Free Los Angeles Residential Lease Agreement

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A configurable Los Angeles residential lease agreement that generates a signable multi-page PDF. The form asks the question that actually decides everything — whether the unit is under the Rent Stabilization Ordinance, the Just Cause Ordinance, the state Tenant Protection Act, or none of them — and the lease branches on your answer.

City of Los Angeles LAMC 151.00 RSO & JCO Free PDF 2026 Edition

A Los Angeles residential lease agreement is a California lease with a second body of law sitting on top of it. The California layer is the Civil Code, and it is the same in Bakersfield as it is in Boyle Heights. The Los Angeles layer is the Los Angeles Municipal Code — principally the Rent Stabilization Ordinance at chapter XV article 1, the Just Cause for Eviction Ordinance at chapter XVI article 5, the Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance at chapter IV article 5.3, and the Right to Counsel Program Ordinance at chapter XVI article 6. Almost everything that makes a Los Angeles lease different from a California lease turns on a single question that most templates never ask: which of those ordinances reaches this particular unit? The answer decides the rent ceiling, the grounds on which the tenancy can be ended, whether the landlord may lawfully collect rent at all, and how much the landlord owes if the tenancy ends through no fault of the tenant. This page builds the lease around that question, and states every annually republished figure as a mechanism — who publishes it, on what date, under what authority — so that a signed lease cannot quietly go stale.

The order below is deliberate. In most states you can fill a lease from the top down. In Los Angeles you have to settle the coverage question before anything else means anything, because the same blank — the rent figure, the termination clause, the deposit line — is governed by different rules depending on the answer.

Complete the fields below to generate a Los Angeles residential lease agreement as a signable multi-page PDF. The first block is the coverage block, and the generated lease branches on every answer in it: a Rent Stabilization unit gets the registration and rent-adjustment sections, a Just Cause unit gets the six-month attachment rule and its own relocation architecture, and a unit outside both still gets the three city-wide duties that bind every rental unit in Los Angeles. Before handing over keys, run proper tenant screening — but read the section on what a landlord may not ask an applicant first, because Los Angeles regulates what you may ask an applicant in a place nobody thinks to look. Pair the signed lease with a California move-in / move-out checklist.

A Los Angeles rental unit sits in one of four positions, and they are not a ladder — they are four separate circles. It can be under the Rent Stabilization Ordinance, which controls both rent and evictions. It can be under the Just Cause for Eviction Ordinance, which controls evictions but expressly does not control rent. It can be outside both City ordinances but inside the California Tenant Protection Act, which supplies a rent cap and a just-cause rule. Or it can be outside all three. What almost every competing page gets wrong is the relationship between the first two: they are mutually exclusive, not cumulative.

Here is the whole test in one table. Everything else on this page is detail underneath it.

The test is the date of the first Certificate of Occupancy, not the year the building went up. This is the single most consequential correction on this page, because every ranking template — and the Housing Department’s own summary page — states it as “built on or before October 1, 1978,” and that shorthand produces the wrong answer for a real class of buildings.

The operative text is exclusion 6 in the definition of “Rental Units” at LAMC 151.02, as amended by Ordinance No. 184,822. It does three things, and only the first is the one people quote:

• It excludes housing accommodations located in a structure for which the first Certificate of Occupancy was issued after October 1, 1978.
• It includes a structure issued a Certificate of Occupancy on or before that date — and the ordinance says expressly that this covers a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy. A building that received only a temporary certificate in 1978 and its final one in 1980 is inside the Ordinance.
• It also includes a property issued a residential building permit at any time on or before October 1, 1978 for which a Certificate of Occupancy was never issued, or was not issued until after that date. This is the limb nobody carries. A building permitted in 1977 whose certificate issued in 1981 is covered, even though a build-date test and a certificate-date test would both, read carelessly, put it outside.

The exclusion also does not reach individual mobile home coaches, mobile home parks, individual recreational vehicles, recreational vehicle parks, or replacement units built under LAMC 151.28 A — so a newly built replacement unit can be an RSO unit despite a modern certificate.

