Free Santa Monica Residential Lease Agreement

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A configurable Santa Monica residential lease agreement that generates a signable multi-page PDF. Built to the Rent Control Charter Amendment itself — the three-part coverage test, the general adjustment the Charter caps at 3%, the two separate registration systems, and the one-year written unfurnished lease Municipal Code 6.22 requires.

Santa Monica Charter art. XVIII Just Cause Free PDF 2026 Edition

A Santa Monica residential lease agreement is a California lease with a second body of law sitting on top of it — and in Santa Monica that second body is not an ordinance. Rent control here lives in the City Charter, in Article XVIII, adopted by the voters on 10 April 1979, with a second charter article, Article XXIII, added by the voters in 2010 to give just-cause protection to the units Article XVIII does not reach. A charter provision cannot be amended by the City Council; only the electorate can touch it. On top of those two sit the Rent Control Board’s own regulations, where most of the operative detail actually lives, and nine chapters of the Municipal Code that between them decide what a Santa Monica lease may say, how long it must run, whether the unit may be furnished, and what has to be handed over at signing. The single most important thing to understand, and the thing every template in circulation gets wrong, is that Santa Monica runs three separate coverage tests on the same unit, and they routinely give different answers. This page states each test explicitly, builds them into the form as field-driven branches, and then covers what the law requires of the lease document itself. For the statewide layer, see our California residential lease agreement, which derives every state figure from the statute; this page does not repeat it.

Start here, because this is the question that decides the rent — and only the rent. Charter Section 1801(c) defines controlled rental units as all residential rental units in the City of Santa Monica, including mobile homes and mobile home spaces and trailers and trailer spaces, except single-family homes to the extent provided in Section 1815 and those units the Board finds exempt under one of seven listed provisions. The seven are narrower than most summaries suggest, and the last of them is procedural rather than substantive.

• Section 1801(c)(1) — rental units in hotels, motels, inns, tourist homes and rooming and boarding houses which are rented primarily to transient guests for a period of less than fourteen days. Board Regulation 12051 makes the test evidential: the applicant must produce occupancy records from 1 January 1979 to the present, and must document the transient occupancy taxes paid to the City.
• Section 1801(c)(2) — rental units in any hospital, convent, monastery, extended medical care facility, asylum, non-profit home for the aged, or dormitory owned and operated by an institution of higher education. Regulation 12052 narrows two of those words: an extended medical care facility means a skilled nursing facility licensed under Title 22 of the California Administrative Code, and expressly does not include a community care facility or an alcohol or drug rehabilitation or detoxification centre.
• Section 1801(c)(3) — units a government unit, agency or authority owns, operates or manages, or in which governmentally subsidised tenants reside, only if applicable federal or state law or administrative regulation specially exempts such units from municipal rent control. The qualifier is doing the work: without a provision that specially exempts, the unit is controlled.
• Section 1801(c)(4) — rental units in owner-occupied dwellings with no more than three units, where “owner” means a natural person who owns a 50% ownership interest in the building and resides on the property as a principal place of residence. The exemption expires by operation of law when the owner ceases to reside there, and thereafter all units on the property are subject to the whole Article again.
• Section 1801(c)(5) — rental units and dwellings constructed after the adoption of this Article, that is after 10 April 1979. The subsection then adds a sentence most summaries drop: “this exemption does not apply to units created as a result of conversion as opposed to new construction.”
• Section 1801(c)(6) — a unit actually used, on a non-profit basis, for child care or other residential social services. This exemption expires when the use ceases, applies only to units as they become vacant, and expressly does not authorise the eviction of any tenant or the charging of rent above what the Article permits.
• Section 1801(c)(7) — the procedural provision: exemptions “are not automatic but shall be granted by the Board upon application by the owner”, with a completed application deemed approved if the Board does not act within ninety days.

Single-family homes have their own rule and it is not a blanket exemption. Charter Section 1815 provides that a single-family home not used for residential rental purposes on 1 July 1984 is automatically exempt. One that was so used is “subject to all requirements of this Article” until the Board permanently exempts it on proof that the home has been continuously occupied by the owner as a principal place of residence for two years after a voluntary vacancy or a lawful eviction — and an owner may hold only one such exemption at a time.

The condominium trap runs the other way from what people expect. Charter Section 1801(n) defines “single family home” for Article XVIII purposes to include a lawfully created condominium, stock cooperative or similar unit that is part of a larger residential structure — but it excepts those condominiums and stock cooperatives converted after 10 April 1979 for which no removal permit or vested-right determination has been issued by the Board. A post-1979 conversion without a Board permit is therefore a controlled rental unit, with the full rent ceiling and the full Section 1806 just-cause protection, notwithstanding that it is a condominium.

Because they come from two different charter articles, adopted thirty-one years apart, with two different definitions of what they reach. Article XVIII, adopted in 1979, does both jobs for the units it covers: Sections 1804 and 1805 set the rent ceiling, and Section 1806 requires just cause. Article XXIII, approved by the voters at the 2 November 2010 election, does only the second job, and does it for almost everything Article XVIII leaves out.

The findings the voters adopted in Charter Section 2301 say why in terms: “tenants living in uncontrolled units currently have no protections against unjust evictions, including evictions based on relatively minor and correctable violations of rental agreements.” Article XXIII was written to close that gap, and it closed it by defining its own scope in the widest possible way. Section 2302(a) reaches all residential rental units in the City except two categories: those subject to Article XVIII, and single-family homes.

Its own exemption list, at Section 2303, is short — four entries, and they mirror the first three plus the child-care entry from Article XVIII: transient lodging rented primarily for under fourteen days; hospitals, convents, monasteries, extended medical care facilities, asylums, non-profit homes for seniors and college dormitories; government-owned or subsidised units where federal or state law specially exempts them; and units used on a non-profit basis for child care or other residential social services. Notice what is not there. There is no new-construction exemption in Article XXIII. There is no owner-occupied-triplex exemption. A 2015 apartment building in Santa Monica is outside the rent ceiling and squarely inside just-cause control.

The safety property, stated plainly, because it is what a lease has to get right. If the unit is exempt from the rent ceiling, the lease must still say which protections survive — and in Santa Monica a great many of them do. Just cause survives under Article XXIII unless the dwelling is a single-family home. The lease-form rules in Municipal Code Chapter 6.22 survive in every case, because that chapter never mentions rent control. The tenant harassment ordinance survives, because Section 4.56.010(h) defines its reach by reference to both charter articles. The buyout rules survive on the same definition at Section 4.57.020(a). The algorithmic rent-setting ban survives on the same definition again at Section 4.58.010. The relocation code survives on a definition that is broader than either, reaching any housing unit in the City regardless of permit status. And since 1 January 2026 the City’s own registration duty attaches precisely because the unit is outside Article XVIII. The generated lease prints the surviving protections in every branch, and refuses to print a bare “this unit is exempt”.

At the rent, and nowhere else — and Santa Monica’s own instruments say so on their face rather than leaving it to be inferred. The Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, California Civil Code Sections 1954.50 to 1954.535, pre-empts local control of the rent that may be charged for separately alienable dwellings and for units first certified for occupancy after 1 February 1995, and requires vacancy decontrol. It says nothing about the grounds on which possession may be recovered.

Three Santa Monica provisions record that boundary in their own words. Charter Section 1804(b) provides that for tenancies commencing on or after 1 January 1999 “which qualify for a vacancy rent increase pursuant to state law”, the base rent ceiling is the initial rental rate — a local rule written around the state one. Regulation 3301(a) permits the new base rent after a qualifying vacancy “pursuant to Section 1954.50 et seq. of the Civil Code” and then adds, in the same regulation, that the unit “shall otherwise remain controlled by and subject to all sections of Article XVIII and the regulations of the Rent Control Board.” And Regulation 11201(a) removes the registration fee, and only the fee, from a unit whose rents are decontrolled by Civil Code Section 1954.52(a). Not one of them touches Section 1806.

Two consequences follow that no template states. First, a Costa-Hawkins vacancy increase does not make a Santa Monica unit uncontrolled; it resets the base rent and leaves the general adjustment, the registration duty, the just-cause grounds and the notice-filing duties exactly where they were. Second, the fee waiver under Regulation 11201 is not automatic either: Regulation 11201(b) makes it available only where the tenancy commenced on or after 1 January 1996, the prior tenancy was not ended by the owner by a Civil Code 1946.1 notice or a Civil Code 827 change of terms, and the unit carries no serious health, safety, fire or building code violation cited and left unabated for six months or longer before the tenancy.

Because it changes who can amend it, who runs it, and what happens if a court strikes part of it down. This is a genuine structural difference from every other rent-control city in California, and no template states it.

Only the voters can amend it. Article XVIII was adopted on 10 April 1979 and the Charter prints its own amendment history by election date: amended 6 November 1984; Section 1820 adopted 6 November 1990; Sections 1800, 1801(d), 1804(b), 1806 and 1821 amended or adopted 5 November 2002; Section 1806 amended 2 November 2010; Sections 1803(g), 1804(b) and 1805 amended 6 November 2012; Section 1803(n) amended 4 November 2014; and Sections 1803(d), 1804(a), 1805(a) and 1806(a)(8) amended 8 November 2022. Every one of those is a ballot measure. Article XXIII was likewise “Approved by the voters at the 11/2/2010 election”, a line printed under each of its nine sections.

The Board is elected and is not the Council’s creature. Charter Section 1803(a) establishes a Rent Control Board of five elected Commissioners serving four-year terms, limited to two full terms. Section 1802 then insulates it: the Board “shall exercise its powers and duties under this Article independent of and without interference from the City Council, City Manager, and City Attorney”; the Council and Manager “shall have no authority to oversee, supervise, or approve” its budget; the Council “shall have no power to abolish positions established or classified by the Board”, notwithstanding any other section of the Charter; and the Board may retain its own private attorneys without Council approval. Charter Section 1803(k) even fixes Commissioner compensation at seventy-five dollars a meeting with an annual ceiling.

If a provision is struck down, the Board writes the replacement. Charter Section 1802(e) is unusual and worth quoting: if any portion of the Article is declared invalid or unenforceable by a court, or rendered invalid by state or federal legislation, “the Board and not the City Council shall have authority to enact replacement regulations consistent with the intent and purpose of the invalidated provision and applicable law”, and those regulations supersede the invalidated text to the extent necessary.

