New Housing Laws: Know Your Rights as a Renter or Landlord

Published: May 28, 2025

California has introduced new housing laws that aim to create a more balanced, transparent, and fair rental market for both renters and landlords. For renters, recent changes provide stronger protections around eviction, privacy, and affordability. There are new limits on security deposits, clearer rules around rent increases, and expanded rights for tenants with disabilities. Renters who use government rent subsidies also have more flexibility in how they prove their ability to pay rent and cannot be discriminated against in the application process for receiving rent assistance. The new laws also recognize the needs of landlords. Owners of rental properties are granted flexibility in how they manage deposits and a new law clarifies how landlords can handle mobility devices like e-scooters and e-bikes on their property. Requirements to unbundle parking costs from rent also promote transparency, helping both parties better understand and manage housing costs.

What You Need to Know

• AB 12: limits the amount landlords can charge a tenant for a rental housing security deposit to one month's rent for either a furnished or unfurnished unit. Exempted from this limitation are landlords who 1) are a natural person or limited liability company in which all members are natural persons, and 2) who own no more than two residential rental properties that collectively include no more than four dwelling units. Such landlords will be allowed to charge deposits of two months' rent, provided that the tenant is not a service member

• AB 1620: amends the Costa-Hawkins Rent Control Act (Costa-Hawkins). It authorizes a local ordinance for rent-controlled units to allow a tenant with a mobility-related disability to move to an accessible floor when a comparable unit becomes available, and to keep the same rent as the existing lease.

• AB 1418: prohibits local governments from enacting nuisance ordinances and crime-free housing programs that impose penalties against tenants and landlords solely for contact with a law enforcement agency. Also, local governments will not be allowed to require or encourage landlords to perform criminal background checks on tenants or applicants. This bill outlines how the measure may be enforced including a cease and desist court order, nullification of the ordinance by a court, and injunctive relief, among other remedies.

• SB 267: prohibits housing providers, in instances where a prospective tenant has a government rent subsidy, from requiring an applicant's credit history as part of the rental application if the provider does not also allow applicants to submit lawful, verifiable alternative evidence of a reasonable ability to pay the portion of rent for which the tenant will be responsible. If the applicant with a government rent subsidy elects to provide such alternative evidence, the bill requires the housing provider to 1) provide the applicant reasonable time to respond with the alternative evidence and 2) consider that evidence in lieu of credit history. Violations of these provisions are a violation of the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA).

• SB567: revises the no-fault just cause eviction provisions of the Tenant Protection Act of 2019 and provides additional enforcement mechanisms for all provisions of the Act, including for violations of restrictions on residential rent increases and no-fault just cause evictions. New enforcement mechanisms include injunctive relief, reasonable attorney's fees, damages, the possibility of triple damages and punitive damages, as well as legal enforcement by the Attorney General and a city attorney or county counsel.

• SB 712: prohibits a landlord from disallowing a tenant from owning personal micromobility devices, or from storing and recharging up to one device per person in the dwelling unit. Examples of these devices include electric bicycles and electric scooters, among others. The bill also allows a landlord to alternatively provide secure, long-term storage for tenants' devices, and maintain any prohibitions on tenants storing devices in their dwelling units.

• AB 1317: requires landlords of residential properties with parking spaces to separately price parking from rent in new leases. This means tenants will see the cost of parking as a distinct charge rather than having it bundled into their rent.