What is affirmatively covered is broader than most landlords expect. The definition reaches all dwelling units, efficiency dwelling units, guest rooms and suites as defined in LAMC 12.03; all housing accommodations as defined in Government Code 12927; and, named expressly, duplexes and condominiums in the City of Los Angeles. It reaches the land and buildings appurtenant to them and all housing services supplied with occupancy, including garage and parking facilities — which is why taking away a parking space is a rent increase and, separately, a listed form of harassment. It reaches mobile homes whether rent is paid for the coach and the land or the land alone, and recreational vehicles as defined in Civil Code 799.29 when located in a mobile home or recreational vehicle park.

The Housing Department adds two property types to its published list that the ordinance text does not name but which follow from the definition: accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units, on the same certificate test, and residential units attached to a commercial building.

There are thirteen numbered exclusions, and several of them are conditional rather than automatic. A landlord who reads only the headline of an exclusion and stops is the landlord who ends up deemed subject to the Ordinance in January. Here they are as the code has them.

Notice the pattern: exclusions 7, 8, 9 and 13 are not facts about the building at all. They are Department-issued certificates. Without the certificate, the exclusion does not exist. That is a preview of the next section, which is the same point generalised.

Because LAMC 151.05 G says a unit that is not registered and not declared is deemed to be subject to the Ordinance. This is the provision that no competing page carries, and it inverts the burden landlords assume they have.

The subsection reads that the landlord of a rental unit which is not registered with the Department shall provide the Department, on the form approved by the Department and accompanied by supporting documentation, a written declaration stating the facts upon which the landlord bases a claim of exclusion. Then the sentence that matters: if a landlord fails to submit a written declaration and supporting documents by the last day of the month of January of each year, the unit shall be deemed to be subject to the provisions of the chapter, and any fees collected shall be non-refundable.

Read that carefully. It is not “the landlord may be fined.” It is that the unit becomes a covered unit for the purposes of the chapter — which means the rent ceiling applies, the eviction grounds apply, and the registration precondition at LAMC 151.05 A applies, which is to say the landlord may not lawfully demand or accept rent. And the declaration is not a one-time filing. It is due each year.

There is an extra requirement where the claimed basis is vacancy: the landlord must give the Department a copy of a notice recorded against the property declaring that the unit is and shall remain vacant, and the unit must be secured against unauthorized entry.

The Just Cause Ordinance reaches almost every residential unit the Rent Stabilization Ordinance does not — but it does not apply until the initial original lease expires or the tenant has six months of continuous and lawful occupancy, whichever comes first.

Its coverage definition is deliberately wide. LAMC 165.02 defines “residential real property” as any dwelling or unit that is intended for human habitation. That reaches single-family homes, condominiums, accessory dwelling units and buildings put up long after 1978. The Housing Department confirms it: the Ordinance “can apply to buildings that are newer than October 1, 1978” and “can apply to a property that contains only one single-family dwelling.”

The timing rule is the part tenants get wrong and landlords occasionally exploit. LAMC 165.04 provides that the Article shall not apply until the expiration of an initial original lease or after six months of continuous and lawful occupancy, whichever comes first. So a tenant on a twelve-month lease acquires the protection at month six, not at month twelve, because six months arrives first. A tenant on a three-month lease acquires it when that lease expires. A landlord who terminates inside the window is outside the Ordinance.

Twelve categories are excluded outright, and one of them is the mutual-exclusivity rule already discussed:

Exclusion E deserves a note because it has no Rent Stabilization equivalent and it decides a very common Los Angeles arrangement. If you rent a room in a house where the owner lives and you share the kitchen or the bathroom with that owner, the Just Cause Ordinance does not protect you. If the owner does not live there, or you share nothing with them, it does.

No. They are mutually exclusive, and pages that describe the Just Cause Ordinance as an extra layer on top of rent stabilization have the architecture backwards.

The reason it matters is not academic. It changes three concrete numbers on a lease. A Rent Stabilization unit has a City rent ceiling; a Just Cause unit does not, and looks to state law instead. A Rent Stabilization unit’s registration fee and rent registry run under LAMC 151.05; a Just Cause unit pays a different fee under a different section with a different name. And — the difference nobody carries — the two ordinances set different relocation schedules, with the Just Cause figures in LAMC 165.06 A materially lower than the Rent Stabilization figures in LAMC 151.09 G. A page that gives “the” Los Angeles relocation amount is giving you one of the two, and it is wrong for the other half of the city.