What that does and does not buy. It does not put the Charter beyond state pre-emption — a charter provision is still subordinate to a state statute in a field the Legislature has occupied, which is why Costa-Hawkins reaches Santa Monica at all. What it does mean is that the parts of Santa Monica law a lease depends on move at two entirely different speeds. The Charter changes only at a municipal election. The ordinances in Municipal Code Chapters 4.25, 4.27, 4.28, 4.36, 4.44, 4.56, 4.57, 4.58 and 6.22 change whenever the Council passes an ordinance, and several of them did recently: Chapter 4.58 in June 2025, Chapter 4.25 in November 2025, and amendments to Chapters 4.27, 4.36, 4.56 and 4.57 in February 2024. This page dates each of them for that reason.

No, and assuming otherwise is the most expensive mistake a Santa Monica owner can make. Charter Section 1801(c)(7) is explicit: exemptions “are not automatic but shall be granted by the Board upon application by the owner pursuant to Board rules”. Regulation 12000 states the same rule from the other end: a property “shall not be considered exempt from the Rent Control Law until the owner of said property has applied for, and received, a determination by the Rent Control Board that such property is exempt”, and every exemption is prospectively effective from the grant.

Regulation 12053 sets out what the commonest application — the three-or-fewer-unit owner-occupied exemption — actually requires. A completed application on the Board’s form, accompanied by a grant deed or other proof of the ownership interest, documentation that the property had three or fewer units on 10 April 1979, and a processing fee of one hundred dollars. Staff have five business days to decide whether the application is complete; an application not rejected within that window is considered filed on the sixth business day, and the ninety-day clock starts then. The owner must prove a 50% interest held since filing, the unit count as at April 1979, and continuous residence at the property as a principal place of residence beginning at least one hundred twenty days before the application was filed. The Board mails a copy to every unit at the property with a tenant response form, and any disputed fact sends the matter to a hearing examiner with an on-site staff inspection.

And the exemption has to be renewed, in effect, every year. Regulation 12070(c) requires the owner of a property exempt under Section 1801(c)(4) to certify annually, under penalty of perjury, that they continue to occupy the property as a principal residence. Failing to return the signed certification within thirty days of its mailing is itself sufficient evidence for an initial determination that the exemption has lapsed. Regulation 12073 separately requires the owner to notify the Board in writing within fourteen days when the exempt use ends, when the owner stops living there, or on a transfer of ownership. Regulation 12070(h) adds a humane exception: the death of the owner in whose name the exemption was granted creates an irrebuttable presumption that the underlying facts are no longer true, unless a surviving spouse held at least a 50% interest and otherwise qualifies.

Two further points from the regulations that a landlord relying on an exemption should know. Regulation 12056(f) provides that granting an exemption does not relieve the applicant of registration fees and penalties that accrued before the exemption was filed. And Regulation 12052 records, for the social-services exemption, that granting it “shall not in any way deprive the then current residents of the effected property of any of the protections contained in the Charter Amendment”, naming the Section 1806 good-cause provisions and the Sections 1805 and 1809 maximum-allowable-rent provisions specifically. An exemption granted over a sitting tenant is not a reset button.

Eight steps, and the second one is the one that decides everything else. The builder asks the coverage questions before it asks about rent, because the answers change what the lease has to say about notices, increases, registration and termination.

Everything you fill is written into the document, and the generated lease cites the controlling Charter section, Board regulation or Municipal Code section at each point rather than describing it vaguely. Before handing over keys, run proper tenant screening — the lease governs the relationship, screening decides whether you want it, and in Santa Monica the decision to start a tenancy is far easier than the decision to end one. Pair the signed lease with a California move-in / move-out checklist, because the itemized accounting owed in twenty-one days rests on documented condition, and in Santa Monica a disputed reduction in housing services is decided on the same evidence before the Rent Control Board.

Yes to all three, and this is the body of law a lease template cannot ignore. Municipal Code Chapter 6.22, added by Ordinance No. 2650CCS on 8 September 2020 and amended by Ordinance No. 2655CCS on 27 October 2020, is the most lease-specific ordinance in the city, and not one of the fourteen pages currently ranking for this query mentions it.

Its purpose clause explains the design: the Council found that the City’s rental housing stock “should, to the extent possible, be preserved for use as long-term permanent housing”, and that tenants “are entitled to contractual relationships with landlords that offer some assurances of stability.” Four operative rules follow, each framed the same way — a landlord and tenant may enter into a lease only if:

• Section 6.22.040 — the tenant is a natural person. A company, partnership, trust or other entity may not be the tenant of a Santa Monica rental housing unit.
• Section 6.22.050 — the tenant will occupy as a primary residence. No later than sixty days after commencement the tenant must provide, and the landlord must receive, documentation of the kind Section 6.22.020(c) lists: motor vehicle registration, driver’s licence or California identification card, voter registration, an income tax return, proof of payment of resident tuition to a California public institution of higher education, or a utility bill. The landlord must retain it throughout the tenancy and produce it to the Director of the Community Development Department on request. A person can have only one primary residence.
• Section 6.22.060 — the lease is in writing and for an initial term of no less than one year.
• Section 6.22.070 — the unit is delivered unfurnished. Section 6.22.020(g) defines that as delivered without furnishings, computer equipment, housewares, bed linens, towels, artwork, televisions, entertainment systems or appliances — excepting a stove, a refrigerator, a microwave, a dishwasher, a clothes washing machine and a clothes dryer. A sublessor who is a natural person continuing to live in the unit as a primary residence is exempt, as is a sublessor whose sublease is a one-for-one replacement.

The bilingual notice. Section 6.22.080 requires the landlord to give all prospective tenants a written notice summarising Sections 6.22.060 and 6.22.070, in English and Spanish, delivered electronically where the application or the lease is processed electronically. The form of the notice is set by administrative regulations issued under Section 6.22.130.

What it costs to get wrong. Section 6.22.110 gives the tenant a defence in any legal action brought by the landlord to recover possession and in any legal action brought to collect rent, in either case within one year of the tenant’s initial occupancy, where the landlord failed to comply with Section 6.22.060, Section 6.22.070 or Section 6.22.080. The tenant may also seek injunctive relief on their own behalf and on behalf of other affected tenants. Section 6.22.120 voids any waiver given before the right may be exercised, and Section 6.22.140 makes a violation an infraction punishable by a fine not exceeding seven hundred fifty dollars, or a misdemeanour punishable by a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars or six months in the county jail.

Its exemptions are its own. Section 6.22.100(a) exempts tenancies lawfully in place when the ordinance took effect, until those tenants vacate; lawful home-sharing under Municipal Code Chapter 6.20; leases providing temporary relocation housing under Section 4.36.100 or Section 8.100.030; a narrow owner-in-residence carve-out for a unit the owner occupies as a primary residence, let for under a year with the intent to return, rented no more than twice a calendar year for a total of less than six months, and with no owner-move-in eviction, Ellis eviction or related buyout in the previous ten years; and certain accessory and junior accessory dwelling units whose plans were submitted for plan check by 31 December 2020 on an owner-occupied single-unit parcel. Section 6.22.100(b) gives way to government-owned, government-subsidised and deed-restricted affordable housing requirements where they conflict.

Ten, at Charter Section 1806(a)(1) through (10), and the prohibition reaches further than filing a lawsuit. Section 1806(a) forbids a landlord to “take action to terminate any tenancy including but not limited to, making a demand for possession of a rental unit, threatening to terminate a tenancy, serving any notice to quit or other eviction notice or bringing any action to recover possession” unless one of the grounds applies. A demand and a threat are covered; the ordinance is not aimed only at the courthouse.

1. Non-payment of rent to which the landlord is entitled under the rental housing agreement and this Article — so rent demanded above the maximum allowable rent is not rent the ground reaches.
2. Continuing, after written notice to cease, a material and substantial breach of an obligation or covenant of the tenancy which the landlord has not waived expressly or by conduct and is not estopped from asserting, other than the obligation to surrender possession on proper notice. The sublease carve-out sits inside this ground.
3. Continuing, after written notice to cease, a nuisance, substantial damage, or substantial interference with the comfort, safety or enjoyment of the landlord or other occupants or neighbours.
4. Conviction for using or expressly permitting the unit to be used for an illegal purpose. Note the word: a conviction, not an allegation.
5. Refusing a renewal. The tenant whose agreement has terminated has refused, after written request or demand, to execute a written extension or renewal for a further term of like duration on terms materially the same as the previous agreement and not inconsistent with the Article.
6. Continued refusal of reasonable access, after written notice, for necessary repairs or improvements required by law or to show the unit to a prospective purchaser or mortgagee.
7. An unapproved subtenant holding over at the end of the term.
8. Owner or relative occupancy in good faith — the landlord, or the landlord’s child, parent, grandparent, brother, sister, father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law or daughter-in-law.
9. Demolition or removal from residential rental use, after obtaining all proper permits from the City.
10. Ellis Act withdrawal — having filed the requisite documents with the Rent Control Board initiating the withdrawal procedure under Government Code Section 7060 et seq., with the intention of completing the withdrawal and going out of the residential rental business.

Two grounds people expect to find are not there. There is no ground for the mere expiry of a fixed term, and there is no ground for a tenant’s refusal to accept a change in the terms of the tenancy. Ground (5) reaches only a refusal to renew on materially the same terms.

Nine, at Charter Section 2304(a)(1) through (9), and eight of them are in substantially the same words as the Article XVIII list. That similarity is deliberate — Article XXIII was drafted to give uncontrolled tenants the protection controlled tenants already had. The differences are the interesting part, and they run in both directions.

• Rent may lawfully change on renewal. Section 2304(a)(5) permits the renewal to be on materially the same terms “with the exception of any lawful change in the amount of rent”. Section 1806(a)(5) has no such words, because in a controlled unit the rent is fixed by the Board’s adjustment in any event.
• Affordable units get a wider unapproved-subtenant ground. Section 2304(a)(7) reaches not only an unapproved subtenant holding over but, in a deed-restricted or other affordable unit, an unqualified subtenant or a tenant otherwise ineligible to occupy.
• Owner move-in is easier. Section 2304(a)(8)(iv) requires the landlord or enumerated relative to intend in good faith to move in within thirty days after the tenant vacates and to occupy as a primary residence for at least one year. The Article XVIII equivalent, as amended by the voters in November 2022, is sixty days and two years.
• There is no demolition ground. Section 2304(a)(9) reaches only a landlord who “intends to withdraw all rental-units in all buildings or structures on a parcel of land from the rental market”. There is no analogue to Section 1806(a)(9)’s permitted demolition of an individual unit.
• The City, not the Board, implements it. Section 2305 gives the City Council authority to adopt ordinances, resolutions or regulations to implement Article XXIII, including on exemptions, just cause, notices, comparability and good faith, and to create any administrative mechanism it thinks necessary. Article XVIII gives the equivalent power to the elected Board.

