---
title: "Courts strike down LA and Pasadena rules that made landlords pay tenants over rent hikes"
description: "For a few years, Los Angeles and Pasadena required landlords to help pay tenants' moving costs when a steep rent increase effectively forced them out. California appellate courts have now struck those rules down, finding they collided with a state law that lets owners set rents freely on many properties, and leaving renters without that cushion."
category: "Los Angeles"
category_url: https://herald.la/category/los-angeles
author: "Lucía Fuentes"
published: 2026-07-17T13:53:00.000Z
updated: 2026-07-17T13:53:00.000Z
canonical: https://herald.la/article/courts-strike-down-la-and-pasadena-rules-that-made-landlords-pay-tenants-over-re
tags: ["los angeles", "pasadena", "housing", "tenants", "rent"]
---
# Courts strike down LA and Pasadena rules that made landlords pay tenants over rent hikes

For a few years, Los Angeles and Pasadena required landlords to help pay tenants' moving costs when a steep rent increase effectively forced them out. California appellate courts have now struck those rules down, finding they collided with a state law that lets owners set rents freely on many properties, and leaving renters without that cushion.

A tool that Los Angeles and Pasadena had used to soften the blow of soaring rents is gone, knocked out by the courts.

## What the rules did

Both cities had adopted ordinances requiring landlords to pay relocation assistance to tenants who moved out after a large rent increase, on the theory that a big enough hike is, in practice, a forced eviction. The rules applied to housing that sits outside local rent control, such as single-family homes, condominiums and newer apartments, where owners can otherwise raise rents to whatever the market will bear. When a tenant left after an increase above a set threshold, the landlord owed a payment meant to cover the cost of finding somewhere new, [a sum that in Pasadena scaled with the unit's size and the length of the tenancy](https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/los-angeles-pasadena-landlord-tenant-relocation-payment-rent-increase-struck-down-courts).

## Why the courts said no

The California Court of Appeal ruled that the ordinances ran afoul of the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, a state law that guarantees landlords the right to set rents freely on those exempt units. In the [Pasadena case brought by the California Apartment Association](https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/2025/b329883.html), the court found that requiring a relocation payment amounted to penalizing owners for exercising a right the state had granted them. The California Supreme Court declined to take up the Pasadena case, making the decision binding, and a separate ruling then applied the same reasoning to Los Angeles, striking down its version.

## Both sides

The landlord group that sued cast the decisions as a vindication of state law over local overreach, arguing that cities cannot use fees to claw back a right the Legislature deliberately protected. Tenant advocates saw it very differently, describing rent-triggered relocation aid as a crucial defense against displacement in one of the country's most expensive rental markets, and warning that its loss will fall hardest on lower-income renters who cannot absorb both a rent spike and moving costs at once. They framed the biggest increases as "constructive evictions" in all but name.

## What tenants still have

The rulings did not wipe out every protection. Cities still require relocation payments for genuine no-fault evictions, when a landlord removes a tenant to move in a family member, to do major renovations, or to leave the rental business under the state's Ellis Act. Core rent-control caps and just-cause eviction rules in both cities also remain in place. What is gone is the specific mechanism that treated a large rent increase itself as the trigger for a payout, leaving a gap that housing advocates say the state, or the cities in some other legally durable form, will now be under pressure to fill.

## Sources

- [SoCal cities made landlords pay when rent hikes pushed out tenants. Then courts stepped in](https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/los-angeles-pasadena-landlord-tenant-relocation-payment-rent-increase-struck-down-courts)
- [California Apartment Association v. City of Pasadena](https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/2025/b329883.html)