The eviction grounds are close, but not identical, and two of the differences reach the drafting of a lease:

• The owner-occupancy ground. LAMC 165.03 H.(2) lets a Just Cause landlord recover possession for a spouse, domestic partner, grandchild, child, parent or grandparent. LAMC 151.09 A.8(b), the Rent Stabilization equivalent, lists spouse, grandchildren, children, parents and grandparents — and not a domestic partner.
• The withdrawal ground. Under LAMC 151.09 A.10 a Rent Stabilization landlord may use the ground only when withdrawing all the rental units in a structure or building, and may not withdraw fewer. Under LAMC 165.03 I.(2), as amended by Ordinance No. 188,685 effective August 4, 2025, a Just Cause landlord must be withdrawing all residential real property on the same parcel of land. Those two tests can give opposite answers on a lot with more than one building.

The California Tenant Protection Act does different work depending on which circle the unit sits in, and in Los Angeles it is mostly the rent cap for Just Cause units.

The Act, at Civ. Code 1946.2 and 1947.12, limits an annual increase for a covered tenancy to 5 percent plus the percentage change in the cost of living, or 10 percent, whichever is lower, and requires just cause to terminate after twelve months of occupancy by all tenants or twenty-four by one. Both sections are covered in full on our California residential lease agreement page and in the California rent increase laws guide, and this page does not duplicate them.

What matters in Los Angeles is the interaction:

• For a Rent Stabilization unit the City ceiling is the operative rent limit, and the City’s eviction grounds are the operative grounds.
• For a Just Cause unit the City answers the eviction question and is silent on rent. The Housing Department says so directly: “The JCO does not regulate rent increases, however, state law AB 1482 … may regulate the rent amount in buildings that are older than 15 years old.” So the state cap is the ceiling.
• For a unit outside both the Act may be the only regime of either kind, subject to its own exemptions.

No, and this is the easiest mistake to make, because a Los Angeles mailing address does not tell you which jurisdiction the parcel is in. Unincorporated Los Angeles County has an entirely separate ordinance, administered by a different agency, with a different coverage test, a different formula and a different published figure.

The County bulletin, revised March 2, 2026, also carries preconditions the City ordinance words differently: a County landlord may impose the annual increase only after giving at least thirty days’ written notice under Civil Code 827, only after twelve consecutive months since the last increase, only if each fully covered unit is registered with the Department of Consumer and Business Affairs and the registration fees are current, and only after providing the tenant with the County’s Notice of Tenant Rights. A Small Property Landlord must additionally self-certify to that department.

If the parcel is in another incorporated city inside the county — Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Inglewood, Pasadena and many more — then neither this page’s ordinances nor the County ordinance apply, and that city’s own rules do. The form above records which of the three situations you are in and generates the lease accordingly.

The answer is a formula, not a number, and the formula changed on February 2, 2026. Ordinance No. 188,795 rewrote LAMC 151.06 D, and every template still in circulation states the old rule.

The subsection now provides that the maximum rent or maximum adjusted rent may be increased annually based on 90 percent of the difference between the average Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers for All Items in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, California for the most recent consecutive twelve-month period ending on September 30 and the average of the same index for the prior such period, calculated as a percentage and rounded to the nearest whole number. If the result computes below 1%, the landlord may still increase by up to 1%. And in no event may an annual increase under that subsection exceed 4%.

The old rule used a different multiplier with a 3% floor and an 8% ceiling. Any page quoting three-and-eight is quoting law that stopped operating in February 2026.

Three further limits sit inside the same subsection and are easy to miss:

• Once every twelve months. No increase may be imposed under subsection D within twelve consecutive months of the effective date of a prior increase under subsection D or under subsections A, B, C or F.1.
• The transitional cap. Any annual increase not previously noticed and served during the period beginning June 1, 2025 through June 30, 2026 must comply with the new subsection, shall not exceed 3%, and shall not include any additional increase based on the landlord’s payment of utilities.
• The utility add-on is gone. The rewritten subsection D contains no additional percentage for the landlord’s payment of gas or electricity. The Department states it plainly on the Renter Protections Notice: effective February 2, 2026, the annual rent increase must not include any additional percentage increase for utilities. The one-percent-per-service add-ons that still appear elsewhere in LAMC 151.06 sit in subsections A, B and E, which are historical provisions tied to increases available in 1980 and 1981.

