housing

Pomona City Council Quietly Reverses Course on Rent Cap Ordinance

Updated 10/31/2025 6:11 am PST

Illustration by Julian Lucas

A week after the Pomona City Council quietly rejected a second reading of the city’s rent-stabilization ordinance, residents are still waiting for an explanation. The Oct. 20 vote, taken by computer, without discussion, blocked a measure that would have made Pomona’s temporary rent cap permanent.

Four councilmembers voted with property, not with people.

Pomona’s housing fight came to a head again Monday night. The City Council voted 3–4 to reject the second reading of Ordinance No. 4359, a measure that would have made the city’s temporary rent-stabilization law permanent.

According to city of Pomona archived city council meeting video review by The Pomonan, the council voted 3–4 on October 20 to reject the ordinance. Official minutes have not yet been released by the City Clerk.

Mayor Tim Sandoval, along with council members Victor Preciado and Nora Garcia, voted yes.

Debra Martin, Elizabeth Ontiveros-Cole, Steve Lustro, and Lorraine Canales voted no, blocking the ordinance.

The measure would have given renters long-term stability in a city where nearly half of all households rent. Instead, Pomona remains under the temporary protections first passed in 2022.

Sandoval says he plans to bring the ordinance back, without the rental-registry component. Not out of appeasement, but because he’s searching for a version that can survive a council split between homeowners and the renters they represent. But good intentions don’t outvote a class majority.

In past debates, opponents called rent control ‘too costly’ and ‘too bureaucratic,’ pointing to the $82,000 cost of the city’s rental-registry software. There was no discussion this time, just a quiet, digital vote that said enough.

This wasn’t about software. It was about priorities.


All four “no” votes came from those who have other property or lean in the favor of landlords.
This is class alignment.

Debra Martin is part of Pomona’s old guard, a returning councilmember whose politics protect property values over people. Public reporting indicates she owns property in Pomona.

Steve Lustro, a longtime city planner, speaks in procedure, but votes to keep things as they are.

Elizabeth Ontiveros-Cole often frames herself as an advocate for small landlords, repeating the same government overreach lines that have echoed through city politics for decades.

Lorraine Canales, newer to the council, leans conservative and votes like it — protect property, stall change, calls it caution, a pattern visible in her recent votes.

Lets not forget, California’s Proposition 13 already handed home and property owners a permanent tax break while draining public revenue from schools, housing, and city services. Renters have been paying the difference ever since. Monday night was another reminder of how that story plays out locally, how policy, comfort, and silence all work together to keep things exactly as they are.

Pomona doesn’t need another temporary fix.
The city needs honesty and courage, and a new council willing to take risks, not the old guard, or the new guards clinging to old ideas.


Update October 31, 2025

The Pomona City Council is set to revisit rent stabilization on Monday, November 3. The revised ordinance maintains the 5 percent annual rent cap but removes the rental-registry system that would have tracked increases and ensured compliance. It also adds a December 2026 sunset clause, meaning protections will expire unless renewed by future council action.

The new draft also expands landlord exemptions and broadens the definition of “nuisance,” which tenant observers warn could make the law harder to enforce and easier to evade. Critics argue that, without a registry and permanent timeline, the ordinance keeps the cap in name only—leaving renters to police the system themselves.

Read the proposed ordinance and staff presentation:

The Pomonan editorial board consists of opinion journalists whose perspectives are shaped by their expertise, research, discussions, and established principles. This board operates independently from the newsroom.

UPDATE: Is Senate Bill 79 good for Claremont?

In the next three days our State Assembly and State Senate will vote on SB 79, a Housing development bill.

SB 79 was recently amended, and what this now means for Claremont is that if SB 79 passes, the bill would upzone these areas from our train station in downtown Claremont to the following heights and densities:

• Within 1/4 mile – 65 feet (6 stories), 100 units per acre, Floor Area Ratio of 3.0 which means the total built-up area of the building can be up to 3 times the size of the land plot.

• Within 1/2 mile – 55 feet, (5 stories), 80 units per acre, Floor Area Ratio of 2.5 which means the total built-up area of the building can be up to 2.5 times the size of the land plot.

