This April, several new tenant protections went into effect for renters in Concord, California, after a months-long opposition campaign delayed their implementation. Formally passed through “Ordinance 20-7,” the city’s new tenant protection package includes three key eviction diversion policies aimed at fighting against tenant displacement, including rent stabilization protections, “just cause” eviction standards, and relocation assistance for tenants under certain circumstances. The ordinance also expands the city’s former rental registry, requiring landlords and property owners to register their properties with the city annually. With the passage of the law, the city joins other California cities like Antioch, Bell Gardens, Pasadena, and Richmond that have enacted similar protections for tenants since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
The new ordinance grants several protections to renter households. For one thing, ordinance caps annual rental increases at 3% or 60% of the yearly change in cost of living (known as the Consumer Price Index), whichever amount is less. Concord’s new rent cap places a more stringent cap on rental increases than does “Assembly Bill 1482,” a state law enacted in 2019 that only caps rental increases at 5% plus the change in cost of living, or 10%, whichever amount is less). However, there are exemptions to Concord’s new law as mandated through state law. One component of the city’s rent stabilization ordinance is that it does not apply to single-family rental homes but only multi-family units that were built before February 1, 1995. Certain properties in California are exempted from coverage under rent control measures due to the state’s “Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act” of 1995, which prohibits rent control on single-family units, condominiums, and any new construction built after the February 1 date.
Under the new ordinance, moreover, the city allows for “vacancy decontrol,” meaning that a landlord can increase rents for tenants by an unregulated amount between leases, with the rent stabilization measures embedded in the law only applying once a tenant has assumed occupancy. Landlords and property owners can also request higher rental increases as part of a “fair return on investment” process, which will be overseen by a Hearing Officer and will need to be initiated by petition through the city government, as mandated by Concord’s City Council.
Rent stabilization protections are a critical tool for safeguarding against rental costs that rise at both unregulated and unchecked rates. When passed, rent stabilization laws place limits on the speed and amount that rents are allowed to increase by, giving tenants a sense of stability in knowing when, and by how much, their rents will increase. Rising rents have impacted Concord tenants greatly, as rental rates in the city have increased by 10.5% since July 2021, with the average rent for a one-bedroom unit having risen to $1,749 by the last quarter of 2023. Since 2011, median rental rates have increased by 62%.
Another protection passed through Concord’s new ordinance requires landlords and property owners to provide “just cause” for evicting a tenant from their residence. Just cause eviction laws, known also as “good cause” evictions, seek to prohibit landlords and property owners from evicting a tenant or refusing to renew a tenant’s lease when the tenant is not at fault or in violation of any law. When passed, just cause laws protect renters from being evicted arbitrarily, discriminatorily, or without valid reason. Instead, just cause laws establish a minimum set of allowable situations for which a landlord or property owner can evict a tenant, including an accrual of rental arrears, violence perpetrated by the tenant, violation of the agreed upon lease, or intent by a landlord and property owner to move back into the unit. In some instances, the presence of just cause laws can protect a tenant who has faced a substantial rent increase by keeping them stably housed.
Concord’s new just cause protections only apply to tenants who are being evicted for a “no-cause” or “no-fault” reason. This means that a landlord or property owner does not have to provide a reason for evicting a tenant due to a just cause reason, such as non-payment of rent or another verifiable violation of the tenant’s lease agreement. Instead, the new law mandates that landlords and property owners provide cause, in writing, for evicting a tenant due to reasons such desire by the owner to move back into the unit, the unit being removed from the private rental market, or the unit no longer being safe for habitation and requiring rehabilitation.
For properties that require rehabilitation, the law provides two protections for tenants. First, the law offers tenants a “right of return,” meaning that a tenant can move back into their residence once the property’s habitability concerns have been rectified. Second, the law allows for tenants to apply for relocation assistance, though the law applies to all no-fault eviction cases in multi-family rental properties only. Under the law, the just cause protections mandate that a landlord pay a tenant three times the fair market rental (FMR) rate outlined by HUD, plus an additional $3,000 to cover a tenant’s moving costs. The FMR is a tabulation of standard market rental costs plus utilities. In Concord, the current range for relocation assistance runs from $8,475 for a studio unit to $14,862 for a four-bedroom unit.
Finally, Concord’s new tenant protection package expands the city’s former rental registry, which was in effect from July 2021 to July 2023. Under the prior iteration of the city’s “Rent Registry Program,” landlords of multi-family rental units with four or more units were required to register their properties with the city annually. Through the registration process, landlords were required to provide information on rents charged and changes in tenancy, including information on evictions. Information provided by the registry found that eviction rates within the city increased from two evictions in 2022 to 21 just a year later, signaling a growing eviction crisis for renters across the city. Under the new rental registry provision embedded in Concord’s new law, landlords and property owners of most rental units, including single-family rental homes, will have to register their properties annually and pay a registration fee to the city.
Rental registries, when created to safeguard tenants, aim to bring about transparency and accountability in the rental market. Rental registries provide tenants not only with information on a unit’s rental history in order to compare rental costs across the market but also with contact information for landlords that can assist tenants in requesting that habitability concerns are rectified. By providing a contact person, rental registries can ensure a tenant knows who they are renting from and how best to reach them in case of emergency. As of 2024, NLIHC has tracked the passage of rental registries in more than 20 localities nationwide.
The protections outlined in “Ordinance 20-7” were originally passed by the City Council in March 2024, though a petition from opposing landlord groups caused a delay in the law’s implementation. In March, the ordinance’s opponents initiated a referendum petition process that would have placed the rent stabilization provision outlined under the law on the ballot for voters to vote on in November 2024. For the referendum to make it on to the ballot, however, the ordinance’s opposition would have had to get the necessary 7,204 signatures to initiate a referendum process. The group was ultimately unable to accomplish this, allowing the protections to go into effect in April.
Tenant advocates were widely in support of the “Residential Tenant Protection Program,” with supporters of the ordinance noting that the protections were years in the making. (Tenant advocates had been proposing rent control measures as far back as 2016.) One major supporter of Concord’s new tenant protection law was the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE), a former cohort member of NLIHC’s End Rental Arrears to Stop Evictions (ERASE) project. The ERASE project ran from January 2021 to December 2023 and worked to ensure that the historic $46.5 billion in emergency rental assistance (ERA) funds enacted by Congress during the COVID-19 pandemic went to those for whom the aid was intended, including the lowest-income and most marginalized renters. Tenant advocates supported the city’s proposed tenant protections package by holding rallies, providing testimony in front of City Council, and speaking out in favor of the ordinance.
Rising Juntos, a tenant advocacy organization in the Contra Costa area working to build power to advance racial, economic, and health justice, was another group that helped advocate for Concord’s new tenant protections package and pleased with its eventual passage and the safeguards it will provide tenants. Rhea Elina Laughlin, executive director of Rising Juntos, noted that “[a]fter 8 years of advocacy, we are thrilled that the Concord City Council finally passed these fundamental tenant protections. Now renting families can breathe a sigh of relief that they will have more affordable and stable housing. It’s a tremendous victory for tenants and organizers who showed extraordinary perseverance and resilience in defeating landlord abuse and corporate greed in our city.”
Find more information on Concord’s new tenant protections bill here.