The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 4-0 on Tuesday to kick off work on the county's first Commercial Rental Property License, a new framework aimed at tracking rents, leases and vacancies for commercial properties in unincorporated areas. The motion, authored by Supervisors Holly J. Mitchell and Hilda L. Solis, does not cap what landlords can charge — but it opens the door to relocation assistance, license suspensions, and new data the county has never systematically collected before.
According to Random Lengths News, the vote sets off a multi-month process to draft a formal ordinance, with a final vote targeted for early 2027. Supervisor Mitchell pointed to the case of A'Kia Benbo, the South L.A. entrepreneur who grew HoneyQween Juice Bar from a street vending operation into a brick-and-mortar storefront in 2021 before alleged landlord harassment pushed her out, as reported by LA County Politics. Mitchell cited Benbo's story as a primary catalyst for the motion, according to the outlet's reporting.
As Parriva reports, the proposed license would require commercial landlords in unincorporated L.A. County to register their properties with the county and disclose space size, rent amount, lease duration, tenancy information and vacancy status. County staff has also been directed to explore restrictions on rent increases and no-fault evictions during any period when a landlord's license is suspended, though the same reporting notes a license could only be suspended after a final court determination of a violation.
Why the County Can't Just Cap Rents
Unlike residential rent control, which is common across California cities, direct commercial rent regulation is largely off the table. Local governments cannot impose commercial rent caps or mandatory lease renewals because of the Costa-Keene-Seymour Commercial Property Investment Act of 1987, a state law that preempts municipal rent control on commercial property, according to an analysis by Strategic Actions for a Just Economy.
That legal ceiling is why the county is leaning on licensing, data collection and anti-harassment enforcement instead. Per Parriva's account of the motion, the plan is explicitly not a general commercial rent-control program, and the proposed license would not impose a 3% rent-increase limit on every commercial landlord in the county.
A Voluntary Track With Real Limits
Buried inside the framework is an optional path: county staff were asked to explore a voluntary special status license that landlords could choose to adopt. Under that opt-in program, participating landlords would agree to limit rent increases to 3% annually for ten years, per the same Parriva report — a tradeoff that gives landlords a designation in exchange for predictability, without forcing the cap on anyone who doesn't sign up.
The framework would also connect to the county's existing Commercial Tenant Protections Ordinance, adopted permanently by the Board of Supervisors in 2022, which already gives commercial renters with nine or fewer employees legal recourse against landlord harassment, according to the Small Business Anti-Displacement Toolkit. The new license would explore linking directly to that ordinance, so that violations could trigger license consequences.
Relocation Money and a Rent Study
For businesses displaced because of landlord violations, the motion directs county staff to develop a relocation-assistance formula based on the greater of three months of gross receipts or three months of fair-market rent for an equivalent location, with that assistance subject to a recommended cap and covering moving costs. Separately, the county would also consider relocation assistance for businesses displaced by redevelopment projects.
To make those fair-market calculations possible, the motion orders the county's Department of Economic Opportunity to conduct a regional commercial rent study within 120 days, to be updated every three years, according to Realtor.com. That study would establish the fair-market rent per square foot that future relocation payments would be measured against.
Landlord Groups Push Back
The Building Owners and Managers Association of Greater Los Angeles has publicly opposed the motion, arguing that restricting rent increases and no-fault evictions during license suspensions amounts to a form of soft rent control, according to LA County Politics. Property owner representatives contend the added regulatory hurdles and relocation penalties could depress commercial property values.
Facing that pushback, Mitchell publicly clarified during Tuesday's board meeting that the proposed license framework does not cap commercial rents, does not require landlords to submit private leases, and does not block redevelopment projects, per LA County Politics' reporting on the exchange. County lawmakers appear to be trying to thread a needle: building a data-tracking system for small business preservation while avoiding a direct confrontation with the industry over price controls.
The Scale of Who's Affected
The stakes are significant given how much of the county's economy runs through small storefronts. L.A. County contains roughly 250,000 businesses accounting for 43% of the local workforce, with about 33,000 small businesses operating with nine or fewer employees in unincorporated areas alone, according to Strategic Actions for a Just Economy. U.S. Census Bureau data from 2021 put the county-wide count of micro-businesses with nine or fewer workers above 236,000, as cited by LA Local. Parriva's reporting notes that Latino-owned and immigrant-owned businesses make up a major part of that small-business economy.
Statewide, small commercial tenants already have some protection under California's Commercial Tenant Protection Act, or SB 1103, which took effect at the start of 2025. That law requires landlords to give qualified small businesses and nonprofits at least 90 days' written notice before rent increases exceeding 10%, as detailed by Sheppard Mullin. Hoodline previously reported on a bookshop's rent fight in Eagle Rock that turned partly on that same statute, though the county's new licensing motion would add a layer of local enforcement that state law alone doesn't provide.
What Happens Next
There is no application to file yet — the commercial rental property license is not currently an operating requirement, and won't be until the county finishes developing licensing-framework recommendations and drafting the ordinance that will return to the Board of Supervisors for a final vote. In the meantime, Parriva's reporting outlines several steps small-business owners can take to protect themselves: seeking legal or business assistance before signing a new tenancy agreement, documenting rent increases and landlord communications, and keeping copies of leases, amendments, rent payment records and major lease-related expenses. The county's existing small-business programs, which include counseling and connections to legal and other support services, remain available in the meantime as the licensing framework works its way toward a vote expected in early 2027.
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