> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Local landlord prevails over Rent Control Board
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/local-landlord-prevails-over-rent-control-board/
- Published: 2003-01-09T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T01:17:11.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Real Estate & Housing, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*De-listing properties allows landlords to escape fees*

*By DAVE DANFORTH Daily Press Staff Writer*

A leading advocate of landlord rights has beaten Santa Monica’s Rent Control Board in a courtroom over its $132 annual fee.

Lawyer and landlord Gordon Gitlen had contested the Rent Control Board’s effort to collect more than $1,000 in fees and interest penalties charged at 60.1 percent annually.

The battle erupted over a small, dilapidated unit at the rear of Gitlen’s property on Yale Street near Santa Monica Boulevard. Gitlen claimed the Board had no right to charge him because he wasn’t renting out his unit, which he used to house a caretaker.

The Board claimed that it could levy the fee on all units on rent control lists until owners complete a 120-day exit process. Gitlen apparently delayed his request to de-list his unit for reasons which aren’t clear. He said his law office may have inadvertently paid earlier rent control registration fees.

The issue boiled down to Commissioner Donna Groman’s interpretation of the phrase “controlled residential rental unit” in Santa Monica’s rent control law. She ruled Wednesday that the phrase implies that a unit is actively rented. If it isn’t, its owner doesn’t have to pay the fee, she ruled.

It’s unclear whether the ruling will have wider impact because most landlords de-list their properties and promise not to rent them so they don’t have to pay the fees, as the state allows.

Gitlen had called his property a “lot with a shack in the back” when he argued the case before Groman Dec. 20\. The Rent Control Board’s Marti Padilla said the local law has no exemption to units which simply aren’t being rented. To escape the fee, Padilla said, Gitlen would have to go through the 120-day application process.

At issue now is the fate of the unit’s current occupant, the apparent caretaker. The city routinely visits units slated for de-listing to make sure they’re unoccupied. But when city investigator Pete Savino checked on Gitlen’s “shack” last month, he found a sleeping dog out front and a woman inside. He said she declined to say why she was there and referred him to Gitlen.

The lot, which is now for sale, originally had a much larger house on its front portion. But the home, damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, won permission for demolition and hasn’t been replaced. The remaining 800-square-foot structure would go for $312 monthly under rent control.

City guidelines suggest that de-listed units can’t house anyone, but there is a separate permit process for an owner wishing to house someone at no cost. But the permit may not cover lots on which the owner doesn’t live.

Gitlen is president of the anti-rent control group Action Apartment Association. His group believes the city should leave the rent control business and build low-cost housing instead. Rent control was instituted in Santa Monica in 1979 when Santa Monicans for Renters Rights became the dominate party on City Council.

Keith Kresge, the Rent Control Board attorney handling the Gitlen case, couldn’t be reached Wednesday.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/010903-02_01.jpg)

Gitlen’s ‘shack in the back,’ which was charged a rent control fee. (Photo: File photo Gordon)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 9, 2003.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/010903.pdf?ref=smdp.com)