The City Council voted Tuesday to place three proposed rent-control charter amendments on the November ballot, advancing a package of expanded eviction protections that drew a wave of impassioned opposition from small landlords even as council members split over how far the changes should go.
Three of the proposals — a state-required environmental finding, a set of administrative updates to the Rent Control Board paired with a reaffirmation of the city's just-cause eviction laws, and a prohibition on evictions over relatively small rental debts — were adopted together, 6-0. A separate measure, which would bar evictions when tenants add new occupants to a household, passed 4-2, with Council Members Lana Negrete and Barry Snell opposed. Council Member Jesse Zwick recused himself because of his employment as Southern California director of the Housing Action Coalition.
The proposals grew out of a January directive that council members said was prompted by federal immigration enforcement in the region. Council Member Dan Hall urged colleagues to recall that context, noting that Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids had left some households scrambling. "Primary tenants were taken into custody by federal immigration enforcement, leaving family members ... in pretty rough straits," Hall said, describing the eviction protections as working "hand in hand as both a financial protection and a household protection."
Chief Deputy City Attorney Romy Ganschow, who presented the measures, said the amendments followed a survey of tenant protections in comparable California cities and multiple public hearings before the Rent Control Board, which recommended them.
The nonpayment measure would prohibit evictions when a tenant owes less than a threshold tied to federal fair-market rent estimates for local ZIP codes. According to the staff report, roughly 75% of eviction lawsuits reported to the city attorney's office since 2024 were for nonpayment, with a median amount of about $6,000 in cases that were filed.
The most contested measure would prevent landlords from evicting tenants who move additional family members or non-family "household" members into a unit, and would let certain occupants remain after the original tenant leaves. Negrete pressed Ganschow repeatedly on whether that could create what critics call "perpetual tenancy," asking whether a series of occupants could each pass the unit along. "That could happen under this regulation," Ganschow acknowledged. "It wouldn't preclude that."
Negrete, who said she lives in a rent-controlled building, described fielding calls from small landlords who felt blindsided. "I don't think ... they don't not want to be involved. They're just not getting these notifications," she said, asking whether the vote could be delayed. She also worried about effects on "small mom and pop good landlords" who might conclude, "God, I can't handle this anymore. I'm going to put it up for sale."
Mayor Caroline Torosis defended the measure by pointing to situations she said she had seen on the Rent Control Board. "You have ... an elderly parent passes away, child is not on the lease, lives with the parent as a caretaker," she said. "We're talking about someone's pocketbook versus ... a roof over someone's head and an exacerbating homeless crisis."
Snell, who said he is a renter and a business owner but not a landlord, supported the other measures but balked at the occupancy provision, citing concern for landlords unable "to dictate who's in the place on a serial basis." He successfully moved to split that resolution off for a separate vote, a procedural motion that carried 5-1.
Council Member Ellis Raskin, who carried the main motion, invoked the Rent Control Board's independent authority. "There's been a lot of hard work that's gone to this," he said. "Our elected experts to the rent control board have been hard at work at this over the last six months." He added that the council was "not making law tonight," because "it's the electorate that decides."
Written comments submitted before the meeting ran heavily against the package, particularly from landlords and the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles, which warned the occupancy language was vague and "ripe for abuse" and could invite litigation. Supporters, including a resident who works a tenant hotline, said the nonpayment protection could buy the city time to connect struggling renters with relief funds before eviction proceedings begin.
The council then voted 6-0 to authorize members to draft ballot arguments in favor of the measures — Hall for the administrative updates, Torosis for the nonpayment protection and Raskin for the occupancy measure. No member filed arguments against any measure. Ballot arguments are due within 14 days.