A push to bring rent control and other new mandates to the Central Valley city of Merced died Monday, Aug. 17, without a vote, amid opposition from the California Apartment Association and local rental housing providers.

The motion from Councilmember Fue Xiong drew no second, and all five of his colleagues spoke against the plan.

Xiong’s presentation asked the council to direct staff to study rent control, a rental registry, proactive rental inspections, expanded relocation payments, additional restrictions on evictions and a right-to-counsel program for tenants. Several Merced landlords, property managers and real estate professionals spoke against the item during a public comment period that ran more than half an hour. Tenant advocates urged the council to adopt the protections.

In a letter to the council, CAA Senior Vice President Matt McDonald wrote that the presentation “identifies an extensive list of new local mandates … but does not demonstrate that existing state and local protections are inadequate or that these additional regulations are necessary in Merced.” A rental registry, mandatory inspections, a local rent cap and expanded relocation mandates would add costs and administrative burdens for owners with no history of code violations, CAA argued, urging the council to enforce existing law instead.

Merced rental housing remains subject to the state Tenant Protection Act, AB 1482, which caps annual rent increases at 5% plus regional inflation, to a maximum of 10%. For Merced, the limit for increases taking effect on or after Aug. 1 is 8.6%. A local ordinance could have set a lower cap and reached units the state law exempts.

Council members repeatedly pointed to a program they adopted just two months earlier. In June, the council unanimously approved Chapter 8.53, a Repeat Housing Code Violators Program that targets owners with patterns of neglect, unresolved violations or unsafe conditions.

“We literally just addressed this in June,” Mayor Pro Tem Sarah Boyle said. “We unanimously adopted our Repeat Housing Code Violators program, and that program hasn’t even had the opportunity to operate long enough for us to know whether it’s working.”

Boyle said she remained willing to discuss tenant protections generally but objected to the scope of what was presented. “There is significant difference between targeting repeat offenders and creating new requirements that apply to every responsible landlord in Merced,” she said.

Councilmember Darin Dupont called the proposal a non-starter, arguing the issues it raised are already governed by state law. Councilmember Mike Harris said he could not support moving any of it forward and considered it a tremendous overreach. Councilmember Shane Smith said the city had already found its answer in the program it adopted in June.

“I think we found a consensus path forward, which is a way to punish the people who are not doing what they’re supposed to do by presenting habitable housing,” Smith said.

Responding at the end of the discussion, Xiong said rent control and a rental registry were “not the items I am asking us to go forward with,” describing them as larger items listed for context, and said he was seeking narrower protections written into the municipal code. He then moved to direct staff to research ways to expand tenant protections. No one seconded the motion, and Mayor Matthew Serratto declared it failed.

Because the council gave staff no direction, no ordinance is being drafted. The proposal can return to a future agenda.