What if you had to pay for your neighbors’ utilities—or for the cost of your landlord’s failure to fix a leaky pipe?

That’s exactly what happens under Ratio Utility Billing Systems, or “RUBS”—a billing method used by landlords to charge tenants for utilities in buildings that lack submeters. Rather than paying for their own usage, tenants are forced to cover a portion of the building’s total bill. If one tenant leaves the shower running for 24 hours, or if a landlord refuses to repair a leak, everyone’s bill goes up—and nobody sees why.

“RUBS encourage landlords to act like a slumlord, pushing the costs of neglectful maintenance onto tenants and hurting the environment to squeeze more profit,” says Alex Ferrer, a researcher at UCLA. Environmental and utilities experts have criticized RUBS as a wasteful practice that misaligns conservation incentives and hinders critical progress on submetering. RUBS are outlawed in West Hollywood and other jurisdictions, but widely used in Los Angeles and across California.

Now, tenants in two Equity Residential buildings in Los Angeles, Virgil Square Apartments and Mozaic at Union Station, are organizing to demand that the city of Los Angeles and the state of California ban RUBS altogether. In 2023, Los Angeles City Council ordered the Los Angeles Housing Department to issue recommendations to address some of tenants’ concerns about RUBS, but no action was ever taken.

We know that tenants across Los Angeles and California (and beyond!) are frustrated with RUBS. Sign our petition to show legislators how many tenants want this change and to learn more about our campaign in the future!