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City Council Rejects Rent Stabilization Ordinance
Outlook Newspapers
March 14, 2025
The South Pasadena City Council declined consideration of an ordinance that would have set local limits on rent increases last week.
Instead, councilmembers supported a motion made by Mayor Janet Braun at their meeting Wednesday, Feb. 19, directing city staff to look into the creation of a committee or board to review allegations of excessive rent increases, unlawful evictions, intentional vacancies to drive up prices and other alleged abusive or untoward behavior by landlords, or tenants. Council members also asked the city’s Housing Department to look for ways to promote education on renter’s rights and other ways to support people who may be struggling to stay in their homes.
Those directions came in light of a study presented at the meeting by real estate consultants HR&A Advisors regarding the state of South Pasadena’s rental market and the potential creation of a rent stabilization program.
About 53% of South Pasadena’s residents are renters. The study found that roughly one fifth of them spend between 30% to 49% of total earnings on housing. As many as 15% of renters pay more than half of their income on rent.
Researchers found that there had been rapid increases in rents since 2016, and the number of households in the city with an annual income of $75,000 or less had declined by about 1,750 since 2012. That suggests that residents are moving out of South Pasadena because they can no longer afford to live there, said Judith Taylor, partner at HR&A.
Many more are struggling to stay in the communities they call home, renter and South Pasadena Tenant’s Union volunteer Casey Dukes said during the meeting. She read testimonials from others who say they’ve been fighting to keep up with rising housing costs and other expenses.
“Another renter said: ‘I don’t know If I’ll be able to afford another increase and the anticipation is stressful,’” Dukes recited. “‘My income has not gone up to match rent hikes, and I have had to work longer hours.’”
A state law capping rent increases to 5% plus the rise in the cost of living, which currently comes out to a total rent hike of 8.9% in South Pasadena, is set to expire in 2030. Tenants in support of a rent stabilization program — which could have potentially set an even lower increase limit — made up about half of the people who offered public comments on the matter in council chambers last week.
Others identified themselves as local independent property owners who said they want to provide well-maintained homes people can afford. But they listed rising insurance costs, a dramatic increase in trash pickup fees and other expenses as making it harder for them to justify keeping their properties.
“Those are the kinds of things that will force small landlords, eventually, to give up their properties, and we know what that will lead to,” resident Michael Thurman said. “Because they won’t be bought by other South Pasadena people. They won’t be bought by people whose business plans don’t provide for a quality way of life.”
Council members expressed concern over reports and comments from the community suggesting people are being pushed out of South Pasadena. But they were also wary of driving away what they described as “mom and pop” property owners with stricter rent increase caps, potentially inviting corporate developers to own a larger portion of housing in the city.
“The marginal benefit of a rent stabilization cap that is better than the state’s is dramatically outweighed by the risks that are created of displacement,” Councilman Jon Primuth said. “…You change the economics of mom and pop property ownership, you’re going to get displacement. You’re going to get corporate, profit-driven economics buying the property.”
The report presented last week noted that 71% of the 3,450 rental units that could have potentially been subject to rent stabilization were located in buildings with less than ten rental units. Council members and public comments indicated many of these belong to families that live in South Pasadena.
However, it’s difficult to determine how many of them might be owned by any single entity due to the convoluted nature of rental property holdings. In addition, the city does not have a tally of how many qualify as affordable housing versus market-rate units, acting Community Development Director Alison Becker said.
A proposal to create a local rental registry that would have sought to catalog every rental unit in the city, track their condition and identify who was the owner for any given unit, as well as increases or decreases in rent and more, was rejected by the previous city council last March. The registry was meant to be a key tool in implementing a rent stabilization ordinance and other programs designed to protect renters under the city’s housing element.
“The challenge is that we don’t have the data,” Mayor Pro Tem Sheila Rossi said.
Other council members did not express interest in reconsidering a rental registry. They were also unsure if the city’s Housing Division had the resources to take on the implementation of a rent stabilization ordinance.
Council members voted 4-0 in support of Braun’s measure directing city staff to help plan the creation of a formal body to weigh in on potential cases of misconduct by landlords or tenants, and research ways to support struggling renters. Councilman Omari Ferguson was absent from the discussion.