Lemon Grove’s Rushed Tenant Ordinance Sends a Dangerous Message

Last week, the City of Lemon Grove rushed a sweeping tenant protection ordinance onto its City Council agenda under the banner of an “urgency measure” related to one housing site.   

The proposal came with only the bare minimum of legally required notice. It was confusing. And it was a slap in the fact to those who wanted to participate in decisions affecting their livelihoods.   

Urgency ordinances are meant for true emergencies, such as earthquakes, fires or major public health threats. They are not supposed to be used to short-circuit a public process or skip stakeholder input. Yet that is exactly what happened here. 

The City said it needed to act because a local apartment complex was sold and is undergoing major renovation. The management is requiring tenants to move out during that project. While we don’t have all the facts, we believe that anyone facing the sudden loss of their home – especially seniors and longtime tenants – deserves a fair process. Many tenants in such cases are entitled to certain protections under state law. 

The irony is that Lemon Grove already operates under some of the strongest tenant protections in the nation. In fact, California’s Tenant Protection Act addresses this exact situation – when the owner of a rental housing community undertakes a major remodel. Tenants who must leave under what’s known as a “no fault” eviction generally are entitled to written notice and mandatory relocation assistance of one month's rent, according to the law.  I 

The renovation of one apartment complex does not equal a trend that needs to be addressed with a new law. Without evidence, the Lemon Grove Mayor claimed that this was one of many such cases, but did not cite any statistics.  

Good law should be tied to data. If anyone is not following the law, that situation should be addressed directly, but it should not be used to justify rushed policies that affect hundreds of responsible property owners. 

That matters, because Lemon Grove is home to over 800 local housing providers – many of them small, family-run operations. They are people like a Lemon Grove family that lived in one unit of a four-plex and rented out the others. They are retirees relying on rental income for stability. They are our neighbors. 

There was no outreach to housing providers in Lemon Grove before this proposal was unveiled. None – not even a phone call to the Southern California Rental Housing Association, our region’s leading trade association serving the rental housing industry.  

And the rushed nature of this ordinance was not subtle. On the Friday afternoon before the meeting, a draft ordinance was uploaded to the city’s website. Just a few hours later, a different version appeared – broader and more restrictive. There was no redline and no explanation of what changed. The staff report itself was only partially updated to reflect the new version.  

That is not transparency; it is the opposite.  

Even members of the City Council acknowledged the confusion. Several expressed concern that they had not been given enough time to understand what was in front of them. That alone should have stopped the urgency push in its tracks. While not approving everything that was proposed, the council did pass an ordinance to provide immediate “urgency” protections that in some case duplicated, and in other places attempted to go beyond, state law. 

Rather than starting with facts, data, and stakeholder input, the City chose to rush through this law. This approach does real harm because it erodes public trust.   

Good housing policy is built in the open, and what happened in Lemon Grove should not be repeated.