Days after the California Apartment Association launched an opposition campaign to SB 567, a bill that aimed to strengthen California tenant protections and lower the state’s annual rent cap, a legislative committee has nixed the rent cap provision altogether.
The major adjustment came as a result of a state Senate Judiciary Committee hearing held on Tuesday. While the committee voted 9-2 to advance the bill, the approval was contingent on the removal of its planned rent cap decrease, the Sacramento Bee reported.
The bill had sought to decrease the state’s maximum annual rent cap increase from 10 percent or 5 percent plus inflation (whichever is lower) to 5 percent or the simple inflation increase.
California state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, the Eastside L.A. politician who authored the bill, told the committee she would be willing to change course and shift the bill’s focus to bolstering other tenant protections. Durazo’s bill is meant as an upgrade to an existing law, the California Tenant Protection Act of 2019, and includes changes meant to strengthen that law’s just-cause eviction protections.
“When we fix these loopholes, it’s going to mean a lot to people to be able to stay in their homes,” Durazo, a former union official, told the newspaper.
The partial blow to Durazo’s bill came amid opposition from the industry. The California Apartment Association (CAA), the largest statewide landlord advocacy group, had recently called on its members to oppose the effort, and claimed SB 567 would hamstring landlords’ ability to evict problem tenants and renovate older units.
Other landlord groups, including the Southern California Rental Housing Association, also opposed the bill, while numerous housing nonprofits, as well as the cities of Santa Monica and West Hollywood, had lined up behind it.
At the Tuesday hearing, Debra Carlton, a CAA executive, argued that the new bill amounted to an underhanded attempt by lawmakers to change existing rules.
“To come here now and claim [the existing law] needs amendments — more extreme eviction protections — is not backed by data,” she said. “It breaches the legislative agreement that we reached in good faith on a historic law.”
After the Tuesday hearing the bill was sent back to the Senate Appropriations Committee.
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