Three conditions block the annual increase entirely, whatever the published percentage. A landlord shall not impose it where the unit is the subject of an uncorrected notice of noncompliance sent to the Franchise Tax Board under Revenue and Taxation Code 17274; or an uncorrected notice of rent reduction or Notice of Acceptance into the Rent Escrow Account Program; or a criminal conviction relating to the landlord’s failure to comply with a citation or order issued by the Department of Building and Safety, the Fire Department or the County Department of Health, where the conditions causing the conviction have not been corrected. Habitability and rent are linked here in a way state law does not link them.

The additional-tenant increase lost its widest application in the same ordinance. LAMC 151.06 G lets a landlord increase the maximum rent by up to 10 percent for each additional tenant who joins the occupants. Ordinance No. 188,795 added paragraph (a)(iii): this subsection shall not apply for any dependent added to an existing tenancy. A new baby or an elderly parent moving in is no longer a rent increase. The 10 percent survives for a non-dependent additional tenant, but only after that person has maintained residence in the unit for a minimum of thirty consecutive days, and not at all where the landlord had actual or constructive knowledge of the occupancy for more than sixty days and failed to notify the tenant of the increase.

Separately, LAMC 151.06.1 allows a smoke detector surcharge — fifty cents a month for each battery-operated detector, or three dollars a month for each permanently installed one — collectible only until the actual purchase and installation cost has been recovered, and expressly not a rent increase for the purposes of LAMC 151.06. Within two months of installation the landlord must tell the tenant in writing what the actual costs were and in which month and year they will be fully amortised.

No. The twelve-month spacing rule in LAMC 151.06 D prevents a second increase inside a year, and the Housing Department states the position on the years when increases were frozen without qualification: rent increases under the Rent Stabilization Ordinance were prohibited from March 2020 to January 2024, and no banking or retroactive rent increases are allowed.

That is a real financial consequence, and it is the point on which some landlord-side commentary is wishful. The skipped years are gone. They cannot be aggregated, deferred, or recovered through a later above-formula increase, and attempting it produces rent above the maximum adjusted rent — which under LAMC 151.10 A carries a civil action for three times the excess plus reasonable attorney fees and costs.

The annual adjustment is automatic and needs no permission. Anything above it does. The Department publishes five routes, each with its own Rent Adjustment Commission regulation:

• Capital Improvement Program — recovery of costs for improvements to the unit or common areas that benefit the tenant and will last at least five years. The definition of Capital Improvement in LAMC 151.02 lists what qualifies, and adds that complete exterior painting counts only once every ten years.
• Primary Renovation Program — recovery of costs for major renovation of structural, electrical, plumbing or mechanical systems requiring a permit, or abatement of hazardous materials such as lead-based paint and asbestos. This route brings the Tenant Habitability Program at LAMC ch. XV art. 2 with it, including a Tenant Habitability Plan the Department must accept.
• Rehabilitation Program — recovery of costs for work done to comply with an order from the Housing Department or another government body.
• Seismic Retrofit Program — recovery of costs for mandated soft-story retrofit work.
• Just and Reasonable Rent Increase — available where net operating income adjusted for inflation is not sufficient to cover operating expenses.

There is also a vacancy rule that landlords sometimes assume is wider than it is. Under LAMC 151.06 C the landlord may re-rent at any amount where the unit was vacated voluntarily, or as a result of a termination on the nonpayment, breach, primary-renovation or Residential Hotel grounds. But where the unit was vacated on most no-fault grounds, or because the landlord created an unreasonable interference with the tenant’s comfort, safety or enjoyment, or because of an uncorrected Franchise Tax Board notice or a Rent Escrow Account Program acceptance or a code-related criminal conviction, the landlord may only re-offer at the lawful rent in effect at the time of the most recent termination plus the annual adjustments available. A landlord cannot manufacture a vacancy decontrol by driving a tenant out.

Yes, and this is the provision with the sharpest teeth in the whole ordinance. LAMC 151.05 A provides that on or after April 30, 1983, no landlord shall demand or accept rent for a rental unit without first serving a copy of a valid registration or annual registration renewal statement on the tenant of that rental unit.

Note what the duty is. It is not “register the property.” It is register, and then serve the statement on the tenant. A landlord who has paid every fee but never handed the tenant a copy has not satisfied subsection A.

