How Much Can My Landlord Bill Me for Trash Pickup? [Updated]
City of Beverly Hills allows residential multifamily landlords to pass through to tenants the bimonthly cost of refuse collection and alley maintenance (at the the cost charged by the city) unless the lease or rental agreement explicitly says that the landlord pays for refuse collection. While some tenants already pay, many more will be surprised to learn that an unexpected $50 bucks or so can be added to the monthly rent for a basic service like solid waste collection. Let us explain!
Update The city’s schedule of Taxes and Fees for fiscal year 2023-24 specifies the bimonthly refuse service charge and alley maintenance fee. For alley refuse pickup the bimonthly charge is $39.80. Multifamily customers with curbside collection (dumpsters) are billed $.01377 per square foot of lot and building area which could then be divided by number of units or proportionally by apartment size. To the refuse charge the city adds another charge for alley maintenance in the amount of $55.25 per dwelling unit. For example, a landlord with alley trash cans will pay the city $95.05 every two months. That is $47.53 monthly per dwelling unit. (That figure will vary for landlords with curbside collection.) That is the amount in the FY2023-24 fiscal year (July through June) that can be passed through to a tenant if the rental agreement allows it or is otherwise silent about whether or not the landlord pays for refuse or trash collection. Find these figures highlighted in this excerpt from the city’s Schedule of Taxes and Fees.
What You Need to Know About the Refuse Fee Surcharge
The Beverly Hills rent stabilization ordinance allows the landlord to pass through 100% of that cost to tenants as a surcharge on top of the monthly rent. The relevant section of the rent stabilization ordinance reads:
A. In addition to the rent otherwise permitted by this chapter, the landlord may pass through to the tenant of an apartment unit regulated by this chapter the cost of any refuse fee imposed by the City pursuant to a resolution or ordinance of the City Council. — B.H.M.C. 4–6–8 (REFUSE FEE SURCHARGE)
The refuse fee surcharge pass-through applies to both Chapter 6 tenants and Chapter 5 households. However tenants should understand when the refuse fee can be lawfully passed-through and when it can’t be passed-through. Second, we must be able to recognize when a refuse fee that is passed-through is an accurate reflection of what the landlord is billed. In no circumstance can a tenant pay a pass-through greater than the city’s charge to the landlord.
The key points:
- Landlords may pass on 100% of the cost of the city’s refuse charges (called a ‘refuse fee surcharge’) so long as the rental agreement doesn’t say that the landlord pays for refuse. If the rental agreement says the landlord pays for refuse, then that is a provision that can’t be modified unilaterally by the landlord but instead only by mutual agreement with the tenant. This holds true when a tenancy has transitioned to month-to-month because the terms of the original agreement are still in effect.
- If the rental agreement does not prohibit it then the landlord may pass-through the cost of refuse to a tenant who does not currently pay for refuse. However the landlord must 1) provide written notice of the new pass-through by registered or certified mail no fewer than thirty days in advance of charging for refuse; and 2) provide the tenant with a copy of the landlord’s utility bill. No tenant can pay more than the landlord’s own cost for refuse because it is a pass-through cost.
- The refuse charge is composed of separate fees for solid waste collection and refuse alley maintenance. The current fees are published by the Department of Finance on the Taxes, Fees and Charges webpage and updated in July at the start of the fiscal year
- Refuse is billed by the city bimonthly on a per-unit basis except for those multifamily buildings that have trash picked up curbside (instead of using alley cans). This service is billed by the city on a per-square foot basis and is apportioned to tenants according to a formula which must be provided to tenants (along with the utility bill). Because the refuse is a bimonthly charge, it must be divided by two in order to determine the correct monthly pass-through cost.
Real World Example
A few years ago a tenant provided us with a notice of rent increase which included a line-item for the refuse fee pass-through. The notice included a copy of the landlord’s utility bill, as required. Was the refuse pass-through calculated correctly?
The landlord didn’t explain how the $58.38 refuse pass-through was determined. We couldn’t square the figures so we did some digging.
First we went to the city’s Schedule of Taxes and Fees (available on the Finance website) to determine the current bimonthly per-unit fees for alley and refuse. According to the fee schedule the correct fees for alley refuse are $21.76 and $36.62 respectively. Total those and it equals a bimonthly refuse charge of $58.38 per dwelling unit.