In addition, SB 79 allows for buildings immediately adjacent to our train station to be 8 stories high, with commensurate increase in density.

The proposed Village South development, just south of the train tracks on the west side of Indian Hill to Arrow Highway is 24 acres. Excluding streets, this could mean that the state would allow something like 1500 to 2,000 units at Village South. SB 79 disallows the City of Claremont from modifying that amount of units, providing green space or anything else. The density will be determined by the state, with no local input.

Under SB 79, only 10% of our historic buildings and neighborhoods with that half mile radius can be protected - the rest can be sacrificed.

Yes! to height and density by our train stations. But tell your state senator and assembly member we want to build a better bill.

We can build housing AND preserve historic communities, too.

Senator Sasha Renée Pérez Phone: (916) 651-4025

Assembly member John Harabedian Phone: (626) 351-1917

Pamela Casey Nagler is currently finishing her book, A Century of Disgrace: The Removal, Enslavement, and Massacre of California’s Indigenous People 1769 - 1869.

Prop 13 Is Killing California, But We’re Too Nostalgic to Admit It

There’s no polite way to say it, but proposition 13 has slowly killed California, gutted our schools, choked out our housing market, and shielded corporations from paying their fair share. But try bringing that up in a room full of California homeowners and you’ll be met with something between a hiss and a heart attack, especially from those in burbs.

Prop 13 has become a sacred cow, sold to us as the measure that saved homeowners from being taxed out of their properties. And while it may have once served a purpose, today it’s a policy zombie, dead logic still roaming the halls of Sacramento, kept alive by nostalgia, fear, and misinformation.

Let’s break the myth: Prop 13 doesn’t protect the working class, it protects those who bought early and big. The system punishes new homeowners and renters, locks in generational inequality, and grants absurd tax breaks to corporations that haven’t had their properties reassessed since the late 1970s [1].

While you’re paying market rate for a one-bedroom in Pomona, Chevron is sitting on commercial land taxed like it’s 1982. Is that fairness? Is that equity? No, it’s a long con dressed up as property rights.

And let’s not forget how Prop 13 gutted funding for public schools and local services. Before 1978, California ranked among the top states for education funding. Now? We’re lucky if schools have working HVAC systems. That isn’t accidental. That’s what happens when you starve local governments for decades and expect them to run on fumes and bake sales [2].

Prop 13 was a political coup wrapped in populist language. It passed with bipartisan support, but its legacy is bipartisan failure. Even Jerry Brown, who was governor when it passed, embraced it after the fact. No one wanted to touch the “third rail” of California politics, even as the damage became obvious.

SO WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT IT?

We stop pretending this policy is sacred. We start telling the truth about who it protects and who it punishes. That means having the courage to:

Close the commercial loopholes. It’s obscene that Disneyland and Chevron are taxed like it’s still 1978 while working families pay full freight. The 2020 attempt (Prop 15) to fix this nearly passed. With better organizing and clearer messaging, it could pass next time [3].

Introduce a progressive reassessment structure. We can protect elderly and low-income homeowners while still updating the assessed value of properties, especially investment homes and land banking schemes that drive up rent and displacement.

Use the additional revenue to reinvest locally. Public schools, housing, transit, and healthcare have all been starved for decades under Prop 13. Restoring local funding would actually make California livable again—not just for the wealthy, but for working people who built this state.

This isn’t about punishing success, it’s about undoing structural protections for inherited wealth and corporate hoarding that are actively destroying access to opportunity for everyone else.

And yes, the governor matters. And yes, so do state policies. But let’s stop blaming every problem in California on whoever’s in office and start calling out the policies that have quietly driven this crisis for decades.

Because while we’re yelling at governors, blaming immigrants, and pointing fingers at social programs, the real culprit has been quietly sitting there for decades, untouched and untouchable.

But maybe it’s not untouchable anymore.

Maybe The Pomonan just touched it.

This is your sacred cow. Consider it tipped.

Julian Lucas, is a photographer, a purveyor of books, and writer, but mostly a photographer. Don’t ever ask him to take photos of weddings or quinceaneras, because he will charge you a ton of money.