California Tenant Protection Act: Rent Caps, Just Cause, and SB 567

California’s Tenant Protection Act, passed as Assembly Bill 1482, caps annual rent increases at 5% plus the regional Consumer Price Index (with a hard ceiling of 10%) and bars landlords from evicting most tenants of 12 months or more without a legally recognized reason. The law took effect January 1, 2020, applies statewide to covered rental housing, and is set to expire January 1, 2030.

Does the Act Cover Your Unit

The default is coverage. The law applies to all residential rentals in California unless a specific exemption fits, and the exemptions are narrower than many landlords assume.¹

New construction. Units with a certificate of occupancy issued in the previous 15 years. The exemption rolls forward, so a building new in 2011 came under the Act in 2026.²
Single-family homes and condominiums. Exempt only when the owner is not a corporation, a REIT, or an LLC with any corporate member, and only when the owner gives the tenant a specific written notice stating the property is exempt. No notice, no exemption. For tenancies that began on or after July 1, 2020, that notice must be in the rental agreement itself.³
Owner-occupied duplexes. The owner has to have been living in one of the units when the tenant moved in and must still live there. Neither unit can be an ADU or junior ADU.¹
Deed-restricted affordable housing. Including units receiving government housing subsidies.²
Dormitories owned and operated by a college, university, or K–12 school.³
Mobile homes, unless the mobile home is owned and rented out by the owner or manager of a mobile home park.¹
Units under stricter local rent control. If a city or county ordinance caps annual increases below 5% plus CPI, the local rule applies instead of the state cap.³

How Much Rent Can Go Up Each Year

For covered units, the maximum rent increase in any 12-month period is 5% plus the percentage change in the regional Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, or 10%, whichever is lower. The increase is measured against the lowest rent charged for the unit at any point during the prior 12 months.²

The 10% ceiling is a hard stop. In a high-inflation year, CPI alone can push the formula past 10%, and the law still caps it there. In lower-inflation regions, the effective cap might sit closer to 6% or 7%.

Two other rules narrow the cap further. A landlord cannot raise rent more than twice in any 12-month period, and the combined total of those two increases still cannot exceed the annual cap. Temporary discounts or concessions the tenant accepted are stripped out when calculating the “lowest gross rental rate,” so a landlord cannot use a short-term concession to inflate the baseline for a later hike.²

Vacancy Resets the Rent

The cap protects a sitting tenancy, not a unit. Once every tenant from the prior tenancy moves out, the landlord can set any initial rent for the next tenant. After that, the annual cap applies again going forward.² Staying put is what gives the rent cap its real financial value.

Notice Before a Rent Increase

How much advance notice the landlord owes is governed by Civil Code Section 827, not AB 1482 itself. Increases of 10% or less within the past 12 months require 30 days’ written notice. Anything above 10% requires 90 days.⁴ Because AB 1482 caps covered units at 10%, most tenants under the Act will see only the 30-day notice.

When a Landlord Needs Just Cause to Evict

After a tenant has lived in a covered unit continuously for 12 months, the landlord must state a legally recognized reason in any written termination notice. If additional adults join the lease before any original tenant hits 24 months, the protections apply once all tenants have been there 12 months, or once at least one tenant has been there 24 months.⁵

The allowed reasons split into two groups, and the split matters because one triggers a required payment and the other does not.

At-Fault Reasons

At-fault reasons turn on the tenant’s own conduct:

Nonpayment of rent.
A material breach of the lease, after written notice and a chance to cure.
Nuisance behavior that substantially interferes with other tenants.
Criminal activity on the property, or directed at the owner or their agent off the property.
Refusing lawful entry the landlord is entitled to, such as for repairs or inspection.

At-fault evictions do not require relocation assistance.⁵

No-Fault Reasons

No-fault reasons involve the owner’s plans for the unit:

Owner or close-family move-in, where the owner, spouse, domestic partner, child, grandchild, parent, or grandparent intends to live in the unit as a primary residence for at least 12 continuous months.
Demolition or substantial remodel that requires the tenant to vacate.
Permanent withdrawal of the unit from the rental market.

Every no-fault termination triggers mandatory relocation assistance.⁵

Relocation Payment for No-Fault Evictions

The amount is one month of the tenant’s current rent, measured at the time the termination notice is served. The landlord can pay cash within 15 calendar days of serving the notice, or waive the final month’s rent in writing at the same time the notice is served. The tenant’s income does not matter.

Miss the payment and the notice is void. A landlord who serves a no-fault notice and then fails to deliver the money or the waiver on time has served nothing enforceable, and would have to start over.⁵

Tighter Rules Under SB 567

Effective April 1, 2024, SB 567 added documentation and follow-through requirements to the two no-fault categories most commonly misused.

For owner move-in, the termination notice must name the intended occupant and their relationship to the owner, and must tell the tenant they can request proof of that relationship. The named person has to move in within 90 days after the tenant leaves and live there as a primary residence for at least 12 consecutive months. The eviction is not available if a similar vacant unit already exists on the property.⁶

For demolition or substantial remodel, the notice must describe the planned work, state how long it is expected to take, and attach either the required permits or a signed contractor agreement. If the work never happens, the landlord has to offer the displaced tenant the unit back at the same rent that was in effect when they left. The tenant then has 30 days to accept or decline.⁶

What You Can Do If a Landlord Violates the Act

A tenant charged more than the legal maximum can sue for the full overcharge, an injunction stopping the landlord from doing it again, and reasonable attorney’s fees. If the landlord acted willfully or with fraud, the court can award up to three times the excess rent.³

Retaliation is barred separately. For 180 days after a tenant files a habitability complaint, reports a code violation, or exercises any legal right, the landlord cannot raise rent, cut services, or move to evict in response.⁴ Threatening to report a tenant or anyone connected to them to immigration authorities is explicitly retaliation. A landlord who retaliates is liable for actual damages plus punitive damages of $100 to $2,000 per act.⁷ The retaliation presumption can be invoked only once in any 12-month period, so documentation matters.

Where Local Rent Control Still Governs

AB 1482 does not override stricter local law. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, Berkeley, and other cities with rent stabilization ordinances often cap annual increases well below the state formula, and in those places the local cap controls. The same goes for just cause: where a local ordinance already requires just cause and provides stronger protections, the local rules apply. The state Act works as a floor, extending baseline protections to the many California communities that had no rent stabilization before 2020 while leaving tougher local regimes in place.³

1
California Department of Justice. Landlord-Tenant Issues
2
California Legislative Information. California Code CIV – Section 1947.12
3
California Legislative Information. California Civil Code 1947.12
4
California Legislative Information. California Civil Code 827
5
California Legislative Information. California Code CIV – Section 1946.2
6
LegiScan. California SB567 – Chaptered
7
California Legislative Information. California Civil Code CIV 1942.5