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Cal. PEN § 602.9

This is the official text of Cal. PEN § 602.9, part of California’s Penal Code — defines crimes and sets criminal procedure in California.

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Official statutory text

(a) Except as provided in subdivision (c), any person who, without the owner’s or owner’s agent’s consent, claims ownership or claims or takes possession of a residential dwelling for the purpose of renting that dwelling to another is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by a fine not exceeding two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500), or by both that imprisonment and fine. Each violation is a separate offense.

(b) Except as provided in subdivision (c), any person who, without the owner’s or owner’s agent’s consent, causes another person to enter or remain in any residential dwelling for the purpose of renting that dwelling to another, is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by a fine not exceeding two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500), or by both that imprisonment and fine. Each violation is a separate offense.

(c) This section does not apply to any tenant, subtenant, lessee, sublessee, or assignee, nor to any other hirer having a lawful occupancy interest in the residential dwelling.

(d) Nothing in this section shall preclude the prosecution of a person under any other applicable provision of law.

(e) It is the intent of the Legislature that this section shall not preclude the prosecution of a person on grand theft or fraud charges. The Legislature finds that this section has never precluded prosecution of a person on grand theft or fraud charges.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.