What is identical, and matters to a lease. Both articles carry the one-for-one sublease protection with the fourteen-day deemed-approval rule, in the same words, each expressly overriding “any contrary provision in the rental housing agreement”. Both carry the succession protection for a spouse, children or registered domestic partner who has lived in the unit a year when the tenant vacates through death or incapacitation. Both carry the notice-to-cease requirement for the breach, nuisance and access grounds. Both bar a retaliatory eviction. Both give the tenant an affirmative defence and expose the landlord to actual and punitive damages including emotional distress with fees to the prevailing party. And both are non-waivable — Section 1807 and Section 2306 respectively.

State the cause, follow a prior notice to cease where the ground requires one, and get filed twice on two different clocks. Santa Monica is one of the few jurisdictions where the same notice has to reach two separate public offices within different numbers of days.

Content. Charter Sections 1806(e) and 2304(e) require the landlord to state the cause in any notice purporting to terminate the tenancy and to allege and prove compliance in any action to recover possession. Rent Control Board Regulation 9001 then requires the notice to contain “a specific statement of the reasons for the termination with specific facts to permit a determination of the date, place, witnesses and circumstances concerning the reason for the eviction.” A recital of the statutory ground in the abstract does not satisfy it.

The notice to cease. For the breach, nuisance and access grounds, Charter Sections 1806(b) and 2304(b) require a written notice to cease to be served “a reasonable period prior to serving a notice to terminate tenancy”, informing the tenant that a failure to cure may result in eviction proceedings. This is a two-notice regime. A three-day notice to perform covenants or quit under Code of Civil Procedure Section 1161(3) is the second document, not the first.

Filing, clock one — three days to the Rent Control Board. Charter Section 1806(e) requires a copy of any notice terminating tenancy, except a three-day notice to pay rent or vacate, to be filed with the Board within three days after serving it on the tenant. Regulation 9002(e) repeats the duty for an owner-occupancy notice and adds what that notice must contain.

Filing, clock two — two days to the City Attorney. Municipal Code Section 4.27.060, added by Ordinance No. 2712CCS in August 2022 and amended in September 2022, requires landlords to email the Santa Monica City Attorney’s Office unredacted copies of any endeavour to evict — which the section defines as any attempt to begin the termination or eviction process, “such as notices to terminate tenancy, notices to pay rent or quit, notices to quit, and filing of unlawful detainer cases in court” — within two days of service. Within three days of the information becoming available the landlord must also report whether the tenant obtained a fee waiver, whether the tenant has legal representation, whether the landlord has legal representation, and the outcome. Note two things about it: it catches the pay-or-quit notice that the Board filing exempts, and Section 4.27.060(d) states expressly that a violation does not result in an affirmative defence for the tenant — it is enforced as a misdemeanour or by administrative citation of up to one thousand dollars instead.

State periods still set the clock. Nonpayment is three days under Code of Civil Procedure Section 1161(2), excluding Saturdays, Sundays and other judicial holidays. Breach of covenant is three days under Section 1161(3), on the same exclusion. Ending a periodic tenancy is at least sixty days under Civil Code Section 1946.1, reduced to thirty where a tenant has resided in the dwelling less than a year. The state period is the method; the Charter is the permission; and a Santa Monica notice needs both.

By the annual general adjustment the Rent Control Board announces each year — a mechanism, not a fixed number, and one the Charter itself caps. Charter Section 1805(a) requires the Board, no later than 30 June each year, to announce the percentage by which rent ceilings for eligible units will be generally adjusted effective 1 September of that year. Regulation 3035(a) requires that announcement to be made by resolution, together with a decision, in the same resolution, whether to impose a dollar-amount ceiling.

The percentage is fixed by formula rather than by judgment. Section 1805(a)(1) sets it at 70%-5% of the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange County region, as reported and published by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, for the twelve-month period ending as of March of the current year. Section 1805(a)(2) prescribes the rounding — numbers of .04 and below round down to the nearest tenth, .05 and above round up. And Section 1805(a)(3) then does the thing no template states: “in no event shall the general adjustment be less than zero percent or greater than three (3) percent.”

The dollar ceiling is a second, separate lever. Charter Section 1805(b) permits the Board, in its discretion, to impose a dollar-amount limit on any annual general adjustment, calculated by taking the eighty-fifth percentile of the maximum allowable rents of all controlled units, taking the eighty-fifth percentile of the maximum allowable rents of all controlled units with a base rent established before 1 January 1999, averaging the two, and multiplying by the announced percentage. Where the Board imposes both, a unit’s increase is the lower of the percentage and the dollar figure.

The current figure, for reference only. By Resolution 26-001, adopted 11 June 2026, the Board announced a 2026 general adjustment of 2.6 percent with a seventy dollar monthly limit, effective 1 September 2026. The resolution shows its own arithmetic on its face: the twelve-month CPI increase to March 2026 was 3.4 percent, 70%-5% of that is 2.55 percent, rounded up to 2.6 percent; the eighty-fifth percentiles were three thousand seven hundred sixty-eight dollars and one thousand six hundred twenty-four dollars, averaging two thousand six hundred ninety-six dollars, which multiplied by 2.6 percent and rounded up gives seventy dollars. None of those figures appears in the generated lease, and that is deliberate: a lease signed today may still be on foot in 2031, and every one of them will have changed. The lease states who publishes the figure, by when, from what index, and under what Charter section, and sends the parties to the current resolution.

When the adjustment may first be taken. Regulation 3035(b) permits the increase effective 1 September of the year for which it is authorised, but not where a new base rent was lawfully established after a vacancy after 31 August of the preceding year, nor where a Tenant Not In Occupancy increase became final after that date, nor where the unit’s first base rent ceiling since the adoption of Article XVIII was established after it. The practical result, as the Board’s own information sheet puts it, is that a tenancy must be in place for a full year before a general adjustment is available to it.

Catching up, within limits. Regulation 3035(f), adopted 9 October 2025 and effective 15 October 2025, permits an otherwise eligible landlord to increase the rent up to the maximum allowable rent “provided that the total increase does not exceed 10% of the rental amount charged at any time during the 12 months before the effective date of the increase”, whether alone or combined with any other increases in that period. That is a Board-imposed ceiling on catching up to a banked maximum allowable rent, and it is new.

Eight separate conditions, any one of which defeats it — and a certification the notice itself must carry. Regulation 3035(b) lists them, and Charter Section 1805(h) puts two of them in the Charter.

• A new base rent was lawfully established after vacancy after 31 August of the preceding year.
• The maximum allowable rent was increased by a Tenant Not In Occupancy petition that became final after that date.
• The unit’s first base rent ceiling since the adoption of Article XVIII was established after that date.
• The landlord is not in compliance with any provision of Article XVIII or the regulations.
• The landlord has not properly registered the unit.
• Registration fees or penalties are outstanding, other than those barred by the statute of limitations.
• Cited violations of health, safety or housing laws are uncorrected. Where the violation affects only particular units, the bar applies to those units only.
• The landlord has not given the tenant the informational form Regulation 13002(g) requires. A landlord who later complies may impose, prospectively only and on proper notice, the adjustments that could not lawfully have been imposed during the period of noncompliance.

The certification. Regulation 3035(c) provides that a landlord may not collect the general adjustment unless the tenant has been given written notice as Civil Code Section 827 requires and that notice includes the following certification: “The undersigned (landlord) certifies that this unit and the common areas are not subject to any uncorrected citation or notices of violation of any state or local housing, health, or safety laws issued by any government official or agency.” Charter Section 1805(h)(2) requires a statement in substantially the same form. If it is missing, the tenant may refuse to pay the improperly noticed increase and may raise the noncompliance as an affirmative defence in any resulting unlawful detainer. Regulation 3035(d) is blunter still: a rent-increase notice that does not conform with the chapter “is ineffective to increase rent.”

And two provisions about the landlord’s own finances. Charter Sections 1805(f) and 1805(g) each provide that no rent increase is authorised because a landlord has a negative cash flow resulting from refinancing or from acquiring the unit, where the negative cash flow was reasonably foreseeable within the year following the refinancing or acquisition on the rent schedule then in existence. A buyer who overpays cannot pass the shortfall to a sitting tenant.

Only as a fixed dollar amount agreed at the very start of the tenancy — and even then it is rent. Rent Control Board Regulation 3301(a)(ii) is one of the two or three most consequential provisions on this page for anyone using a modern property-management lease, and no ranking page carries it.

The regulation provides that where the rental agreement provides for separate charges for shared or master-metered utilities, “including, but not limited to, water, sewer or trash, those charges are part of the rent, as defined under Charter section 1801(f)”, and that “charges for such housing services must be specified as a dollar amount at the commencement of the tenancy.” It then closes the loop: the base rent will include only those charges that were specified as a dollar amount at commencement and were actually paid by the tenant during the initial term. The Rent Control Board’s own information sheet states the rule in one line — “Variable monthly charges are not permitted.”

What that rules out is the ratio-utility billing clause that appears in most national lease templates: a formula allocating a building’s water or trash bill across units by occupancy or square footage, billed at whatever the invoice happens to be. In a controlled Santa Monica unit that is a variable charge for a housing service, it is rent under Charter Section 1801(f), and charging it operates as an unlawful rent increase — exposing the landlord to the excess-rent remedies in Charter Section 1809, which run to the overcharge plus attorney fees, trebled on wilfulness, oppression, fraud or malice.

The mirror-image rule for concessions. Regulation 3301(a)(i) provides that where the rental agreement gives a period of “free” rent within its initial term, “the base rent shall be reduced to account for the free period”, and that the unit otherwise remains controlled by and subject to all sections of Article XVIII. A twelve-month lease at three thousand dollars a month with the first month free does not establish a three-thousand-dollar base rent. The builder collects any concession so the base rent is computed correctly and registered correctly.

What counts as rent generally. Charter Section 1801(f) defines rent as all periodic payments and all non-monetary consideration, including the fair market value of goods or services rendered to or for the benefit of the landlord, and expressly including all payment and consideration demanded or paid “for parking, pets, furniture, subletting and security deposits for damages and cleaning.” A Santa Monica lease cannot move money out of the rent ceiling by giving it another name.

