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Santa Monica council and rent board narrow proposed tenant-protection charter amendment after legal warnings
Summary
City staff and counsel warned that broad changes to who may remain in a unit could invite litigation; the rent control board and city council agreed to pull back the two most novel provisions and asked staff to return with a narrower measure focused on single-unit parity and owner move-in rules.
The Santa Monica City Council and Rent Control Board, meeting together in a special joint session, agreed to narrow a proposed charter amendment after staff and city counsel warned that parts of the measure are legally untested and could invite litigation.
City staff framed the meeting as a procedural step driven by election timelines: "we have till August 7 to make any final determinations related to what we do wanna put before the voters," a staff presentation said. The set of proposals — referred to as Resolution 3 — would have broadened who may remain in a rental unit after the original tenant vacates and would have removed the current death-or-incapacity trigger that limits protections for remaining occupants.
City counsel and rent-control staff told the bodies they were unaware of any precedent on that point. As the attorney put it, "based on our research, we have not seen any case law on this point," and cautioned that adopting novel charter language could invite legal challenges that are harder to remedy because charter amendments require future elections to change.
After extended questions from commissioners and council members about scope and precedent, the rent control board moved to pull back the two contentious elements in Resolution 3 (the expanded class of covered occupants and the removal of the death/incapacity trigger) and to hear City Council feedback before making a final recommendation. The motion to seek council input passed on a roll-call vote.
The City Council then directed staff to return with a narrower resolution that would contain only the items to extend just-cause protections to single-unit dwellings and to update owner move-in regulations to match existing rent-control rules. Councilmember Hall moved the direction and the council approved it; staff said the formal rescission of the prior motion would need to be placed on a future agenda but that staff received direction to draft the narrowed measure.
Public commenters had earlier objected to the timing: resident Matthew Millen said, "How is the public supposed to advise you whether they support or oppose the proposed language if the language hasn't been submitted to the public yet?" The meeting ended with the two bodies asking for more time and clearer language to reduce legal exposure before placing changes before voters.