The mechanics, as the section has them:

• The fee is thirty-eight dollars and seventy-five cents per rental unit under subsection B.5, due on the first day of January of each year and deemed delinquent if not paid on or before the last day of the following month.
• Registration is not complete on payment alone. Subsection B conditions it on payment of all outstanding fees, compliance with subsection J, and furnishing an emergency contact name, address and telephone number.
• The surcharge. Subsection F lets a landlord who has timely paid all fees and completed the rent registry collect one-twelfth of 50% of the annual fee per month from the tenant — the Department publishes that as one dollar and sixty-one cents a month — but only after serving a thirty-day written notice as described in Civil Code 827, given in the manner prescribed by Code of Civil Procedure 1162. A delinquent landlord may not collect it, and the Department notes there is no longer an option to take the money as a single lump sum.
• The posted notice. Subsection I requires every property for which a registration statement is required to post a Department-prescribed notice about the Ordinance in a conspicuous location in the lobby, near a mailbox used by all residents, or in or near a public entrance, in English and Spanish and in any other language the Department requires.

The rent registry is a separate annual filing from the fee, it is due by the last day of February, and registration is not complete without it. LAMC 151.05 J.1 requires a landlord to provide rent amount and tenancy information for every rental unit subject to the chapter, on a form prescribed by the Department, submitted annually by the last day of February. The subsection states expressly that registration is complete only when all outstanding registration fees have been paid and all required rent amount and tenancy information, including emergency contact information, is provided.

The section also builds in a cure process, which is worth knowing because it is generous and time-limited at once. Under J.2 the Department must notify the landlord in writing of a failure to comply and allow fifteen calendar days to respond, and it will not issue a registration statement for the property until the landlord has substantially complied. Under J.3 a landlord disputing a deficiency notice may file a written appeal within ten calendar days of the date of the notice; the Department must give a written decision within thirty calendar days, and that decision is a final administrative decision.

Three separate consequences, and the money penalty is the least of them.

Put together, a Los Angeles landlord who has not registered is in the position of being unable to collect rent, unable to evict for the rent that is not being collected, and accruing a penalty. That is the design.

Yes, and almost no competing template carries it. LAMC 165.10, retitled and amended by Ordinance No. 188,468 effective January 27, 2025, creates the Just Cause Enforcement Fee: an annual registration fee of thirty-one dollars and five cents for each rental unit subject to the ordinance, due on the first day of January of each year and deemed late if received after the last day of February, with a penalty the Department sets at its sole discretion.

Subsection B then mirrors the Rent Stabilization precondition. No landlord shall demand or accept rent for a covered unit without first doing all of the following: procuring a valid annual registration statement by paying the fee plus any late-payment penalty, and either serving on the tenant a copy of the valid registration statement or posting a copy of it in a conspicuous place at the property.

Note the difference from the Rent Stabilization version, because it is a genuine one: LAMC 151.05 A requires service on the tenant, while LAMC 165.10 B allows service or conspicuous posting. A Just Cause landlord who posts has complied; a Rent Stabilization landlord who only posts has not.

The Department may waive the penalty where it determines good cause exists for a late payment. There is one drafting oddity worth flagging: subsections A and B both say “subject to this chapter,” where the Article is what is meant, since the Just Cause Enforcement Fee is a creation of Article 5 and Article 5 is the thing with a coverage test. It reads as a slip rather than an intention to reach all of Chapter XVI, and this page does not build anything on the literal words.

The rules on eviction grounds, the city notice-filing duty, relocation assistance, owner move-in, Ellis Act withdrawals and buyout agreements are set by the Rent Stabilization and Just Cause ordinances, with their filings made through the Los Angeles Housing Department. The generated lease carries the clauses those rules require; the rules themselves are not restated on this page.

Yes. This is a purely municipal duty with no California equivalent, and it appears on no competing Los Angeles template. LAMC 151.06.02 provides that a landlord who is subject to the provisions of Section 1950.5 of the California Civil Code shall pay annually interest on all security deposits held for at least one year.

Since January 1, 2003 the landlord may determine the annual rate by either of two methods, and the choice has a condition attached:

• (a) The Rent Adjustment Commission rate. Stated as a mechanism because it is one: the rate shall be based on the average of the interest rates on savings accounts paid on September 1 of the previous year, by at least five Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insured banks with branches in Los Angeles. The Commission shall adopt the rate by November 30 of each year and shall publish it in a newspaper of general circulation within one week after it is established. The adopted rate is in effect from January 1 through December 31 of the subsequent year. The Housing Department identifies the established rate in the annual rental unit registration billing sent to landlords.
• (b) The actual interest earned on each security deposit account each year. But if the landlord chooses this method, the landlord shall provide the tenant with bank statements showing the interest earned for that year — and if the landlord fails to provide that information when transmitting payment, the rate required to be paid becomes the Commission’s rate instead. The alternative is not a free option; it is an option with an evidentiary price.

