The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously this week to order a full study of how artificial intelligence tools are being used to set rents across the city, a move that stops short of any new rule but opens the door to one. Council members instructed housing staff to report back with policy recommendations addressing algorithmic rent-setting and other AI technologies used by housing providers, rather than adopting any regulation themselves.
A Motion Months in the Making
The vote formalizes a motion introduced on Oct. 13 by Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez, who called for regulatory safeguards, transparency requirements, registration programs and dedicated funding mechanisms, according to MyNewsLA. Hernandez said corporate landlords are increasingly adopting these tools, also known as artificial intelligence, to set rent prices and manage vacancies, and she argued the city currently has no way to track what effect that technology is having on the local rental market. Her motion states that AI and algorithmic pricing systems are increasingly used by landlords for rental pricing, occupancy management, leasing decisions and property operations. Council members Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Monica Rodriguez and Imelda Padilla seconded the motion, and Hernandez thanked Councilwoman Heather Hutt for having introduced a similar motion on the issue the previous year.
The California Apartment Association, an industry group that tracked the matter closely, noted that an Oct. 21 committee vote on the same issue did not itself adopt new requirements for housing providers, and that those committee recommendations were still awaiting consideration by the full council at the time. The group's account, posted at caanet.org, also detailed that the council instructed officials to analyze regulatory practices already in place in Berkeley and West Hollywood as part of the review.
What Officials Are Being Asked to Study
The scope of the requested report is broad. Council members directed the housing department, the chief legislative analyst, the city administrative officer and city attorneys to examine a registration and disclosure program for multifamily housing providers that use algorithmic rent-setting or revenue-management software, alongside tenant notification requirements for when AI or algorithmic pricing influences rental rates, lease renewals or occupancy decisions. Officials were also told to look at the city's authority to regulate, restrict or prohibit technology that relies on nonpublic competitor information, and to study annual registration or licensing fees, projected revenues and implementation costs, including whether a special fund could be created from any registration, licensing or enforcement revenue to pay for eviction prevention, emergency rental assistance, tenant legal services, fair housing enforcement, and tenant outreach and education.
The council also asked for updates on two legal matters tied to the broader rent-software debate: the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust lawsuit, which California joined in August 2024, alleging that rent-setting software used nonpublic market information in a way that reduced competition and contributed to higher rental prices, and a settlement Nevada secured with RealPage in September 2025 over alleged rent price-fixing that included new limits on how the company uses data.
How Other California Cities Have Moved
Los Angeles would not be the first California city to act on this front, and the council's instruction to study Berkeley and West Hollywood points to models already on the books. West Hollywood adopted Ordinance No. 26-08 on May 4, 2026, making it unlawful for a landlord to use a covered algorithmic device when setting rents or occupancy levels for rental units in the city, according to records filed with West Hollywood's city government. That ordinance allows civil penalties of up to $1,000 per violation and took effect 30 days after adoption. The same ordinance's findings cited a 2024 estimate that algorithmic rental-pricing software raised costs by an average of $34 per month, or $408 per year, across the Los Angeles metropolitan area, and identified Berkeley, San Diego, San Jose and Santa Monica as cities that had already adopted, proposed or were drafting similar legislation.
San Francisco passed its own law in 2024 banning landlords from using software that tells them what to charge, a measure codified in the city's municipal code as Section 37.10C, which the City and County of San Francisco says makes it unlawful for a landlord to use a described algorithmic device when setting rents or occupancy levels for residential dwelling units. Despite that ban, the San Francisco Standard reported that asking rents for apartments in the city still rose 14% from March to July 2026, according to data from ApartmentList. San Diego has also moved to restrict the practice; a GlobeSt report described the city as having banned the use of multifamily rent-setting algorithms, though the current enforcement status of that measure was not detailed in that account.
The Research Behind the Pushback
The scrutiny of rent-setting software predates this year's local debates. ProPublica has reported that RealPage's YieldStar product analyzes a trove of data the company gathers from clients, including private information on what nearby competitors charge, to recommend prices for vacant apartments — and that former RealPage employees told the outlet property managers adopt as many as 90% of the software's suggestions. A UC Berkeley School of Information investigation in spring 2025 found a statistically significant association between RealPage software use and higher rents, estimating an average increase of $0.23 per square foot monthly at properties using the system, according to the UC Berkeley School of Information.
For now, Los Angeles has committed only to gathering information rather than writing new rules. The council's direction leaves the shape of any future policy — registration fees, disclosure mandates, or outright restrictions like West Hollywood's — to the report that housing staff, the chief legislative analyst, the city administrative officer and city attorneys have been tasked with producing.