Registration in Santa Monica has real teeth, and they bite in four directions at once. Charter Section 1803(q) requires registration of all controlled rental units, with re-registration at times the Board sets. Regulation 13001 sets those times: within thirty days of a change in ownership; within thirty days of establishing a new base rent after a vacancy; within thirty days of the lapse of an exemption; on filing an exemption application if the owner has not previously registered; and on several other occasions including a removal-permit agreement and a Section 8 termination.

Regulation 13002 defines what a proper registration contains and requires it to be signed under penalty of perjury with a telephone number or email address at which the landlord may reliably be reached in business hours. Regulation 8010 defines the minimum for the withholding remedy: the property address and unit designations, the name and address for service on the landlord, the base rent for each unit, and the signature of an owner or authorised agent.

The four consequences of not registering

• No rent increase, ever, until it is fixed. Charter Section 1803(q) provides that “whether or not the Board allows such withholding, no landlord who has failed to register properly shall at any time increase rents for a controlled rental unit until such units are properly registered.” Regulation 3035(b)(5) and (6) repeat it, and Regulation 8018(b) applies it from the date of a wilfulness finding until compliance is determined.
• The tenant may be authorised to stop paying rent. Where the Board finds, after notice and a hearing, that the failure was wilful and knowing, Charter Section 1803(q) permits it to authorise the tenant to withhold all or a portion of the rent until the unit is properly registered. Regulation 8017 makes that mandatory on such a finding, with discretion to postpone it by up to seven days for compliance, and Regulation 8017(b) directs the tenant to keep the withheld funds available. Regulation 8016 dismisses the complaint if the landlord registers before the hearing — the remedy is designed to produce registration, not punishment. Regulation 8015 makes the finding a violation as to every unit on the property and binding on the landlord in later proceedings.
• Money, compounding monthly. Regulation 11200(d) makes fees due on 1 July and delinquent if not received or postmarked by 1 August. Regulation 11200(g) then imposes a late charge equal to 4% of the unpaid balance of fees and penalties for each month after the due date, including balances carried from prior years, until the whole balance is paid.
• The Board stops taking the landlord’s calls. Regulation 11200(g)(3) provides that no petition, application, claim or request shall be accepted from a landlord, and no hearing or other proceeding scheduled, until the registration fees for all of that landlord’s controlled units in Santa Monica are paid. The Administrator may relax it for good cause on conditions. A landlord in arrears cannot file for a capital-improvement adjustment, a fair-return adjustment, an exemption, or anything else.

The fee, as a mechanism

Charter Section 1803(n) empowers the Board to finance itself by charging landlords annual registration fees “in amounts deemed reasonable by the Board up to a maximum annual registration fee of $288 per controlled unit”, and permits 50% of the fee to be passed through to tenants. That ceiling was itself set by the electorate on 4 November 2014, so the Board cannot exceed it and the Council cannot raise it. Within that ceiling the Board fixes the actual figure by regulation for each fiscal year running 1 July to 30 June. Regulation 11200(b) currently sets it at two hundred forty dollars per controlled unit, with a severability clause reverting it to two hundred twenty-eight dollars if the increase is held invalid; the Board’s 2025 information sheet states the corresponding monthly pass-through as ten dollars from 1 September 2025. As with the general adjustment, the generated lease carries the mechanism and not the number.

The pass-through has five conditions attached. Regulation 11200(e) permits it only after timely payment of all current and past fees and penalties; caps it at 50% of the fee actually paid for that unit; requires it to be charged in twelve equal monthly instalments; forbids passing through any prior year’s fee or any penalty for late payment; and excludes units for which a fee waiver is in effect. Miss the deadline and the pass-through is forfeited for the whole fiscal year. Regulation 11200(f) requires the Civil Code 827 notice to state that the fee was paid on or before the deadline, and provides that a landlord who fails to notice properly “will forfeit the pass-through to which he or she would otherwise have been entitled for the number of months for which there was improper notice or lack of notice.” Regulation 11200(e)(5) confirms the pass-through is not counted as part of the rent when calculating the general adjustment.

And it follows the building. Regulation 11200(c) provides that the current landlord is jointly and severally liable, along with the former landlord or landlords, for unpaid registration fees and penalties owing for prior years, and states that this is declarative of existing law. A buyer who does not check the Board’s ledger inherits it, with 4% a month still running.

Yes — since 1 January 2026, and nothing in the current search results mentions it. Municipal Code Chapter 4.25, added by Ordinance No. 2835CCS on 18 November 2025, creates a second, entirely separate registration system run by the City rather than by the Rent Control Board, for every rental housing unit not subject to Charter Article XVIII.

Its purpose clause names what it is for: ensuring that the protections in Charter Article XXIII, Municipal Code Chapters 4.27, 4.28, 4.36, 4.56 and 4.57, Civil Code Sections 1946.2 and 1947.12 and Penal Code Section 396 “are followed and enforced”, monitoring affordable-housing deed restrictions, and letting the City gauge whether the protections are working. The definition of “rental housing unit” at Section 4.25.020 sweeps in a dwelling unit, an accessory dwelling unit, a junior accessory dwelling unit and a single-room-occupancy unit — and expressly allows a dwelling unit to be smaller than three hundred seventy-five square feet for this purpose. Section 4.25.030 exempts only three categories: transient lodging under fourteen days, institutional accommodation, and government units specially exempted by federal or state law.

What has to be filed

Section 4.25.040 requires a property registration statement annually on a date set by regulation, and within sixty days after a change in ownership or management — management, not merely ownership, which is a duty most owners will not expect. The statement must give the property address; the name, mailing address, email address and phone number of every owner and of the person responsible for managing the property; information relevant to deciding whether each unit is subject to Civil Code Section 1946.2 or 1947.12, Charter Article XXIII or an affordable housing deed restriction; and for each unit its complete address, bedrooms, bathrooms and occupancy status. For each occupied unit it must additionally give the rent amount, the date the tenancy began, whether the tenant pays with a housing voucher, the amenities provided, whether utilities are paid by owner or tenant and on a submeter or direct meter basis, and when the prior tenant vacated and why.

The certificate, and the rent bar that starts in 2027

Section 4.25.050 requires the City to issue a property registration certificate within thirty days of a complete statement and payment of any fee. The certificate expires when the next annual certificate is issued or would be issued, or thirty-one days after a change in management or ownership if no updated statement has been filed, whichever comes first. Section 4.25.060(a) requires the owner to display the non-expired certificate conspicuously at the property or give a copy to the tenant of each unit.

Section 4.25.060(b) then adds the sanction that makes the chapter matter, and gives it a date: “No owner shall demand or accept rent for a rental housing unit at a property for which a property registration statement is required to be filed without first complying with subsection (a). This subsection shall become effective January 1, 2027.” Section 4.25.100 confirms the chapter took effect on 1 January 2026 with Section 4.25.060(b) held back a year.

What it costs

Section 4.25.090 sets out four separate exposures. Non-compliance with Section 4.25.060 is an affirmative defence to an action by the owner to recover possession of a unit subject to Charter Article XXIII. A violation of the chapter carries injunctive relief and a civil penalty of two hundred dollars per unregistered rental housing unit per month, plus reasonable attorney fees and costs, with the penalty adjustable upward by Council resolution. Administrative fines and penalties are available under Municipal Code Chapter 1.09. And a conviction is an infraction punishable by a fine not exceeding two hundred fifty dollars, or a misdemeanour punishable by a fine of not more than five hundred dollars or six months in the county jail — on strict liability, because Section 4.25.090(e) provides that the prosecution need not prove criminal intent.

The fee and its pass-through. Section 4.25.070 lets the Council set a fee by resolution, payable no more than once a year at the time of filing. An owner who has paid it may pass through 50% to all tenants at the property, divided equally among all rental housing units at the property, whether vacant or occupied, at no more than one twelfth per month. Two limits follow: the pass-through “shall not be considered rent and shall be separately denominated on any rent ledger or tenant account balance statement”, and it may not be passed through at all to a tenant of a deed-restricted affordable unit, or by an owner who has not first complied with Section 4.25.060.

One month, on a local rule that tracks the state one — and once it is set it can never be raised. Rent Control Board Regulation 14002 does the work, and it does more of it than California Civil Code Section 1950.5 does.

Regulation 14002(b) provides that for any tenant renting a controlled rental unit after 1 January 1983, the maximum allowable security deposit is “no more than an amount equal to the maximum allowable rent or base rent after vacancy in effect on the initial rental date”. The landlord may demand two months’ rent only if the prospective tenant is not a service member and both of the following are true: the landlord is a natural person or a limited liability company in which all members are natural persons, and the landlord owns no more than two residential rental properties collectively including no more than four dwelling units offered for rent. That subdivision was amended by the Board on 8 August 2024, effective 17 August 2024, to track the change California made to Civil Code Section 1950.5(c) — a good illustration of the Board keeping its own regulations conformed to state law.

The rule no other jurisdiction in this wave has. Regulation 14002(c) provides that a security deposit, once established, cannot be raised for the duration of the tenancy. Where several tenants occupy one unit, the tenancy is deemed to continue for this purpose so long as any one of the tenants who occupied the unit when the deposit was set continues to occupy it — so a roommate turnover does not reopen the question. And the regulation adds, in terms, that “the general adjustment does not apply to a security deposit.” A Santa Monica lease that reserves a right to call for an additional deposit later, or that expresses the deposit as a multiple of the current rent, is reserving something the regulation forbids.

The narrow historical exception. Regulation 14003 permits an additional deposit of up to one month’s rent, but only for tenancies commencing before 1 January 1999, only with the written consent of the tenants giving it, and only in exchange for permitting an added use — additional occupants, pets, or a similar use not permitted when the base rent was established. The tenants may revoke consent in writing and give up the added use, and the landlord must refund the additional deposit within thirty days. Regulation 14003(c) caps the combined total at the state maximum in any event.

The account is mandatory. The payment is not. That is the reverse of what several city guides assume, and it turns on a suspension recorded in the regulation’s own history lines.

Charter Section 1803(s) requires that “any payment or deposit of money the primary function of which is to secure the performance of a rental agreement or any part of such agreement, including an advance payment of rent, shall be placed in an interest bearing account at a federally insured financial institution until such time as it is returned to the tenant or entitled to be used by the landlord.” Rent Control Board Regulation 14001(a) repeats the duty and names the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation. That much is unconditional, and it reaches advance rent as well as damage deposits.

What the Charter then says about the interest is conditional: “Unless and until the Board enacts regulations directing that the interest on such accounts be paid directly to the tenant, the landlord may either pay such interest directly to the tenant or use it to offset operating expenses, in which case the offset shall be a factor in making individual rent adjustments under Section 1805.”

