Tenants at Virgil Square Apartments in Koreatown are refusing to pay shared utility bills they say have become opaque and unaffordable. One resident, Jo Porter, says the monthly charge she was told would be about $50 when she moved in has climbed to $182 over three years.
Another downtown Los Angeles resident, Hanna Yosef, says her shared bill jumped from $332 to $541 in just a few months, making it hard to budget. The charges are part of a ratio utility billing system, or RUBS, in which a third-party company divides a building’s total utility use among tenants instead of billing each unit separately.
Tenant advocates say residents asked for the calculations behind the bills and copies of the original utility statements, but the property manager and billing company provided only general explanations or directed blame at each other. Dozens of residents have now sent a group letter and started withholding payment, arguing that the system should be banned entirely.
Property owners and billing companies say the method is necessary because installing individual meters in older buildings can be prohibitively expensive. But as the dispute spreads, transparency in shared utility billing has become a broader issue for renters across Los Angeles.
