The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to formally codify an existing rule requiring landlords to file eviction notices with the city, a procedural step that aims to improve enforcement of tenant protections and spot patterns of evictions.
Under the newly adopted ordinance, landlords must submit a copy of any written notice ending tenancy to the Los Angeles Housing Department (LAHD) within three business days of serving the tenant. The amendment, originally drafted by the City Attorney’s Office in April, specifies that notices must be submitted either electronically or using a form approved by the LAHD and the City Attorney.
City officials and housing advocates say the rule is part of a broader push to increase transparency around evictions and ensure renters aren’t being forced out of their homes illegally.
In a statement, Sharon Sandow, director of communications for the city’s Housing Department, said the amendment requires landlords who don’t file eviction notices online to instead mail the notice along with an LAHD Eviction Filing Cover Sheet.
“This ensures that LAHD receives all necessary tenant information directly from the landlord,” she said. “Tenant information is essential for providing tenants with valuable renter protection and referrals to appropriate legal services, thereby safeguarding tenant rights.”
Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival, a longtime tenants’ rights nonprofit, praised the move, saying it strengthens tenant protections and enables groups like his to help tenants fight unlawful evictions.
“Tenants are in some cases unaware that they’re being evicted, until they get the notice to appear in court,” Gross said. “So landlords play a lot of games with these notices and this will hold them accountable.”
He also connected the ordinance to broader tenant protection infrastructure, like the city’s Right to Counsel Program, which provides eligible tenants with free legal representation.
“ It goes hand in hand with the city’s commitment to funding Right to Counsel,” Gross said, “to ensure that tenants, particularly low-income tenants, are represented with legal representation when they have to fight an eviction in courts.”
But landlord groups criticized the move as overly burdensome. Daniel M. Yukelson, executive director and CEO of Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles, said the measure adds yet another layer of bureaucracy for landlords already grappling with complex rules.
“The city is doing everything in its power to make it more difficult for property owners to collect legally owed rent or deal with problems that tenants are causing, whether they be conducting criminal activity, destroying property, creating a nuisance,” he said.
Yukelson said that under the city’s eviction-filing rules, even small technical errors, such as forgetting to list the number of bedrooms, or failing to submit the required forms within three business days, can allow a tenant to raise an affirmative defense in court. That means a judge could delay or dismiss the case, forcing landlords to start the eviction process from the beginning.
“ Believe me, evictions are a last resort in any situation,” he said. “They’re very costly and time-consuming and nerve-wracking for property owners to go through, so nobody wants to do it. And the city is just creating even more burdens on property owners through this latest action. It is basically death by a thousand cuts.”
The item passed Tuesday without discussion. The updated ordinance amends sections 151.09 and 165.05 of the Los Angeles Municipal Code to clarify how landlords must comply with the city’s eviction filing rules, which was enacted in January 2023 as part of a broader package of pandemic-era tenant protections.
This rule applies to all written notices terminating a tenancy for at-fault reasons, including those for nonpayment of rent, lease violations, nuisance complaints or other tenant misconduct under the city’s Rent Stabilization and Just Cause ordinances.
Notices for no-fault evictions — such as owner move-ins or demolition — must be filed separately through a Declaration of Intent to Evict, which includes an application fee and paid relocation assistance to the tenant.
The LAHD maintains a searchable database of notices filed under the ordinance, which tenants can use to check whether their landlord has complied. If a landlord fails to file the notice properly or on time, tenants may be able to raise an “affirmative defense” in court — a factor that can delay or even derail the eviction process.
In a July 2023 report, LAHD noted that while it had received roughly 40,000 eviction notices since the rule took effect, many were submitted on paper, creating backlogs and straining staff capacity. To streamline the process and bolster enforcement, the department recommended a technical amendment requiring landlords to either upload notices electronically or submit them on a standardized form approved by LAHD. Tuesday’s vote codified that recommendation.