Interest began accruing on November 1, 1990 and accrues monthly. Under subsection C the tenant shall be given the unpaid accrued interest as either a direct payment or a credit against rent — the landlord chooses between the two methods and must notify the tenant in writing of the choice — and may elect to pay it monthly or yearly. The lease generated by the form above records both elections, which is the cleanest way to satisfy the written-notice requirement.

Under subsection D, on termination of the tenancy only a tenant whose deposit has been held for one year or more is entitled to payment of accumulated interest. Under subsection G, if the landlord fails to pay the interest the tenant may bring an action to recover it in a court of appropriate jurisdiction, including but not limited to small claims court. Under subsection H the section does not govern mobile home parks.

No. It is unlawful, and the consequence is not a fine — it is that the tenant may stop paying rent.

LAMC 151.04 C, added by Ordinance No. 182,359 effective January 26, 2013, provides that it shall be unlawful for any landlord or landlord’s agent to demand or require an electronic funds transfer or online internet payment as the exclusive method of payment of rent, security deposits, surcharges or other housing service fees.

The reach is wider than rent. It covers deposits, surcharges and other housing service fees — so a landlord who accepts a cheque for rent but requires the parking fee through a portal has not complied.

What makes the section unusual is that it is wired into the same two enforcement provisions as the registration duty. LAMC 151.11 B lets the tenant withhold rent otherwise lawfully due until the landlord has complied with both LAMC 151.04 C and LAMC 151.05 A, and LAMC 151.09 F makes non-compliance with either an affirmative defence in an action to recover possession. A portal-only lease therefore carries the same consequence as an unregistered unit.

The form above includes an express election to state in the lease that electronic payment is not the exclusive method, and to name at least one non-electronic option. It costs nothing and it disposes of the point on the face of the document.

Screening in Los Angeles is regulated by the harassment ordinance, which is not where anyone looks for screening rules. Two paragraphs of LAMC 45.33 do the work, and both reach prospective occupants, not only existing tenants.

• Paragraph 10 makes it tenant harassment to inquire as to the immigration or citizenship status of a tenant, prospective additional tenant, occupant, or prospective additional occupant of a rental unit, or to require any of those people to make any statement, representation or certification concerning their immigration or citizenship status. Paragraphs 11 and 12 extend the protection: disclosing or threatening to disclose a tenant’s immigration or citizenship status to any person or entity, or disclosing information about a tenant to a government entity, in retaliation for protected activity or to influence them to vacate, are separately listed.
• Paragraph 15 makes it harassment to interfere with a tenant’s right to privacy, or to request information that violates a tenant’s right to privacy, including but not limited to residency or citizenship status, Social Security Number, relationship status, or criminal history, except as authorized by law.

The phrase “except as authorized by law” is doing real work in paragraph 15 and this page does not attempt to map its edges — that is a question for a Los Angeles landlord-tenant attorney applied to a specific screening process. What is clear is the direction of travel: an application form that routinely collects a Social Security Number, marital status and criminal history from every applicant, without reference to what any of it is authorized for, is exposed under an ordinance that carries treble damages and a two-thousand-dollar-minimum civil penalty per violation. Los Angeles also has separate fair-housing articles in chapter IV addressing immigration status, age, student status and source of income, which are outside the scope of this lease page and worth separate advice.

Nothing here removes the need to screen. It changes what you collect and why. Our California tenant screening laws guide covers the state framework, and the practical answer in Los Angeles is to run screening through a process that collects what the law authorizes for the permissible purpose and nothing beyond it.

Every landlord of a rental unit in the City, at the commencement of every tenancy, since August 20, 2025 — and it appears on no competing template.

The Right to Counsel Program Ordinance is chapter XVI article 6 of the Los Angeles Municipal Code, added by Ordinance No. 188,681 effective August 20, 2025. Its definition of Rental Unit at LAMC 166.02 is the widest of any ordinance on this page: all dwelling units, efficiency dwelling units, guest rooms and suites as defined in LAMC 12.03, all housing accommodations as defined in Government Code 12927, all duplexes, condominiums and single-family homes in the City, mobile homes, and recreational vehicles in parks — and it states expressly that the term includes all rental units owned, operated, or managed by the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles.

