News Alert: S.B. 522 Held – Rent Caps and Eviction Limits on New Construction Averted

News Alert: S.B. 522 Held – Rent Caps and Eviction Limits on New Construction Averted

Plus, Other Legislative Updates: A.B. 246 and A.B. 628 to the Governor’s Desk

Thank you to all our members who called and wrote to our state legislators about this harmful proposed bill! YOU DID IT!

Senate Bill 522 (Sen. Aisha Wahab) would have forced strict rent control and just-cause eviction rules on new construction built to replace housing destroyed or damaged following a natural disaster. While the bill was passed by the Senate, the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles’ advocacy efforts helped to hold the bill on the State Assembly floor. S.B. 522 will now become what is known as a 2-Year Bill and may or may not come back for review next year or be amended for next year’s legislative session. For now, however, S.B. 522 is “dead.”

Two other bills that have been strongly opposed by the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles and affiliated coalition groups have passed through the second legislative house and will, unfortunately, now go to the Governor’s desk for consideration. These two bills are:

• Assembly Bill 246 (Bryan) – This bill would create the Social Security Tenant Protection Act of 2025 allowing a tenant to assert a Social Security hardship as an affirmative defense in an unlawful detainer (a “Social Security hardship” is a loss of income due to an interruption in the payment of Social Security benefits due to the action or inaction of the federal government).
  
  
• Assembly Bill 628 (McKinnor) - This bill will require landlords to provide a stove and refrigerator that are maintained in good working order and are capable of safely generating heat for cooking purposes and capable of safely storing food for leases entered into, amended, or extended on or after January 1, 2026. The bill would also require a landlord to repair or replace a stove or refrigerator that is subject to recall by the manufacturer or a public entity within 30 days of receiving notice that the stove or refrigerator is subject to recall. A landlord and tenant may mutually agree to allow a tenant to provide own refrigerator (only), however, a tenant who provides a refrigerator will have the right, upon 30-days’ notice to a landlord, to request that a landlord furnish a refrigerator.

You Can Help Make a Change!

Are you as tired as we are about these seemingly constant attacks against our livelihoods and property rights? We can change our current situation. Please help us to elect candidates for public office who seek balance in regulations and who are sympathetic to the needs of the state’s rental housing providers. Please support the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles’ Political Action Committee.

Make your check payable to “AAGLA PAC” or contribute online as follows:

Mail Your Check Payable to “AAGLA PAC” to:
AAGLA PAC
c/o Reed & Davidson
Attn. Cary Davidson, Esq., Treasurer
515 South Figueroa Street, Suite 1110
Los Angeles, California 90071-3301
 
Contribute Online: www.AAGLA.org/CandidatesPAC