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La Suzanna residents Michael Parker and Clarice Hanna in their apartment on Wednesday, Sept. 16th, 2026 in Bankers Hill. \/ Vito Di Stefano for Voice of San Diego<\/p>\nMichael Parker lived in his two-bedroom Bankers Hill apartment in San Diego for five years and for five years, his utility bill had been the same: $60 a month paid to his landlord. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The tenants of La Suzanna got letters in the mail informing them of a utility billing change. Then, last October, an email arrived from a third-party billing company called Livable, welcoming him to its billing service. Livable, it said, would ensure that \u201ceach household pays for its fair share of utility costs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first bill arrived in December. Parker now owed $172.33 for trash. The following month, his share of water and sewer (billed every two months), plus trash pushed his bill to $289.27.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Parker\u2019s landlord, Income Property Advisors, Inc., enrolled him and the tenants of 15 other units at the Bankers Hill apartment building in an increasingly common billing system for renters called ratio utility billing system, or RUBS. \u00a0<\/p>\n
In many buildings, utilities are measured or billed for the property as a whole, rather than by unit. RUBS gives landlords a way to divide those costs among tenants. Under RUBS, a tenant\u2019s bill is based on factors, like the number of occupants, specified by the billing formula, rather than a meter measuring that tenant\u2019s actual use. Different landlords, or billing companies they hire to handle the billing, use different RUBS formulas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In La Suzanna\u2019s case, the landlords decided they wanted tenants to cover a larger share of utilities than the $60 flat fee could. It was an outdated estimate of utility costs, the landlords told Voice of San Diego. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Parker, and most of the other tenants, were pissed. They didn\u2019t like that their bills had skyrocketed and they didn\u2019t trust the RUBS formula. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a shock because we just got the letter in the mail and it didn\u2019t say how much it was going to increase,\u201d Parker said. \u201cIt just said the way they would bill us would be changing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
La Suzanna residents Michael Parker and Clarice Hanna in their apartment on Wednesday, Sept. 16th, 2026 in Bankers Hill. \/ Vito Di Stefano for Voice of San Diego<\/p>\n
La Suzanna\u2019s residents were already friendly with each other, which they attribute to passing one another frequently in the old Spanish-style courtyard of their 1930s apartment building. They started googling RUBS and found a 2023 article by Voice<\/a> about other tenants struggling with sudden increases and unpredictable utility bills. \u00a0<\/p>\n They also discovered a new city law<\/a> that required landlords produce copies of the building\u2019s utility bills.<\/a> San Diego\u2019s Residential Utility Fee Ordinance says landlords cannot charge tenants more for utilities, like water, sewer and trash, than what they\u2019re being billed by the city. Requiring landlords to hand over their bills is supposed to help tenants verify that. \u00a0<\/p>\n Backed up by the new law, the La Suzanna tenants demanded to see their property\u2019s bills from the building manager, Tom Gelinas. They informed him that no one would be paying their utility bills until he complied with the city law and turned over the bills. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNo RUBS tenants copied on this email are going to pay their water, sewer, or trash bills until we see a clear breakdown every month of how these costs are being determined,\u201d the tenants wrote. \u201cWe are sympathetic to the rising costs of doing business but the majority of tenants already receive yearly rent increases that can be used to cover those rising costs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n A day later, Gelinas sent them the building\u2019s trash, water and sewer bills. The trash bill was nearly $4,000 per month, the most significant portion of the residents\u2019 bills.\u00a0<\/p>\n Initially, the property manager told them the private trash hauler came four times a week. The tenants argued that couldn\u2019t be true. Noise from the trash truck wakes them up, they said, so they knew trash and recycling were almost always collected once per week. They started monitoring trash pickups with a camera to prove it and told the landlord as much.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gelinas later informed the residents he\u2019d successfully negotiated a decrease in the building\u2019s trash bill by $500 after they\u2019d come to him. (Gelinas later said property management was already negotiating with the trash company to lower the bill.) The building\u2019s trash bill, which Gelinas later provided to tenants, dropped to $3,122.\u00a0<\/p>\n The tenants weren\u2019t appeased. \u201cIt puts the burden on tenants to keep track of things,\u201d Parker said. \u00a0<\/p>\n And the utility bill strike continued. \u00a0<\/p>\n The Company That Bills the Tenants\u00a0<\/p>\n Dan Sharabi is the co-founder and CEO of Livable the utility billing company used by the landlords of La Suzanna. Landlords can divvy out costs on their own using a RUBS formula, or they can hire one of the many third-party billing companies in this niche marketplace. \u00a0<\/p>\n Sharabi says landlords typically come to him out of necessity.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTypically, they\u2019re in pain, right? And the pain is, \u2018My water rates are going up, my tenants don\u2019t care,\u2019\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to Sharabi, RUBS is intended to encourage tenants to conserve by making them financially accountable for their consumption.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou tie someone\u2019s usage to their wallet and they pay attention,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sharabi pointed to the tenants\u2019 involvement in efforts to reduce La Suzanna\u2019s trash bill as a win for all parties involved. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cA tenant base, you\u2019re telling me, was mobilized to save money for themselves and the housing provider? I mean, that to me just reinforces that [RUBS] works,\u201d Sharabi said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sharabi started Livable in 2020 in San Francisco during the Covid-19 pandemic. The company\u2019s first blog posts pitch RUBS as a way to help property owners reduce their environmental footprint \u2013 the idea being that tenants will use less, because they are no longer being charged a flat fee \u2014\u00a0 while generating revenue for their property<\/a>. \u00a0<\/p>\n A Sept. 1, 2020 article warned property owners against the temptation of including utilities<\/a> in the price of rent as a way to attract renters.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt might be tempting to include utilities in the monthly rent in an effort to attract renters. We would argue that such a short-sighted plan could cost owners A LOT in the long run,\u201d the blog post reads. \u00a0<\/p>\n Utilities are not fixed costs and tend to rise higher and higher over time, the company argued. \u00a0<\/p>\n The company\u2019s not shy about marketing RUBS to landlords as a way to make \u2014 or \u201crecover,\u201d as the company says \u2014 extra revenue from tenants.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/voiceofsandiego.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/vito-di-stefano-9-16-26-23-1024x684.jpg\")
View from the side of La Suzanna on Wednesday, Sept. 16th, 2026 in Bankers Hill. \/ Vito Di Stefano for Voice of San Diego<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/voiceofsandiego.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/vito-di-stefano-9-16-26-9-1024x684.jpg\")
La Suzanna residents AJ Mu\u00f1a and Izaiah Esguerra-Coloma in their apartment on Wednesday, Sept. 16th, 2026 in Bankers Hill. \/ Vito Di Stefano for Voice of San Diego<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/voiceofsandiego.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/vito-di-stefano-9-16-26-24-1024x684.jpg\")
An Income Property Advisors, Inc. sign outside the La Suzanna building on Wednesday, Sept. 16th, 2026 in Bankers Hill. \/ Vito Di Stefano for Voice of San Diego<\/p>\n