No such regulation is in force. Chapter 14 as published contains only Regulation 14001(a). Subdivisions (b) through (f) appear in the chapter’s own history lines — adopted or amended in 1983, 1999 and March 2002 — and then in a final entry reading “[14001(b)-(f) Suspended 6/13/02; Effective 6/22/02]”. Their text is not printed in the current chapter. So the condition in Charter Section 1803(s) has not been satisfied, and the landlord’s election survives: pay the interest over, or use it to offset operating expenses and let the offset be weighed in any individual rent adjustment. The builder asks which election the landlord makes and the generated lease records it, because a tenant is entitled to know which of the two is happening to the money.

What is not in doubt. California Civil Code Section 1950.5(h) still requires the itemized statement of the disposition of the security, any remaining balance, and the photographs Section 1950.5(g) requires, within twenty-one calendar days after the tenant vacates. Section 1950.5(n) still forbids characterising any part of the security as nonrefundable. Santa Monica adds nothing to either — but Charter Section 1801(f) does treat a deposit demanded for damages or cleaning as consideration within the definition of rent, which is why a deposit above the cap is not merely an overcharge but an excess-rent question under Charter Section 1809.

Only covenants that came from an express written agreement signed by both parties — which quietly disqualifies the way most template leases are built. Rent Control Board Regulation 9007(a) is the provision, and no ranking page carries it:

“No tenancy may be terminated for violation of a covenant of a rental agreement, other than the covenant to pay the lawful rent, unless that covenant was a result of an express agreement between the landlord and the tenant. An express agreement must be in writing, signed by both parties, and the tenant must have knowingly consented to the change. A landlord may not unilaterally change the terms of tenancy under Civil Code §827 and then evict the tenant for violation of the added covenant unless the tenant has agreed in writing to the additional covenant.”

Regulation 9007(b) adds the quality test: an obligation or covenant of a tenancy means a material and substantial term, violation of which the landlord has not waived expressly or by conduct and is not estopped from asserting.

Three common drafting habits fail that test. A lease that incorporates a separate set of house rules “as may be amended from time to time” has not produced a covenant signed by both parties. A lease that reserves to the landlord a right to adopt new rules on notice has produced exactly the unilateral Section 827 change the regulation names. And a covenant added mid-tenancy by a change-of-terms notice, however properly served under Section 827, cannot support an eviction unless the tenant signed up to it. The generated lease therefore incorporates nothing by reference and reserves no unilateral rule-making power: everything the parties intend to be enforceable is written into the document and signed.

One covenant is specifically neutralised by ordinance. Regulation 9010 records that Municipal Code Section 4.44.040(c)(1) “expressly states that ‘Nothing in this section may be used as grounds to terminate a tenancy. Nothing in this section shall render smoking in Multi-Unit Common Areas a violation of law pursuant to any rental housing agreement,'” and then provides that no violation of that section shall be used as grounds to terminate a tenancy under Charter Section 1806.

Not in the way a standard clause tries to. Charter Sections 1806(a)(2) and 2304(a)(2) carry the same protection in identical words, and each opens by overriding the lease: “Notwithstanding any contrary provision in this Section, and notwithstanding any contrary provision in the rental housing agreement, a landlord shall not take any action to terminate a tenancy based on a tenant’s sublease of the unit if the following requirements are met.”

The three requirements are that the tenant continues to reside in the rental unit; that the sublease replaces a departed tenant under the rental agreement on a one-for-one basis; and that the landlord has unreasonably withheld the right to sublease following a written request by the tenant. And then the sentence that decides most disputes: “If the landlord fails to respond to the tenant in writing within fourteen (14) days of receipt of the tenant’s written request, the tenant’s request shall be deemed approved by the landlord.”

Refusing unreasonably is not merely ineffective; it is harassment. Municipal Code Section 4.56.020(f) lists “unreasonably withholding the right to sublease as set forth in City Charter Sections 1806(a)(2) and 2304(a)(2)” among the bad-faith acts that constitute tenant harassment, alongside baseless threats to evict and fraudulent owner-occupancy terminations. Section 4.56.040(d) prices a violation at actual damages or statutory damages of between one thousand dollars and twenty thousand dollars, whichever is greater, plus attorney fees.

What a lease can still do. Nothing in either Charter article requires a landlord to accept a subtenant who adds to the household rather than replacing a departing member, and the protection is limited to a tenant who remains in occupancy. Short-term letting of the whole unit is a separate matter: the Rent Control Board’s information sheet states that short-term rentals of an entire dwelling unit are not legal in Santa Monica and that home-sharing is lawful under Municipal Code Chapter 6.20 when its requirements are met. The builder therefore records an agreed written process, with the fourteen-day clock stated on its face, rather than a blanket prohibition that the Charter would override anyway.

Four categories of tenant, plus a series of structural bars that stop the ground being used at all. The owner-occupancy ground is the most heavily regulated eviction ground in Santa Monica, and Rent Control Board Regulation 9002 adds a layer of rules on top of Charter Section 1806(a)(8).

The protected tenants

Charter Section 1806(a)(8)(vii) provides that a landlord may not evict under the ground a tenant who has resided in the unit for at least five years and is either at least sixty-two years old or disabled, or who is certified terminally ill by their treating physician. “Disabled” is defined as receiving benefits from a federal, state or local government, or from a private entity, on account of a permanent disability preventing regular full-time employment. The protection yields only where the landlord or enumerated relative who will occupy the unit also meets the criteria. Charter Section 2304(a)(8)(vi) carries the same protection in the same words for a nonrentcontrolled unit.

Municipal Code Section 4.27.050 adds a fourth category with a different shape: it is a substantive defence to an eviction under Charter Sections 1806(a)(8), 1806(a)(9), 1806(a)(10), 2304(a)(8) or 2304(a)(9) that a child under eighteen or an educator resides in the unit, is a tenant or has a custodial or family relationship with a tenant, the tenant has resided there twelve months or more, and the effective date of the notice falls during the school year on the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District calendar. “Educator” is defined expansively — anyone working at a Santa Monica school as employee or independent contractor, expressly including classroom aides, administrative staff, counsellors, social workers, psychologists, school nurses, speech pathologists, custodians, security guards, cafeteria workers, community relations specialists, child welfare and attendance liaisons and learning support consultants.

The structural bars

• Only a natural person qualifies. Regulation 9002(a) allows the ground only to a natural person with at least a 50% ownership interest, and excludes any corporation, partnership, limited partnership, trust company as defined in Financial Code Section 107, or association.
• One unit per property, ever. Regulation 9002(b) permits recovery “for one unit only on a given property”.
• Not if a landlord or relative already lives there. Regulation 9002(b)(4) bars the ground where any qualifying landlord or enumerated relative already occupies a unit on the property.
• Not if a comparable unit is vacant. Regulation 9002(h) defines comparable as varying by no more than 15% in square footage with the same number of bedrooms, and directs that location and amenities be disregarded unless the landlord shows a documented medical need of the intended occupant.
• Not at the expense of a longer-standing tenant. Regulation 9002(j) bars recovery where a comparable unit is occupied by a tenant who moved onto the property more recently, “notwithstanding the existence of a rental agreement for a specific term between the landlord and the more-recent tenant.” A fixed-term lease signed last year does not shield that unit.
• Not from a post-1979 converted condominium without a Board permit. Charter Section 1806(a)(8)(vi) and Municipal Code Section 4.27.030 both bar the ground in a condominium or stock cooperative converted after 10 April 1979 unless the Board has issued a removal permit or declared a vested right.
• Not twice in four years. Regulation 9002(b)(1) and (2) bar a repeat against a tenant who re-occupies, or who prevailed at trial, for four years.

What the notice must say, and what happens if the move-in fails

Regulation 9002(e) requires the notice to contain the present tenant’s name, the monthly rent currently charged, and the name, relationship to the landlord and current home address of the person proposed to occupy; for a condominium or stock cooperative it must attach the removal permit, vested-rights declaration or a final tract map recorded on or before 10 April 1979; and it must be filed with the Rent Control Board within three days of service.

The occupant must intend in good faith to move in within sixty days after the tenant vacates and to occupy as a primary residence for at least two years, unless extenuating circumstances exist — figures the voters raised from thirty days and one year on 8 November 2022. Regulation 9002(d)(3) adds that a landlord holding other vacant units on the property, or in any other Santa Monica or greater Los Angeles rental property, from the date of the notice to quit until judgment, is not proceeding in good faith unless each vacancy is offered to the tenant being evicted.

If the move-in fails, Charter Section 1806(a)(8)(v) requires the landlord to offer the unit back to the tenant who vacated and to pay all reasonable expenses incurred in moving to and from the unit — which Regulation 9002(f)(ii) expands to include reasonable payments to moving companies for local moves, utility deposits, storage costs, fees to agencies or individuals who locate apartments, and security deposits, less any relocation payment already made. Regulation 9002(d)(4) gives the displaced tenant a right of first refusal if the unit falls vacant within two years, at the rent in effect when the notice was served, and Regulation 9002(g) requires any unit on the property falling vacant within one year to be offered to the displaced tenant.

An amount set by City Council resolution and updated every year — which is exactly why no lease should print a figure. Municipal Code Chapter 4.36, the Tenant Relocation Assistance Code, is the broadest of the Santa Monica ordinances in its reach: Section 4.36.010(h) defines a rental housing unit as a housing unit in the City “regardless of permit status”, expressly including a room in a single-family home, a hotel or motel, a rooming house or apartment, a single-family home, a mobile home or mobile home space, and a trailer or trailer space, and excluding only an innkeeper-guest occupancy. Relocation duties therefore do not turn on rent-control status at all.

When a permanent relocation fee is owed

Section 4.36.020(a) lists eight triggers. Three are the familiar no-fault grounds: an Ellis Act notice of intent to withdraw; a notice to recover possession under Charter Section 1806(a)(8), 1806(a)(9), 2304(a)(8) or 2304(a)(9); and an application for a removal permit under Charter Section 1803(t). Three are consequences of something else: relinquishment after at least six months of temporary relocation under Section 4.36.100; a Code Enforcement Manager’s order based on a determination that the tenant was compelled to vacate by a violation of Section 4.56.020, Section 4.27.010 or Civil Code Section 789.3; and a Building Officer’s order that the unit is not habitable and cannot be made habitable, or is not permitted for residential use. Two are triggered by a rent increase, and those two need separate treatment — see the next section.

