LA Relocation Assistance Calculator

The landlord pays, not the city. The obligation attaches to a no-fault termination: the owner or a family member moving in, a withdrawal of the property from the rental market under the Ellis Act, a primary renovation, or a government order.

It does not attach to an at-fault termination. If the notice is for unpaid rent or a lease breach, no relocation payment is owed, and this is the distinction most articles about the subject blur.

Payment is due within 15 days of the notice, not when you hand the keys back, and there is an escrow route where a landlord disputes the amount. The clock runs from the date on the notice, which is usually weeks before the tenancy ends.

The fee is per rental unit rather than per person. Where two or more tenants share one unit, that single fee is divided pro rata among them. So a household of three is owed one payment to share, not three payments, and a landlord offering one amount for the unit is not shortchanging anybody by doing so.

A termination required by a government order is a no-fault ground, and it is the one where the schedule may not be the whole answer: these situations can fall under separate relocation provisions depending on the order and the agency behind it. Take the order itself to the LA Housing Department rather than reading an amount off the table for it.

The schedule has two tenant categories and the difference between them is large. A tenant is Qualified if they are 62 years of age or older, disabled or handicapped, as defined by California Health and Safety Code section 50072 or 42 U.S.C. section 423, or has one or more minor dependent children. Everybody else is an Eligible tenant. Any one of them is enough and they do not stack: a tenant who is both 70 and living with a minor child is Qualified once, and the length of the tenancy then decides which of that category's two amounts applies.

That one answer is worth more than everything else on the form. Moving from Eligible to Qualified roughly doubles the payment at both lengths of tenancy, which is why it is the thing to get right before arguing about anything else.

A low income is a separate question from the category, and it is one tenants are routinely told wrongly. It does not make anybody a Qualified tenant. What it does is this: an Eligible tenant whose household income is 80% of the area median or less is paid the higher of the two Eligible amounts whatever the length of the tenancy, so a tenant of six months is paid the same as a tenant of ten years. It changes nothing for a Qualified tenant, who is already on the other row, and nothing on the reduced Mom-and-Pop schedule, which has one amount per category and no split by length at all.

The table has one answer in it for any tenancy, and it is reached in two steps. First the category: Qualified if the tenant meets one of the three criteria above, Eligible if not. Then the length: under three years, or three years and over. A low income is the only thing that moves the answer without moving the category, and it moves it along the Eligible row rather than between the rows.

Two other things decide the rest. Whether the unit is rent stabilized, because the RSO carries the fixed schedule below and a single-family dwelling owned by a person is calculated from the rent instead. And whether the owner qualifies as a Mom-and-Pop owner, which carries a reduced version of the same two categories.

These are the fixed amounts for a no-fault eviction from a rent stabilized unit. They are per rental unit rather than per person, and the landlord pays them, not the city.

Where the unit is a single-family dwelling owned by a natural person rather than by a company, on a property of 4 units or fewer, and the eviction is no-fault under the Just Cause Ordinance, the relocation is one month's rent, measured on the rent in effect when the termination notice was served. It is flat: neither the tenant's category nor the length of the tenancy changes it, so there is no Qualified uplift to look for. The landlord may satisfy it as a payment or as a credit against rent owed. Both conditions have to hold: a house held by a company, or one on a larger property, takes the scheduled amount instead.

Everything else the Just Cause Ordinance covers takes the same fixed schedule above. That is worth saying plainly, because a tenant whose unit is not rent stabilized often assumes the amounts are somebody else's: they are not, and the only Just Cause figure that is not on that table is the single-family month. Where more than one amount applies to a unit, the ordinance says the landlord pays the higher one.

A Mom-and-Pop owner is one who owns no more than four residential rental units plus one single-family home in Los Angeles. It applies where the eviction is for occupancy by the owner or an eligible family member, rather than to every no-fault ground. And it may be used only once every 3 years, so a second no-fault eviction inside that window does not take the reduced amount.

It reduces the amount and nothing else. A qualifying owner still has to pay, still has to pay on time, and still needs a valid no-fault reason. Ownership records are public, so a claim to the reduced schedule is checkable rather than something to take on trust: how to check it is set out separately.

There is an appeal to the LA Housing Department with its own filing window and fee, both published. Keep the termination notice and every piece of correspondence: the notice fixes the reason and the date, and both matter to the calculation. An owner claiming the reduced Mom-and-Pop schedule should be able to say why they qualify, and ownership records are public.

This is no longer in effect. A rent increase large enough to price a tenant out used to be capable of counting as a constructive eviction in the City of Los Angeles, carrying relocation assistance. It is not part of the City's current renter protection framework: it was removed from the required Renter Protections Notice for 2026 to 2027, following Court of Appeal rulings that a city provision of this kind conflicts with the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act. There is no threshold to be under or over any more, and no payment to claim on this ground.

What a tenant facing a large increase still has is the cap itself. If you have a notice of increase rather than a notice to quit, check it against the cap, because an increase above the October 1, 1978 ordinance's limit on a stabilized unit is unenforceable for the amount above it. That remedy never depended on the removed provision and is unaffected by it. What happened to the rent increase route is set out separately.