Emergency order would cap Vallejo rent increases at 10 percent

The Vallejo City Council is set to ratify an emergency ordinance this week that prohibits landlords from raising rents more than 10 percent.

City Manager Greg Nyhoff signed an emergency proclamation Thursday that caps rent increases at 10 percent. The proclamation was in response to notices of rental increases in excess of 100 percent for tenants in the Strawberry Hill and Holiday Gardens properties, said Joanna Altman, assistant to the city manager.

Six hundred tenants would have been impacted by the increases, and the city has heard concerns from other tenants facing significant rent increases in the weeks ahead, Altman said.

The emergency proclamation is effective for seven days and must be ratified by the City Council at a special meeting during the first week in July. As of June 27, landlords, including those in the Strawberry Hill and Holiday Gardens properties, are prohibited from raising rents more than 10 percent.

To prevent price gouging after the 2017 and 2018 wildfires, Gov. Jerry Brown signed an executive order that caped rent increases at 10 percent. The order expired in December 2018 for Solano County, which was not hit as hard by the wildfires as other counties.