Landlords Allegedly Breaking Renter Transparency Law

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Last year, San Diego leaders passed a law that mandated transparency on renters’ utility bills. It turns out, some landlords may not be following it.

The ordinance requires landlords to produce copies of utility bills, along with the calculations behind the dollar figures, to any tenant who asks for it or is disputing their utility charges.

The law is designed to help renters who don’t receive a utility bill based on their individual usage. Instead, their landlord or a third-party company divide up the building’s single utility bill across units — and the way the bills are divided up isn’t always clear.

In multiple complaints obtained by Voice, landlords allegedly never produced those records, produced incomplete records or, in one case, threatened to have the requesting tenant evicted for asking too many questions.

The new rule: It’s called the Residential Utility Fee Ordinance, and its goal is to make utility charges more transparent and fair. It’s supposed to give tenants a way to make sure they’re being charged fairly.

Naomi Granata and MacKenzie Elmer reviewed public records from the City Attorney’s Office and discovered several complaints filed by tenants over the past nine months.

Read the full story here.