So the notice duty reaches units exempt from the Rent Stabilization Ordinance and from the Just Cause Ordinance and from the state Tenant Protection Act.

LAMC 166.03 B sets out what is owed and when:

• At the commencement of the tenancy, the landlord shall provide the tenant a copy of the Right to Counsel Program Notice in the tenant’s primary language where the Department has made a translation available on its website.
• Where the tenant’s primary language is not known, or no translation is available from the Department’s website, the landlord shall provide the notice in English plus a copy of each translation the Department has published in Tiers 1, 2 and 3 of the Community Investment for Families Department’s Language Access Plan.
• The landlord shall also serve a copy attached to any Eviction Notice served on the tenant; attached to any notice terminating a rental housing subsidy; and attached to any correspondence concerning an administrative proceeding that may result in termination of the tenant’s rental housing subsidy. “Eviction Notice” is defined broadly as any notice that commences the process of terminating a tenancy, however denominated.
• The landlord shall post and maintain a copy in a conspicuous common area of the residential building where the tenant resides.

The enforcement provision is short and sharp. LAMC 166.04 provides that in any action by a landlord to recover possession of a Rental Unit, an Eligible Tenant may raise as an affirmative defence the landlord’s failure to comply with any provision of the ordinance — and a tenant who successfully asserts it is entitled to reasonable attorney fees and costs.

Three City notices sit on top of the eleven California disclosures, and two of the three bind every unit in the City regardless of coverage.

The federal lead disclosure deserves a Los Angeles note. Because Rent Stabilization coverage generally turns on a Certificate of Occupancy issued on or before October 1, 1978, and the lead rule applies to target housing built before 1978, nearly every Rent Stabilization building is pre-1978 target housing by definition. If a unit is under the Rent Stabilization Ordinance, the lead disclosure is almost certainly required.

The demolition notice has a similar double life here. The same facts that trigger the Civil Code 1940.6 disclosure also make demolition a no-fault ground under LAMC 151.09 A.10 and 165.03 I.(1) — which means relocation assistance, the Ellis process where withdrawal is involved, and the declaration filings.

What Los Angeles does not add: there is no municipal radon disclosure, no municipal asbestos disclosure to tenants, no municipal carbon monoxide disclosure and no municipal Proposition 65 lease notice. Templates that bolt those onto a Los Angeles lease are adding paperwork without authority. The California position on each is covered on the California lease agreement page.

LAMC 151.10 D is the master rule: any agreement, whether written or oral, waiving any of the provisions of the Article is void as contrary to public policy. It is not “unenforceable on the facts.” It is void. Underneath it sit a series of specific clauses that a Los Angeles lease should not contain.

The penalties behind LAMC 151.10 are not nominal. Subsection A gives a civil action for three times the amount by which the payments demanded, accepted or retained exceed the maximum rent or maximum adjusted rent, together with reasonable attorney fees and costs. Subsection B makes any violation of the chapter a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars or imprisonment in the County Jail for not more than six months or both — and provides that each violation, and each day during which it is committed or continues, constitutes a separate offence. It adds a separate misdemeanor for wilfully or knowingly making a false statement, with intent to deceive, in a notice or declaration required under LAMC 151.09 C or I.

On attorney fees, the Los Angeles position is asymmetric even though the clause is symmetric. The City ordinances create no fee rule for the lease itself; California’s Civil Code 1717 does, and it makes any one-sided clause mutual. What Los Angeles adds is a stack of one-way fee entitlements running to the tenant: LAMC 151.10 A on rent above the maximum, LAMC 151.09 H on unpaid relocation, LAMC 151.30 I.(1) on a bad-faith owner-occupancy eviction, LAMC 165.07 and LAMC 45.35 B on the two ordinance-wide remedies, and LAMC 166.04 on the Right to Counsel notice. A Los Angeles landlord’s fee exposure is therefore materially larger than a tenant’s, whatever the lease says.

A landlord can change the rule going forward, but cannot use the new rule to remove a pet that was already there with permission. Both ordinances say the same thing in nearly identical words. LAMC 151.09 D: “A landlord shall not change the terms of a tenancy to prohibit pets and then evict the tenant for keeping a pet which was kept and allowed prior to the change, unless the landlord can establish that the pet constitutes a nuisance and the nuisance has not been abated upon proper notice to the tenant.” LAMC 165.03 B.(4) repeats it for Just Cause units.