The mechanism, and why it stays out of the lease

Section 4.36.040(a) provides simply that “the amount of the permanent relocation fee payable pursuant to the provisions of this Chapter shall be established by City Council resolution.” The City’s Housing Division publishes the resulting schedule and states that the amounts are updated annually on 1 July from the Consumer Price Index. Section 4.36.040(b) fixes how a tenant evicted from more than one unit on a property is treated — one fee, based on the combined bedroom count, with a bachelor or single unit counted as a one-bedroom.

Section 4.36.040(c) is the reason a figure in a signed lease is worse than useless: “Any tenant still in possession of a rental unit after the permanent relocation amounts have been updated pursuant to this Section, shall be entitled to the updated relocation amounts even if the landlord commenced the termination of the tenancy prior to the update.” A landlord who has already escrowed the old figure must escrow the difference within five working days. The tenant’s entitlement follows the published schedule, not the lease.

The City’s own paperwork demonstrates the drift. The mandatory form under Section 4.36.030(b) — the Statement of Rights and Obligations Pursuant to Santa Monica Municipal Code Section 4.36.030(b) — carries a revision stamp reading “Rev. 9/2025” and prints the fee schedule effective 1 July 2025, while the City’s own Tenant Relocation Fee page publishes a schedule effective 1 July 2026. Neither document is wrong on its own date; both would be wrong inside a lease signed today.

The notices, the escrow and the penalties

Section 4.36.030(a) requires any terminating notice served for a Section 4.36.020 reason to be accompanied, on the form provided by the City, by a written statement of the rights and obligations of tenants and landlords under the chapter, a written statement that the relocation fee has been placed in an escrow account or other account approved by the City, and a written statement that the landlord has complied with Section 4.36.050 — which requires a two hundred fifty dollar counselling fee to the City for each unit from which tenants are displaced, or an approved Displacement Plan in lieu at a review fee of one hundred dollars per unit.

Section 4.36.090 sets the price of getting it wrong: the landlord must allege and prove compliance in any action for possession; is liable to the tenant for the unpaid fee, a civil penalty of five hundred dollars and reasonable attorney fees and costs, with punitive damages available; is guilty of an infraction or a misdemeanour; is strictly liable for failing to comply with a relocation order; must reimburse the City’s full investigative costs on conviction; and must repay the City if it pays the benefits in the landlord’s place. Section 4.36.090(g) provides that “no landlord shall attempt to secure from a tenant any waiver of any provision of this Chapter.” Section 4.36.110(d) doubles an administrative citation issued where construction began without permits and the work forced a relocation.

Unresolved — and this page says so rather than picking a side. Two of the eight triggers in Municipal Code Section 4.36.020(a) are relocation payments set off by a lawful rent increase rather than by an eviction, and a recent appellate decision on a materially identical provision elsewhere puts their enforceability in question for part of the housing stock.

What the ordinance says. Section 4.36.020(a)(4) makes a relocation fee payable where the tenant elects to relinquish the tenancy within one hundred twenty days after service of a notice of rent increase exceeding what would have been permitted under Charter Section 1805 had the property not been granted an owner-occupancy exemption. Section 4.36.020(a)(5) makes one payable where the tenant relinquishes within one hundred twenty days after a notice of rent increase “that exceeds the lesser of (1) the Consumer Price Index – All Urban Consumers, plus 5%; or (2) 10%”, calculated on the highest legal monthly rent as at the date of the notice and disregarding any temporary, promotional or discounted rent. Section 4.36.030(b) requires the City’s statement of rights to accompany such a notice, and the City’s current form carries both triggers with a sample notice of relinquishment.

What the case says. In California Apartment Association v. City of Pasadena, No. B329883, the Second Appellate District, Division Seven, decided on 18 December 2025 that a provision of Pasadena’s voter-adopted Measure H requiring landlords to pay relocation assistance where a tenant moves following a lawful rent increase on a unit exempt from local rent control under Costa-Hawkins is pre-empted by the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, on the reasoning that conditioning a rent increase on a relocation payment frustrates the statute’s purpose. The same court upheld the rest of Measure H, including the charter-amendment route itself, the composition of the rental housing board, the rent caps, the just-cause protections, the rental registry, and relocation assistance for genuine no-fault evictions.

Why it reaches Santa Monica, and how far. Santa Monica’s Section 4.36.020(a)(5) has the same shape, and it can operate on units outside Charter Article XVIII — that is, on precisely the Costa-Hawkins-exempt stock the Pasadena holding addressed. But no court has ruled on the Santa Monica provision; the City has not repealed it; and the City’s mandatory notice form still prints it in full. That form’s revision stamp reads “Rev. 9/2025”, which is before the Pasadena decision, so the form has not yet had an occasion to be revised in the light of it.

What this page therefore does and does not say. It does not assert that a rent-increase-triggered relocation fee is enforceable against a unit exempt from local rent control. It does not assert that it is unenforceable. And it does not extend the reasoning to units that are not exempt, which the Pasadena court did not address. The three no-fault triggers — Ellis withdrawal, owner or relative occupancy, and removal-permit demolition — are untouched by the decision and are stated on this page and in the generated lease as current law. A landlord facing this question, and a tenant relying on one of the two rent-increase triggers, should take advice on the current state of the authority, including whether review has been sought or granted.

A buyout is legal, and heavily choreographed. Municipal Code Chapter 4.57, added by Ordinance No. 2478CCS in January 2015 and amended by Ordinance No. 2776CCS on 13 February 2024, applies by its own Section 4.57.020(a) to every controlled rental unit under Charter Section 1800 et seq. — the ordinance’s parenthetical sweeping in a room in a single-family home, a hotel or motel, a rooming house or apartment, a single-family home, and a mobile home or space — and to every non-rent-controlled rental unit under Charter Section 2300 et seq.

Before any offer. Section 4.57.020(b) requires the landlord to give each tenant in the unit a written disclosure on a form developed and authorised by the Rent Control Board for a controlled unit, or by the Housing Office for a non-rent-controlled unit, stating the right not to enter into a buyout agreement; the right to consult an attorney first; a thirty-day right to rescind after full execution; that the tenant may visit the Rent Board for information about other buyout agreements in the neighbourhood; that offering payments within six months after the tenant has said in writing that they do not wish to negotiate may constitute bad faith harassment under Section 4.56.020(f); that the tenant is entitled to at least the minimum buyout amount and what that amount is; and a space for each tenant to sign and date. The landlord keeps the signed disclosure for five years.

The agreement itself. Section 4.57.020(c) requires it to be in writing with a copy given to each tenant at execution; to be for at least the minimum buyout amount, which Section 4.57.010(c) defines as not less than the permanent relocation fee required by Section 4.36.040; and to carry three statements in bold, in at least fourteen-point type, close to the tenant’s signature line, beginning “You may cancel this agreement in writing at any time before the thirtieth day after all parties have signed this agreement.” An agreement that misses any of those requirements “shall not be effective and may be rescinded by the tenant at any time”.

Rescission and filing. Section 4.57.020(d) gives the tenant thirty days from full execution to rescind by hand delivery, email or mail. Section 4.57.020(e) requires the landlord to file the executed agreement no sooner than the thirty-first day and no later than the sixtieth day after execution, with the Rent Control Board for a controlled unit and with the City Clerk otherwise, and provides that a failure to file “may be asserted as an affirmative defense in an action brought by the landlord to recover possession of the unit.”

What the Board does with them. Rent Control Board Regulation 9011, as amended on 14 March 2024, requires the Board’s legal staff to keep filed agreements in a separate file, to treat all personally identifying information as confidential, and to publish the aggregate data — including the compensation paid and the neighbourhood — so that tenants can compare offers. Regulation 9011(a)(3) adds a detail worth noting: the landlord “may not negate this right by requiring the tenant, as a condition of any buyout, to give the landlord written notice of intent to vacate. Any such notice given by the tenant in connection with a buyout is void as a violation of this regulation.” Regulation 9011(c) records that the Board refers substantive violations to the City Attorney rather than enforcing them itself.

Fourteen categories of bad-faith conduct, with statutory damages that start at four figures. Charter Section 1821, adopted by the voters in 2002, requires the City Council “at all times” to maintain a Tenant Harassment Ordinance in force. Municipal Code Chapter 4.56 is that ordinance, last amended by Ordinance No. 2776CCS on 13 February 2024, and Section 4.56.010(h) gives it the same two-article reach as the buyout chapter.

Section 4.56.010(a) defines bad faith as “an intent to vex, annoy, harass, provoke or injure another person,” including the intent to induce a tenant to vacate through unlawful conduct. Section 4.56.020 then lists the conduct. Four entries bear directly on how a lease is drafted and performed:

• Subdivision (d) — abuse of the right of access. It is harassment to abuse the landlord’s right of access as specified in California Civil Code Section 1954, and the ordinance names the abuses: “entries for ‘inspections’ that are not related to necessary repairs or services; entries excessive in number; entries that improperly target certain tenants or are used to collect evidence against the occupant or otherwise beyond the scope of an otherwise lawful entry.”
• Subdivision (f) — influencing a tenant to vacate. Fraud, intimidation or coercion, with named examples including excessive rent increases, baseless threats to evict, threats to report immigration status, terminating a tenancy on a fraudulent basis of owner-occupancy, excessive and baseless entries, unreasonably withholding the right to sublease, and making buyout offers within six months of a written refusal to negotiate.
• Subdivision (l) — privacy. Interfering with the tenant’s right to privacy, “including, but not limited to, entering or photographing portions of a rental housing unit that are beyond the scope of a lawful entry or inspection.”
• Subdivision (m) — unlawful or excessive rent increases. An unlawful increase is one above the maximum allowable increase or maximum allowable rent permitted by the lease, a deed, a regulatory or settlement agreement, or by law — naming Charter Article XVIII, Civil Code Section 1947.12, Penal Code Section 396 and Municipal Code Section 4.32.160 et seq. An excessive increase is one substantially above market rates for comparable units, and bad faith is evidenced by timing: within six months of an unsuccessful just-cause eviction attempt, within six months of a tenant complaint about habitability, safety, harassment, discrimination or neighbour-to-neighbour harassment, or while price-gouging protections bar increases during a state of emergency.

The remaining entries cover interrupting or failing to provide housing services or violating Section 4.27.010(a); failing to perform required repairs; failing to exercise due diligence in completing repairs; abusive words likely to provoke an immediate violent reaction; threats of physical harm; discrimination on any of the listed grounds including immigration status, source of income, housing status, gender identity and gender expression; taking action to terminate on facts the landlord has no reasonable cause to believe true or on an untenable legal theory; interfering with quiet use and enjoyment; refusing to accept or acknowledge a lawful rent payment; and retaliating for reporting a violation or exercising a right under any housing, health, safety, fair housing or other tenant protection law.

