Cal. Apartment Assn. v. City of Pasadena (2025)

Citation: Cal. Apartment Assn. v. City of Pasadena (2025)
Parent Document: Cal. Apartment Assn. v. City of Pasadena (2025)
Jurisdiction: California (state)
Effective Date: 2025-12-18
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/10761039/cal-apartment-assn-v-city-of-pasadena/ ↗

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instances where the landlord raises the rent in bad faith in order
to force tenants to move out, but rather applies to all lawful
increases of the rent to fair market value. The relocation
assistance requirement is thus distinguishable from the
ordinance in SFAA III that was solely concerned with bad-faith,
coercive conduct by landlords. And unlike the measure at issue
in Mak, the relocation assistance requirement is not geared
toward preventing pretextual evictions intended to circumvent
rent control. The relocation assistance requirement applies only
to exempt units, not to units covered by rent control, and thus
landlords do not need existing tenants to move out to be able to
raise the rent to market rates.
       A comparison of the Costa-Hawkins Act savings clause in
Civil Code section 1954.52, subdivision (c), with a savings clause
in the Ellis Act further supports the conclusion that Measure H’s
relocation assistance requirement does not fall within the Costa-
Hawkins Act savings clause. As discussed, the Ellis Act “is
designed ‘to permit landlords to go out of business’ ” (Drouet
v. Superior Court (2003) 31 Cal.4th 583, 595) and regulates the
eviction of tenants as landlords seek to do so (San Francisco
Apartment Assn. v. City and County of San Francisco, supra,
3 Cal.App.5th at p. 478). The Ellis Act’s savings clause provides
that “ ‘nothing in this chapter . . . [d]iminishes or enhances any
power in any public entity to mitigate any adverse impact on
persons displaced by reason of the withdrawal from rent or lease
of any accommodations.” (Gov. Code, § 7060.1, subd. (c), italics
added.) Based on this provision, courts have held that
municipalities may require payment of reasonable relocation
assistance for displaced tenants as a mitigation measure that
does not conflict with the Ellis Act. (See 2710 Sutter Ventures,

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