21.76 + 36.62 = 58.38.
That is the cost paid by the landlord. Again these are the city’s charges.
Next we took the landlord’s refuse bill ($350.28) and divided it by the number of units at that property (6). That produced a bimonthly total refuse charge of $58.38.
$350.28 / 6 = $58.38.
At first glance the refuse line item on the landlord’s notice accurately reflects the city’s charge which would be proper because 100% of the city’s refuse charge can be passed through to a tenant. However it appears that the landlord was attempting to pass-through the refuse fee as a monthly charge. The landlord has added the $58.38 to the base rent to determine the new rent after a rent increase and with the addition of the refuse fee.
That is not correct! The correct monthly refuse pass-through is $29.19 after dividing the bimonthly fee or $58.38 by two to determine the monthly charge. It is a good thing this tenant got in touch with Renters Alliance because the landlord was double-billing the tenant — and likely all six households at the property.
When we did our digging we found that the Rent Stabilization office at first couldn’t provide an accurate figure for the refuse fee. That sent us to the Schedule of Taxes and Fees. Wouldn’t it be easier if RSO provided some means by which a tenant could verify a refuse pass-through? Five years later the RSO website still features no information about pass-throughs…much less the complicated refuse fee pass-through.
If you suspect that your landlord is passing-through a substantially higher refuse fee than is charged by the city then get in touch with the Rent Stabilization Office at 310-285–1031 or get in touch with Renters Alliance.
Rising Refuse Rates…
When we first posted about refuse charges in 2019 the city was billing most residential multifamily landlords $58.38 bimonthly for the ‘refuse fee.’ Most landlords didn’t pass it through to tenants because it was a relatively minor cost of doing business and so leases did not normally put that cost on to the tenant. Also the refuse fee hadn’t changed much over the years (typically increasing with inflation) and so it didn’t attract much attention.
Then the city raised rates. Today, in fiscal year 2023-24, that refuse fee is $95 bimonthly. That’s almost double because City Council in 2020 agreed to raise the multifamily rates sharply for both solid waste collection and alley maintenance sharply. And a much greater share of the rising-rates burden fell on multifamily landlords compared to single-family customers.
In fact the city’s rate hike schedule has multifamily solid waste collection rates rising 50% faster than for single-family customers. Once the rate hike is fully phased-in, multifamily customers will pay fully double what they paid for solid waste collection in 2019. Single-family customers will pay 60% more.
The news is even worse where alley maintenance cost is concerned: multifamily customers by the end of the phase-in period will pay 170% more for alley maintenance than they paid in 2019. Single-family customers see a more moderate rise. By the end of the city’s five-year rate phase-in period, multifamily customers will pay about eight times more than single-family customers for alley maintenance even though multifamily and single-family lots are comparably-sized and share the same alley.
When City Council approved the rate-hike schedule only (former) Councilmember Wunderlich questioned why the burden should fall so disproportionately on multifamily customers.
…Means Landlords Will Pass-Through the Cost to Tenants
Renters Alliance protested the disproportionate effect of the proposed rate hike in an open letter to City Council because we saw that tenants will ultimately pay the city’s sharply higher refuse fee. Either higher rents will cover the higher cost of doing business; or landlords will pass-through the refuse and alley charges.
We went into great detail about that inevitability in two posts: Solid Waste Services Rates are Rising and You May Pay and Proposed Solid Waste Rate Increase Returns to City Council.
New leases will likely include a clause that puts the cost of refuse and alley cost on tenants. In fact the RSO office reports that landlords are more often asking the Rent Stabilization Office about passing-through these charges.
So we expect landlords will inevitably pass through the refuse fee to tenants once they realize that they can pass it through; or they will be sure to include that option in all new leases. That’s why it is important that rent-stabilized tenants understand the refuse fee, when it can be passed-through and how to properly calculate it. (In this explainer we didn’t cover curbside refuse charges because they will vary property-by-property.)
To sum-up: if a refuse fee appears on the rent bill, please check the lease to be sure that the landlord didn’t agree to pay for trash pick-up; then check the math to be sure that the passed-through fee it calculated properly. And if the landlord is only beginning to pass-through the refuse fee, make sure that the notice is proper and in accord with section 4-6-8 of the rent stabilization ordinance (excerpted above). A tenant who has overpaid the refuse fee surcharge will be able to get back any overcharge after contesting it.