Three things follow. The pet must have been kept and allowed before the change — a pet kept in breach of an existing no-pets clause is not protected. The escape route is a nuisance finding, and it is the landlord’s to establish, after proper notice and a failure to abate. And the protection attaches to the pet, not to the tenancy, so it does not carry over to a replacement animal acquired after the change.

Service animals and support animals are not pets at all under federal and California fair housing law, and no pet deposit, pet rent or pet fee may be charged for one. That is a separate body of law from the ordinance and is not affected by any of the above.

The landlord can serve a change of terms under Civil Code 827, but cannot then evict for breach of the new term unless the tenant agreed to it in writing, knowingly and without coercion.

LAMC 151.09 A.2(c) is worth quoting because the wording is precise: “a landlord may not unilaterally change the terms of the tenancy under Civil Code Section 827 and then evict the tenant for the violation of the added covenant unless the tenant has agreed in writing to the additional covenant. The tenant must knowingly consent, without threat or coercion, to each change in the terms of the tenancy.” Two exceptions follow: the landlord does not need written consent where the change is authorized by LAMC 151.06 — that is, a rent adjustment the Ordinance itself permits — or where federal, state or local law requires the change. And a closing sentence preserves the notice obligation: “Nothing in this paragraph shall exempt a landlord from providing legally required notice of a change in the terms of the tenancy.”

LAMC 165.03 B.(3) is the Just Cause version, with the authorisation limb reading simply “required by Federal, State, or local law.”

The same conduct is separately actionable as harassment under LAMC 45.33 paragraph 16, and that paragraph adds a procedural requirement: consent counts only where the tenant accepted in writing after receiving written notice from the owner that the tenant need not accept the new term. A landlord who circulates a lease addendum with no covering explanation, and collects signatures, has not met paragraph 16 even though signatures exist.

Every provision cited on this page, with its own codified title as it appears in the Los Angeles Municipal Code.

• Using a California template unchanged and assuming the City layer is covered by a line about “local ordinances.”
• Deciding coverage from the year built rather than the first Certificate of Occupancy.
• Never filing the annual exemption declaration, and so being deemed subject to the ordinance the landlord believed did not apply.
• Collecting rent before serving the registration statement on the tenant.
• Paying the registration fee but never completing the rent registry, so registration is never complete.
• Naming a resident portal as the only accepted payment method.
• Omitting the bedroom count from a three-day notice for nonpayment.
• Serving a termination notice and never filing a copy with the Housing Department within three business days.
• Paying the Rent Stabilization relocation figure on a Just Cause unit, or the reverse.
• Printing an allowable-increase percentage into the lease, where it is stale by the next July.
• Ignoring the annual security deposit interest duty, or electing the actual-interest method without ever sending bank statements.
• Making a verbal cash-for-keys offer without first giving the Department-authorized disclosure notice.
• Writing a buyout agreement in English for a tenant whose primary language is not English.
• Circulating a mid-tenancy addendum without telling the tenant in writing that they need not accept it.
• Serving an entry notice with a purpose stated generically and an all-day time window.
• Collecting a Social Security Number, marital status and criminal history from every applicant as a matter of routine.
• Never giving the Notice of Right to Counsel because the building is exempt from the RSO and the JCO.

Los Angeles gives a tenant more affirmative defences than almost any jurisdiction in the country, and most of them turn on the landlord’s own paperwork rather than on the tenant’s conduct. The registration statement, the rent registry, the three-business-day filing, the relocation payment, the Right to Counsel notice, the entry notice’s contents — each is a document the landlord either produced correctly or did not. The cheapest way to win a Los Angeles possession action is to have every one of those documents in order before the dispute exists, and to have chosen a tenant you are not going to be in a dispute with.

That second half is screening, and in Los Angeles it has to be done in a way that respects LAMC 45.33 paragraphs 10 and 15. The answer is not to screen less. It is to run screening through a process that collects what the law authorizes for a permissible purpose, documents the basis for the decision, and does not sweep up material the ordinance places off limits. Pair it with a move-in and move-out checklist and a security deposit itemization, because the twenty-one-day accounting California requires rests on documented condition, and the Los Angeles interest duty rides on top of it.

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