The remedies. Section 4.56.040 makes a violation a misdemeanour; allows any person, including the City, to sue on the preponderance of the evidence; allows a violation to be asserted as an affirmative defence in an unlawful detainer; and fixes liability at actual damages or statutory damages of between one thousand dollars and twenty thousand dollars, whichever is greater, plus attorney fees and costs, with an additional civil penalty of up to five thousand dollars for each offence committed against a person who is disabled or aged sixty-five or over, and punitive damages available on clear and convincing evidence. Section 4.56.030 preserves lawful evictions and excepts transient occupancies under Civil Code Section 1940(b).

Municipal Code Chapter 4.27 answers both, and the second answer is the one landlords of newer buildings need.

Self-help. Section 4.27.010(a) applies to any residential rental unit in the City and forbids the landlord to interrupt or terminate any utility service by any means whatsoever — naming the cutting of wires, the removal of fuses, the switching of breakers and the non-payment of utility bills; to prevent the tenant from gaining reasonable access by changing the locks, using a bootlock or any similar method or device; to remove doors or windows without replacing them within a reasonable time; or to remove personal property or furnishings without the tenant’s prior written consent, except under the Civil Code Section 1980 abandoned-property procedure. Section 4.27.010(b) adds, for controlled units, that no action to recover possession — “including, but not limited to, the service or delivery of written notices or demands and the communication of oral notices or demands” — may be taken except as Charter Section 1806 authorises.

The excessive-increase defence. Section 4.27.090, added by Ordinance No. 2776CCS on 13 February 2024, is the closest thing Santa Monica has to a rent limit on units outside Article XVIII. It makes it an affirmative defence to an unlawful detainer for non-payment of rent on a unit that is not a controlled rental unit that the landlord imposed an excessive rent increase in bad faith with the intent to influence the tenant to vacate through fraud, intimidation, or coercion in circumvention of any law requiring the landlord to have just cause to evict. An excessive increase is one raising the rent substantially above market rates for comparable units within Santa Monica, and bad faith is evidenced by an increase within six months of an unsuccessful just-cause eviction, within six months of a tenant complaint, or while Penal Code Section 396 or Municipal Code Section 4.32.161 bar increases during a declared emergency.

The city price-gouging law it points at. Municipal Code Section 4.32.161 makes it unlawful, on a declaration of emergency by City, State or federal officials and for thirty days after it is declared terminated, to sell any consumer product or service for more than 10% above the price regularly and customarily charged the day before the declaration, unless the seller proves the increase was unavoidable and directly attributable to added supplier or labour costs. Section 4.32.162 makes a violation a misdemeanour, treats each day as a separate offence, and allows the City Attorney or any citizen to sue for legal and equitable relief including actual and punitive damages and attorney fees.

One clause outright, and several practices most screening policies would not think twice about. Municipal Code Chapter 4.28, last amended by Ordinance No. 2776CCS on 13 February 2024, protects classes that state law does not always reach: disability, age, source of income, housing status, parenthood, pregnancy, and the potential or actual occupancy of a minor child.

The clause it voids. Section 4.28.030(d) makes it unlawful to “include in any rental agreement or lease for a housing accommodation a clause providing that as a condition of continued occupancy, the tenants shall remain childless or shall not bear children or otherwise not maintain a household with a person or persons of a certain age.” Section 4.28.030(e) and (f) then make it unlawful to threaten or commence eviction because the number of occupants increased through the tenant’s marriage, or through the birth, adoption or change of legal custody of a minor child, where the occupancy is otherwise lawful.

The practices it reaches. Section 4.28.030(g) requires reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices or services where necessary to give a person with a disability equal opportunity to use and enjoy the dwelling. Section 4.28.030(h) requires the landlord to allow reasonable modifications at the tenant’s expense, subject to assurances of professional and code-compliant work and, where reasonable, a condition of restoring the interior to its preexisting condition, ordinary wear and tear excepted. Section 4.28.030(i) forbids refusing rent in the form of rental assistance from any federal, state, local or non-profit-administered programme including Section 8, and treats a failure or unreasonable delay in completing and returning the necessary paperwork, or refusing repairs required after a Housing Quality Standards inspection, as a refusal unless economically infeasible.

The rule that changes screening. Section 4.28.030(l) defines “housing status” to include currently or formerly experiencing homelessness, currently or formerly living in transitional, temporary or shelter housing, or lacking a residential rental housing history — and then provides that where an applicant lacks a rental history or landlord references, “the landlord must offer the option, at the applicant’s discretion, of providing lawful verifiable alternative evidence that the applicant will be a reliable tenant, including, but not limited to, personal references,” must allow a reasonable period to supply it, and must consider it in deciding whether to offer the accommodation. A screening policy that treats “no rental history” as an automatic decline is unlawful in Santa Monica.

What it does not do. Section 4.28.040 preserves senior housing, nursing, convalescent and retirement homes; does not waive any federal, state or local occupancy or density law; and does not force a landlord to rent to a household exceeding the reasonable living space available — though the landlord bears the burden of proving the reasonableness of the occupancy standard. Section 4.28.050 permits the same financial requirements of all prospective tenants, but forbids discrimination in the amount or manner of payment on the basis of age, parenthood, pregnancy or the occupancy of a minor child. Section 4.28.060(c) fixes liability at actual damages or statutory damages of between one thousand dollars and ten thousand dollars, whichever is greater, plus attorney fees.

No — and the smoking status of an apartment is decided by ordinance rather than by the lease. Municipal Code Section 4.44.040, as last amended by Ordinance No. 2410CCS adopted 23 October 2012, sets up a designation regime for multi-unit residential properties, including both apartments and condominiums.

Every unit is designated “Smoking” or “Non-smoking” through the procedure in Section 4.44.040(c)(1). Two rules then take the question out of the landlord’s hands going forward. Section 4.44.040(c)(3): “Every unit that becomes vacant after the effective date of the ordinance codified in this Section shall thereafter be designated ‘Non-smoking’ regardless of its prior designation.” Section 4.44.040(c)(4): every unit in a new multi-unit property permitted after that date is designated “Non-smoking”. The Rent Control Board’s own information sheet states the resulting line as tenants who moved in since 22 November 2012. Section 4.44.040(c)(5) treats a property where smoking is already banned in all units as designated non-smoking without the procedure, and Section 4.44.040(c)(7) requires a non-smoking condominium designation to be recorded on the unit’s title.

The disclosure duty. Section 4.44.040(c)(6) requires the owner to give all new or prospective occupants a copy of the current list of every unit’s smoking designation and the City-prepared information sheet, which must state the requirements of the law — expressly including “the fact that a tenant cannot be evicted for violating this Chapter” — contact information for questions, and information about smoking cessation resources. Section 4.44.040(c)(5) requires the owner to keep the designation list current.

The remedy, and the bar. Section 4.44.040(a) gives any person a civil action, including in small claims court, against a person who smokes in a multi-unit common area or in a unit designated “Non-smoking”, for damages of not less than one hundred dollars, rising to two hundred dollars for a second violation within a year and five hundred dollars for the third and later. Section 4.44.040(b) requires the landlord or homeowners’ association to post prominent signs in each common area. Section 4.44.040(d)(2) requires a good-faith informal attempt and thirty days’ written notice before suit. And Section 4.44.040(d)(1) states the bar this page opened with: “Nothing in this Section may be used as grounds to terminate a tenancy. Nothing in this Section shall render smoking in multi-unit common areas or in a designated ‘Non-smoking’ unit a violation of law pursuant to any rental housing agreement.” Rent Control Board Regulation 9010(d) applies the same conclusion to Charter Section 1806.

The practical effect for a lease is that California Civil Code Section 1947.5, which requires a landlord who limits smoking to specify the prohibited areas in the lease, operates in Santa Monica on top of a designation the ordinance has usually already made — and that a breach of the smoking clause is a damages question, never a possession question.

Twenty-four hours, from state law — but Santa Monica attaches a consequence California does not. California Civil Code Section 1954 supplies the rule: written notice of intent to enter stating the date, approximate time and purpose, with twenty-four hours presumed reasonable in the absence of evidence to the contrary, six days presumed reasonable where the notice is mailed, and entry during normal business hours except in an emergency, on abandonment or surrender, or with the tenant’s consent. Santa Monica adds no different period and no additional formality.

What it adds is exposure. Municipal Code Section 4.56.020(d) makes it tenant harassment to abuse that right in bad faith, and names four abuses by way of example rather than leaving the question at large. Section 4.56.020(l) separately reaches photographing parts of the unit beyond the scope of a lawful entry. And Charter Sections 1806(a)(6) and 2304(a)(6) run the other way, making a tenant’s continued refusal of reasonable access, after written notice, a ground for recovering possession — for necessary repairs or improvements required by law, or to show the unit to a prospective purchaser or mortgagee.

Repairs, habitability and the local consequence. California Civil Code Section 1941.1 supplies the habitability list, and from 1 January 2026 that list includes a working stove and refrigerator for any lease entered into, amended or extended on or after that date. Civil Code Section 1942 supplies repair-and-deduct at up to one month’s rent, twice in twelve months. Civil Code Section 1671 governs late charges, which are enforceable only as liquidated damages reasonably estimating actual loss — there is no Santa Monica late-fee cap and no city grace period. The Santa Monica difference is what a habitability failure does to the rent: Charter Section 1805(e) lets the Board make an individual downward adjustment for a failure to provide adequate housing services or to comply substantially with housing, health and safety codes, and Charter Section 1805(d)(14) keeps that decrease in place until the Board finds the defect corrected. Charter Section 1805(h)(2) separately bars any increase while a citation is uncorrected.

For an older tenancy, say so in writing at the outset or lose the right to catch up. Rent Control Board Regulation 3303 applies to tenancies that commenced before 1 January 1999, and it is short and unforgiving. A landlord who rents a unit at less than the current maximum allowable rent “shall, at the time of the hiring of the unit, notify the incoming tenant(s) in writing of the current maximum allowable rent level,” and the notice “shall be acknowledged by the incoming tenant(s) in writing.”

Failing to do so “shall preclude the landlord from increasing the rent on the incoming tenant”, and lack of proper notice is a defence to any civil proceeding for possession for non-payment, or for collection of rent above the rate established at the commencement of the tenancy. The regulation carves out general adjustments and individual increases the Board authorises later, so the bar is on catching up to the maximum, not on the ordinary annual increase. For tenancies beginning on or after 1 January 1999 the question is answered instead by Regulation 3301, under which the initial rent actually paid becomes the base rent.

