RUBS stands for “Ratio Utility Billing Systems.” In buildings where landlords use RUBS, tenants do not pay for the utilities (electricity, water, gas) they actually use in their own apartments. Instead, landlords charge tenants a portion of the alleged total utility costs of the entire building according to a formula. 

In the past, utilities costs were usually paid in one of two ways. Either all apartments had individual meters, and tenants would pay for only their own usage–if you went out of town for a month and used no gas, you wouldn’t have to pay for any gas that month. Or, the landlord would pay building-wide utility bills each month and factor those costs into the amount of rent they charged.

1. RUBS transfers utilities costs from corporate landlords to tenants, making cost increases & unpredictability problems for tenants, rather than problems for the landlords.
   

2. RUBS allows corporate landlords to circumvent rent control.  Tenants at Versailles Woodland Hills (an Equity Residential - EQR - building) reported that EQR introduced RUBS after the state limited rent increases. 

3. RUBS allows corporate landlords to mislead tenants about the true cost of their rent. Tenants at Virgil Square, another EQR building in Koreatown, have reported that they were told utilities would be “around $50/month” when they were touring the building.

4. RUBS shields corporate landlords from the damage caused by negligent maintenance practices which cause utilities overuse and leaks. Corporate landlords use RUBS to force tenants to finance repairs involving utilities like water. Tenants from Versailles Woodland Hills have dealt with leaks from EQRs failure to maintain plumbing for years, causing damage to their units and massively inflating their water bills. EQR never had to deal with these costs and only initiated repairs when tenants demanded them.

5. Corporate landlords use RUBS to impose junk fees for administering utilities billing, and to charge tenants for fees their billing companies impose. RUBS bills in EQR buildings include “trash admin fees” and other administrative fees tenants must pay to EQR and Conservice.

6. Corporate landlords bills tenants through RUBS for services that are, by law, the landlord’s financial responsibility.  Tenants in many buildings see charges for Pest Control and additional charges for necessary repairs made to the property.

1. You have no control over how high your utilities fees are! If you’re out of town for three weeks and use much less water, your costs don’t go down.
   

2. Charges can vary a lot from month to month, making budgeting & planning very difficult, possibly increasing more than allowed by rent control.
   

3. You can’t access utility assistance programs that you might otherwise qualify for. (LADWP has a program to reduce utilities costs for low-income tenants - but only if you have your own contract with them.)
   

4. If your landlord is slow to fill vacant units, your costs go up–the total building utilities usage is divided among fewer tenants.

1. Landlords face no incentives to reduce electricity, water, and gas usage by updating or improving their building systems because tenants pay the bills.
   

2. If a building has persistently leaky plumbing or poorly maintained gas and electrical systems, the costs of this waste is split among the tenants. They won’t get fixed unless tenants hound EQR.