in understanding "the nature of ownership" and having a better picture of distinguishing small and larger landlords.
On SB 1201, Rent Control Board Commissioner Anastasia Foster said that corporate transparency is an issue Santa Monica runs into with multi-family apartment buildings, stating that it is "sometimes hard for tenants to identify who their landlord is." Foster added that she’s seen bills like this before that haven’t been passed, asking Augusta what the difference might be this time around, with Augusta responding that the state of New York recently enacted a similar bill that "changes the conversation" around anonymity of landlords.
Another question surrounding SB 1201, particularly in the state’s current financial situation, is what the cost will be for the Secretary of State to collect and report this data, and if the bill can get past the "practical limitations" of the data reporting cost.
