The City Council and the Rent Control Board voted this week to pull back the most contested piece of a ballot measure headed for the November election, after city attorneys warned the proposal was untested in court and would likely invite a lawsuit.
Meeting jointly in a special session, the two bodies voted to strip out language that would have let additional household members remain in a unit after the original tenant moved out for any reason, and would have expanded who qualifies to stay behind. In its place, council members directed staff to draft a narrower measure that would extend just-cause eviction protections to single-family homes and condominiums and bring owner move-in rules for those units in line with existing rent-control law — provisions city officials said carry far less legal risk.
The reversal is a significant retreat from what the City Council had approved just weeks earlier. The council voted July 14 to place three rent-control charter amendments on the November ballot, including the disputed occupant measure, which passed 4-2 with Council Members Lana Negrete and Barry Snell opposed and Mayor Pro Tem Jesse Zwick recused. The original proposal grew out of a January council directive aimed partly at protecting family members left behind when a primary tenant was detained by federal immigration enforcement, and would impose eviction restrictions when tenants added a spouse, parent, sibling or other qualifying relative, or a "household" member, to a unit.
As drafted, the measure eliminated a longstanding requirement that a tenant's death or incapacity trigger the eviction protection for those left behind, instead applying it whenever a unit was vacated for any reason, and broadened the class of people eligible to remain from spouses and children to any lawfully residing occupant.
City officials told the two boards this week that the changes had drawn concern from outside parties, including arguments that the measure would circumvent the state's Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act and could leave landlords unable to recover their units at all. City Attorney Heidi von Tongeln said staff could not find any jurisdiction that had eliminated the death-or-incapacity trigger entirely or extended protections to as broad a class of occupants as Santa Monica's measure proposed. She said the change was "a case of first impression" that had never been tested in court, and that passing it as written would likely draw a lawsuit.
Von Tongeln and outside counsel walked the boards through a scenario critics have raised: if an original tenant moved out voluntarily, a second occupant could remain, effectively forming a new landlord-tenant relationship, then bring in additional occupants of their own who could remain again once that second tenant left — creating what several officials called a "perpetual tenancy" problem. Von Tongeln also noted that because the change would be made through a charter amendment rather than a routine ordinance, any successful legal challenge would be far harder to fix, since correcting it would require going back to voters at the next general election.
City Manager Oliver Chi told the boards the city faces an Aug. 7 deadline set by Los Angeles County to finalize ballot language, leaving little time to explore alternatives.
Rent Control Vice Chair Kay Ambriz initially favored keeping the ballot measure intact but restoring the death-or-incapacity requirement, a position seconded by Commissioner Ericka Lesley. Commissioner Kurt Gonska argued for scaling back the proposal, saying the city had "proactively invited a legal challenge" that could jeopardize rent-control protections more broadly, while Phillis Dudick said the board needed more time and more public input before proceeding.
On the council side, Negrete said she opposed the entire measure, arguing it could create loopholes for subletting and would hit small landlords who were unaware of the changes. Councilmember Dan Hall said he was reluctant to rewrite charter language "from the dais" without a formal staff report, and proposed advancing only the single-family-home and owner-move-in provisions while sending the occupant-protection concepts back for further study ahead of the next election cycle, in 2028. Natalya Zernitskaya agreed, saying she shared the intent behind the measure but wanted more time to "protect the city and protect tenants." Ellis Raskin was the lone dissenting voice, calling the pullback "unprecedented" and noting the proposal had been developed over months of public hearings by the Rent Control Board.
After hearing that discussion, the Rent Control Board voted 5-0 to recommend removing the household-occupant and new-occupant eviction protections from the ballot measure, while taking no position on the single-family-home and owner-move-in provisions, which fall under the city's housing policy law rather than the rent-control charter.
The City Council then voted to rescind the existing resolution and direct staff to return with a new measure limited to the single-family-home and owner-move-in provisions, with Raskin casting the only "no" vote. Zwick was absent for the vote.