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Rent Adjustment Program

The mission of the Rent Adjustment Program is to promote community stability, healthy housing, and diversity for Oakland residents, while preventing illegal rent increases and evictions, and ensuring a fair return for property owners.

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Please be advised The Rent Adjustment Program will be closed on April 1, 2024 in observance of Cesar Chavez Day. We kindly ask for your understanding and encourage you to plan accordingly. Operations and services will resume the following day, April 2, 2024. Please allow up to 48 hours for a response to emails and calls received.

Advisory Notice: Owners may now pursue evictions for Just Cause. However, Oakland's Emergency Moratorium continues to prohibit rent increases beyond the CPI on units covered under the RAP Ordinance through June 30, 2024. Owners must wait until after this date to pass along banked or petition-based rent increases. Council has posted information regarding the Moratorium Phase-Out and New Tenant Protections here. For questions, contact a RAP Housing Counselor at 510-238-3721 (option 1) or RAP@oaklandca.gov.

DECEMBER 2023 CITY COUNCIL APPROVED ORDINANCES AND REGULATIONS AMENDMENTS

On December 19, 2023, the City Council approved the following amendments to the Rent Registry Ordinance, the Rent Adjustment Ordinance, and the Ellis Act Ordinance. The City Council also approved amendments to the Regulations that implement the Rent Adjustment Ordinance on December 5. All these changes have taken effect immediately.

Please also add the following links to copies of the red-tracked changes approved by Council:

Rent Registry Ordinance amendment:
City of Oakland - File #: 23-0820 (legistar.com)

Rent Adjustment Ordinance and Ellis Act Ordinance amendments:

City of Oakland - File #: 23-0821 (legistar.com)

Regulations amendments:

City of Oakland - File #: 23-0822 (legistar.com)

For more information, click here.

Live Counseling Sessions for Rent Registry: Due to the high volume of rent registry inquiries, RAP continues to offer monthly live counseling sessions to help answer any rent questions you may have! Live counseling sessions will take place on:

Tuesday, April 16, 2024: 1 pm-2:30 pm

Click here to join during the scheduled timeframes.

CPI Announcement Update: Effective August 1, 2023, the new annual CPI rent increase is 2.5%.

Advisory Notice: Due to the new rent registry ordinance requirements, RAP petition and response forms have been updated. Property owners and tenants should use these updated forms as of July 3, 2023.

You can find the updated forms at:

https://www.oaklandca.gov/documents/rent-adjustment-program-forms-and-notices-for-tenants

https://www.oaklandca.gov/documents/rent-adjustment-program-forms-notices-for-property-owners

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News and Updates

Jul 03, 2023

Rent Registration in Oakland

In 2022, the Oakland City Council adopted a requirement to establish a rent registry for all units subject to the RAP Program Fee. As of July 3, 2023, owners of these units are required to report rent and tenancy information to RAP annually. They are required to confirm or update their units’ tenancy information annually by March 1st.

Note: The 2024 deadline to register has been extended to July 1, 2024.

May 04, 2021

RAP Eviction Portal Now Live

The City of Oakland Rent Adjustment Program's Eviction Portal is now open! The public may view citywide eviction data and trends and property owners may file copies of eviction notices within 10 days after it is served on the tenant.

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Services

Resources

Topics

Resources

Topics

Rent Adjustment Program Annual Reports and Videos

Please find a copy of the 2020-21 & 2021-22 Rent Adjustment Program’s Annual Report here.

Press the play button below to watch the Rent Adjustment Program's Annual Report Video for fiscal years 2018-19 & 2019-20. To view the full PDF document of the Annual Report, click here.

About the Rent Adjustment Program

The Oakland City Council adopted the Rent Adjustment Program Ordinance (OMC Chapter 8.22) in 1980. This ordinance sets the maximum annual rent increase based on the annual Consumer Price Index (CPI) increase and handles rent adjustments for claims of decreases in housing services and handles other rent-related matters. The purpose of this program is to foster fair housing for a diverse population of renters and enforce the Rent Adjustment Ordinance set out by the City of Oakland.

Contact Us

Since March 2020, we have moved our services from in-person to online. Please read the information below carefully to find the best way to contact us.

RAP Contact Information Flowchart

Lista de Contactos de RAP

如何聯絡租金調整分部

By Phone

Phone: (510) 238-3721

The Rent Adjustment Program’s Housing Counselors are available by phone Monday through Thursday, 9:30am to 4:30pm to answer any RAP or housing-related questions you might have. Topics can be, but are not limited to, tenant and property owner issues and concerns, Oakland rental housing laws, or how to file petitions or responses with RAP. Calls are generally limited to 10 minutes per person.

By Email

If you would prefer an email response, you can email us. RAP strives to return all emails within a forty-eight-hour timeframe.

Contact a RAP Housing Counselor: rap@oaklandca.gov. Please include in your email: your full name, your telephone number, and your address.

Hearings Unit: If you have issues or questions relating to your pending case, you must contact your Case Analyst directly. If you do not know who your Case Analyst is, you can email hearingsunit@oaklandca.gov to find that information, or you can look up your case information here.

Petition and Response Review/Filing: You have the option to schedule an appointment for review of your petition or response before filing. To schedule an appointment for review, email rap@oaklandca.gov. If you do not want your petition or response reviewed and are ready to file, please submit your petition or response to hearingsunit@oaklandca.gov .

Eviction Notices: To file eviction notices online, click here. Eviction notices may also be scanned and submitted via email to evictionnotices@oaklandca.gov.

By Mail

Address: 250 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Suite 5313, Oakland, CA 94612

Due to the Shelter-in-Place Order, we are no longer accepting in-person petition and related materials. All new petitions and petition-related documents can be submitted by mail to the address above.

Ellis Act Cases

All documents for Ellis Act cases must be mailed to 250 Frank Ogawa Plaza, Suite 5313, Oakland, CA 94612. For more information on Ellis Act cases, click here.

Online Petition Filing

We also offer an online portal where you can fill out and submit your petitions and all petition-related forms online. Click here to access the portal.

Request a Form

General forms can be found on our website. For property owner forms, click here. For tenant forms, click here. If you cannot find the RAP form that you are looking for, you can email the Rent Adjustment Program at rap@oaklandca.gov to obtain it.

Request a Document/Public Records Request (PRR)

To request documents related to a case, you can either complete the Request for Copies form and email it to rap@oaklandca.gov or make a Public Records Request (PRR) here. Please note that all PRRs are public information. You can look up certain information related to cases through the RAP database.

Join the Email List

If you would like to receive emails about upcoming events or updates from the Rent Adjustment Program, please sign up! Please use the link below to add your name and email to our list for future updates.

Join the RAP email list!