Not one-sidedly, and no clause of any kind can reach the city’s tenant-side awards. Santa Monica produces a two-layer answer that no other jurisdiction in this series has.

Layer one is state reciprocity. California Civil Code Section 1717 converts any one-sided contractual attorney-fee clause into one running to whichever party prevails, and provides that a waiver of that reciprocity is void. A landlord-always-wins clause is therefore not merely unenforceable as drafted — it is read against its author and becomes available to the tenant. That is why the builder offers a prevailing-party clause and nothing else.

Layer two is a city overlay with a prescribed notice. Municipal Code Section 4.27.070, added by Ordinance No. 2716CCS on 13 September 2022, provides that no landlord shall serve notice of an amendment to a lease’s attorney-fee provision without including a separate notice containing this statement:

“The attorney’s fees provisions in tenant protection laws such as the City’s Tenant Harassment Code and its Housing Anti-Discrimination Code that allow a prevailing tenant to pursue his or her own attorneys fees from the landlord (fee shifting) cannot be waived by a tenant or changed by a landlord’s amendments to a lease. Any such lease amendments or provisions are null and void with respect to the fee-shifting in tenant protection laws.”

Serving the amendment without that notice is enforceable as a misdemeanour under Government Code Section 8665 and Municipal Code Section 2.16.100, or by administrative citation of up to one thousand dollars.

And the statutory awards sit outside the lease entirely. Charter Section 1806(f) and Charter Section 2308 award costs and reasonable attorney fees to the prevailing party in a wrongful-eviction action. Charter Section 1809(a) awards the tenant reasonable attorney fees and costs on an excess-rent claim, with treble damages on wilfulness, oppression, fraud or malice. Municipal Code Sections 4.28.060(c), 4.36.090(b), 4.56.040(d) and 4.57.030(c) each add attorney fees to their own statutory damages. And Municipal Code Section 4.58.030(C) says the quiet part out loud: “A lease provision that limits a prevailing tenant from obtaining attorneys’ fees shall not be enforceable against a tenant’s claim for attorneys’ fees that arises under this subsection.”

No, and the ban is barely a year old. Municipal Code Chapter 4.58, added by Ordinance No. 2817CCS on 24 June 2025, applies to the same units as the harassment and buyout chapters — controlled rental units under Charter Section 1800 et seq., with the parenthetical sweeping in rooms in single-family homes, hotels and motels, rooming houses, single-family homes and mobile homes, and every rental unit under Charter Section 2300 et seq.

What is prohibited. Section 4.58.020(A) makes it unlawful to sell, license or otherwise provide to any landlord of any rental housing unit in the City any algorithmic device that sets, recommends or advises on rental rates, rates for non-rent fees, or occupancy levels that may be achieved. Section 4.58.020(B) makes it unlawful for a landlord to use one when setting rents or occupancy levels, and provides that “each separate month that a landlord charges rent at an amount set in violation of this subsection, and each separate residential rental housing unit for which the landlord used the algorithmic device, shall constitute a separate and distinct violation.”

What an “algorithmic device” is. Section 4.58.010 defines it as software or a product that uses one or more algorithms to perform calculations of nonpublic competitor data concerning local or statewide rental prices or occupancy levels, to advise or recommend a rent to charge or whether to leave a unit vacant. Nonpublic competitor data means information not available to the general public about actual rental rates, rate changes, supply levels, occupancy levels, or lease start and end dates — whether attributable to a specific competitor or anonymised, and whether or not derived from another market participant. Two things are carved out: software generating aggregated reports on existing rents or occupancy that does not recommend future prices or occupancy, and software used to set rents or income limits under a local, state or federal affordable housing programme.

The remedies. Section 4.58.030 allows any aggrieved person, including the City, to sue on the preponderance of the evidence; makes a violation an affirmative defence in an unlawful detainer against a tenant whose rent was set that way after the ordinance took effect; allows injunctive relief; and fixes liability at actual damages or statutory damages of one thousand dollars per violation, whichever is greater, plus attorney fees.

The state Act is a floor under what the city does not reach, not a ceiling on what it does. California’s Tenant Protection Act — Civil Code Sections 1947.12 for rent and 1946.2 for just cause, both currently repealed as of 1 January 2030 — interacts with Santa Monica in three distinct ways depending on the unit.

• A controlled rental unit. Civil Code Section 1947.12(j)(1) preserves a more protective local rent limit, and Santa Monica’s is more protective by a wide margin: the general adjustment is capped at 3% by Charter Section 1805(a)(3) against the state formula of 5% plus the cost of living or 10%, whichever is lower. Just cause comes from Charter Section 1806, which has no twelve-month or twenty-four-month occupancy threshold at all — a Santa Monica controlled tenant is protected from day one, where a state-law tenant is not protected until the occupancy threshold is met.
• A unit outside Article XVIII but inside Article XXIII. Just cause comes from Charter Section 2304, again with no occupancy threshold. The rent limit, if any, is the state one — and a building constructed after 10 April 1979 is outside the local ceiling but only outside the state cap until it is more than fifteen years old, because Civil Code Section 1947.12 exempts housing issued a certificate of occupancy within the previous fifteen years on a rolling basis. A 2015 Santa Monica apartment building is therefore locally uncontrolled, state-exempt until 2030, and fully just-cause protected the entire time.
• A single-family home or a separately alienable condominium. This is where the stakes are highest, because Charter Section 2302(a) carves single-family homes out of Article XXIII. The state just-cause rule in Civil Code Section 1946.2 is the only just-cause rule the tenancy has — and the owner can escape even that if the lease carries the exemption statement Civil Code Section 1946.2(e)(8) prescribes verbatim, and the owner is not a real estate investment trust, a corporation, or a limited liability company with a corporate member. No statement, no exemption. With the statement, the tenancy may have no just-cause protection at all, from either the City or the State. That is a real result and a Santa Monica lease should record which side of it the parties are on.

Two related state duties that survive everywhere in Santa Monica. Civil Code Section 1962 requires the lease to name the manager and the owner or the owner’s agent for service, with a telephone number and a usual street address, and to deliver an executed copy within fifteen days. Civil Code Section 1950.5(h) requires the itemized deposit accounting, the balance and the Section 1950.5(g) photographs within twenty-one calendar days of the tenant vacating. Neither is displaced by anything in the Charter or the Municipal Code.

All of them — the Santa Monica layer adds duties, it does not subtract any. The builder carries the statewide set, and the generated lease reproduces the prescribed language where the statute prescribes it.

• Megan’s Law database notice — Civil Code Section 2079.10a, the statutory paragraph in at least eight-point type, in every residential lease.
• Bed bug information notice — Civil Code Section 1954.603, in at least ten-point type, before creating a new tenancy.
• Mold — Health and Safety Code Section 26147 on actual knowledge, and Section 26148’s duty to give every prospective tenant the Department of Public Health booklet before signing.
• Military ordnance proximity — Civil Code Section 1940.7, on actual knowledge of a former ordnance location within one mile.
• Demolition permit — Civil Code Section 1940.6. In Santa Monica this sits alongside Charter Section 1803(t), which requires a Rent Control Board removal permit before a controlled unit may be demolished at all, on a finding that the landlord cannot make a fair return by retaining it. Regulation 9005 bars an eviction on the demolition ground until the permit or a vested-rights determination is secured and requires a copy of the Board’s decision to accompany the notice.
• Flood hazard — Government Code Section 8589.45, for leases entered into on or after 1 July 2018, on actual knowledge.
• Methamphetamine contamination order — Health and Safety Code Section 25400.28, with the tenant’s right to void the rental agreement if the order is not attached.
• Shared gas or electric meter — Civil Code Section 1940.9. In a controlled Santa Monica unit this collides with Regulation 3301(a)(ii): any resulting charge is rent and must be a fixed dollar amount stated at commencement.
• Federal lead-based paint — 42 U.S.C. Section 4852d and 24 C.F.R. Part 35, for target housing built before 1978. Because most of Santa Monica’s controlled stock predates 10 April 1979, this reaches the great majority of rent-controlled units in the city.
• Rent cap and just cause notice — Civil Code Sections 1946.2(f) and 1947.12, and the exemption statement where the exemption is claimed.
• Smoking policy — Civil Code Section 1947.5 requires a landlord who limits smoking to specify the prohibited areas in the lease, on top of the Santa Monica designation regime.

What is not required. Neither California nor Santa Monica requires an asbestos disclosure in a residential lease — Health and Safety Code Section 25915 directs its notice to the owner’s own employees working in a pre-1979 building, not to tenants. Nor is there a radon disclosure, a Proposition 65 lease disclosure, a carbon monoxide disclosure, a sinkhole disclosure or a hurricane disclosure. The Real Estate Transfer Disclosure Statement governs sales, not leases. The builder offers an asbestos block only as a clearly labelled voluntary election, so that nobody mistakes it for a statutory requirement.

Four separate non-waiver rules operate here, and between them they void more of a standard template than in any other California city. Charter Section 1807: any provision, oral or written, in or pertaining to a rental housing agreement whereby any provision of Article XVIII for the benefit of the tenant is waived “shall be deemed to be against public policy and shall be void.” Charter Section 2306: any provision purporting to waive or modify any provision of Article XXIII is contrary to public policy and void. Municipal Code Section 6.22.120: any waiver of a Chapter 6.22 right given before the right may be exercised is void. Municipal Code Section 4.36.090(g): no landlord shall attempt to secure any waiver of the relocation code. California Civil Code Section 1953 adds the state list, including the tenant’s rights under Sections 1950.5 and 1954.

What a void clause costs beyond being void. A wrongful eviction under Charter Section 1806(f) or Section 2308 exposes the landlord to actual and punitive damages including emotional distress, with costs and fees to the prevailing party. Excess rent under Charter Section 1809(a) runs to the overcharge plus fees, trebled on wilfulness, oppression, fraud or malice, with no requirement to exhaust the administrative remedy first — or, at the tenant’s election, an administrative complaint under Section 1809(b) carrying the overcharge plus up to five hundred dollars, deductible from future rent, with the withholding order surviving a sale of the property. Charter Section 1810 makes any violation of Article XVIII a misdemeanour.

The deepest pages on this query are careful about rent control and silent about the lease. Reading the fourteen pages that currently rank, the pattern is consistent: the rent-control mechanics are covered, sometimes well, and the body of law that decides what a Santa Monica lease may actually say is missing entirely. These are the corrections that matter most.

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