CIV § 1942

Deduct Up to One Month's Rent or Vacate: CIV § 1942

CIV § 1942 lets tenants deduct up to one month's rent to repair or vacate. Action after the 30th day is presumed reasonable; allowed twice in a 12-month period.

Official text CIV § 1942 — California
  • (a) If within a reasonable time after written or oral notice to the landlord or his agent, as defined in subdivision (a) of Section 1962, of dilapidations rendering the premises untenantable which the landlord ought to repair, the landlord neglects to do so, the tenant may repair the same himself where the cost of such repairs does not require an expenditure more than one month’s rent of the premises and deduct the expenses of such repairs from the rent when due, or the tenant may vacate the premises, in which case the tenant shall be discharged from further payment of rent, or performance of other conditions as of the date of vacating the premises. This remedy shall not be available to the tenant more than twice in any 12-month period.
  • (b) For the purposes of this section, if a tenant acts to repair and deduct after the 30th day following notice, he is presumed to have acted after a reasonable time. The presumption established by this subdivision is a rebuttable presumption affecting the burden of producing evidence and shall not be construed to prevent a tenant from repairing and deducting after a shorter notice if all the circumstances require shorter notice.
  • (c) The tenant’s remedy under subdivision (a) shall not be available if the condition was caused by the violation of Section 1929 or 1941.2.
  • (d) The remedy provided by this section is in addition to any other remedy provided by this chapter, the rental agreement, or other applicable statutory or common law.

Text as published in the 2026 snapshot of the code.

Source: Vaquill Open US Law, compiled from official state publishers (huggingface.co), reproduced under license CC BY 4.0.

Read this provision at the official source →

What it actually says

Section 1942 gives the tenant two self-help routes and puts hard edges on both. The trigger is the same for each: written or oral notice to the landlord or the landlord's agent of dilapidations rendering the premises untenantable which the landlord ought to repair, followed by neglect to repair within a reasonable time. The tenant may then repair the defect and deduct the cost from the rent when due, provided the cost does not exceed one month's rent of the premises; or the tenant may vacate, and is then discharged from further rent and from the other conditions of the tenancy as of the date of vacating.

Three limits sit on the remedy. Subdivision (a) caps the deduction at one month's rent and allows the remedy no more than twice in any 12-month period. Subdivision (b) supplies the timing presumption: a tenant who repairs and deducts after the 30th day following notice is presumed to have acted after a reasonable time. That presumption is rebuttable, affects the burden of producing evidence, and is expressly not a minimum — the subdivision says it shall not be construed to prevent repairing and deducting sooner where the circumstances require shorter notice, which is what makes a burst pipe different from a cracked tile. Subdivision (c) removes the remedy where the tenant caused the condition in violation of § 1929 or § 1941.2.

Subdivision (d) makes the remedy additional, not exclusive: it exists alongside anything else the chapter, the rental agreement or other statutory or common law gives. That matters because repairing and deducting is the riskiest option a tenant has — if the condition turns out not to have been untenantable, or the cost turns out not to be reasonable, the deduction shows up as unpaid rent. Deciding whether a defect qualifies and what a repair should cost is worth checking with a lawyer or a tenant service before withholding anything.

When it applies

  • A broken heater or water heater that has gone unrepaired for over a month after you told the landlord
  • You paid a plumber yourself and want to take it off the next rent payment
  • A dangerous condition that cannot wait 30 days
  • You want to leave a flat that has become unliveable without owing the rest of the lease
  • The landlord says you had no right to deduct and now claims the rent is unpaid
  • You have already used the remedy once this year and the same thing has broken again

What this section does not say

  • It is not a right to withhold rent. The section allows a deduction for a repair actually made, or vacating; simply keeping the rent while staying is neither, and is not what this section authorises.
  • The cap is per use and the remedy is limited to twice a year. A repair costing more than one month's rent is outside subdivision (a), and a third use inside 12 months is outside it too.
  • The 30 days is not a required waiting period. Subdivision (b) creates a presumption of reasonableness after 30 days, and expressly preserves the ability to act sooner where the circumstances require it.
  • It does not apply to a condition the tenant caused. Subdivision (c) removes the remedy where the condition arose from a violation of § 1929 or § 1941.2.
  • It does not stop a termination. Using the remedy is not by itself protection from a notice — retaliation for exercising it is dealt with separately by § 1942.5.

Worked examples

Invented situations, written to show how the wording bites. They are not real cases, not judgments and not precedent, and nothing here predicts what would happen in yours.

Illustrative example

A tenant reports a broken heater, waits six weeks, then pays an engineer and deducts the invoice from the next rent. The landlord treats the shortfall as unpaid rent.

How the wording applies

Subdivision (a) allows the tenant to spend up to one month of rent on the repair and deduct it, after notifying the landlord and allowing a reasonable time. Two facts decide it: whether the amount spent exceeded one month of rent, and whether more than 30 days had passed since notice, since subdivision (b) presumes 30 days reasonable and six weeks is comfortably past it.

How the parties settled it

The deduction is accepted up to one month of rent, the tenant pays any excess over that figure, and the landlord takes over the service contract for the heater.

Illustrative example

A tenant finds an exposed live cable in a hallway cupboard and has an electrician make it safe the same day rather than waiting.

How the wording applies

The 30 days in subdivision (b) is a presumption of reasonableness, not a waiting period, and the section expressly preserves acting sooner where the circumstances require it. What this turns on is the nature of the defect: a live cable justifies same-day action in a way a dripping tap does not.

How the parties settled it

The landlord reimburses the electrician's invoice in full and instructs a full electrical inspection of the flat within an agreed period.

Illustrative example

A tenant has already used repair-and-deduct twice in the past twelve months, and the same plumbing failure recurs.

How the wording applies

The remedy is available no more than twice in any 12-month period, so a third use in the same window falls outside the section and the deduction simply becomes unpaid rent. The fact this hinges on is the date of the first use, and it changes what the tenant can safely do next, the alternatives being section 1942.4 after a code citation, or vacating.

How the parties settled it

The landlord replaces the failing section of pipework rather than repairing it again, on a fixed date, and credits the rent for the days the flat is without water.

The same problem elsewhere

The other legal systems in this collection answer the same everyday problem with their own provisions.

The comparison and these one-line summaries are in English.

The landlord will not repair: damp, mould and no heating in 7 jurisdictions

Read the full comparison →

Related sections

CIV § 1941 Landlords Must Keep Dwellings Fit to Live In: CIV § 1941 CIV § 1941.1 Untenantable Rental Standards: CIV § 1941.1 CIV § 1942.4 No Rent After 35 Days Unrepaired: CIV § 1942.4 CIV § 1942.5 180-Day Retaliatory Eviction Ban | CIV § 1942.5 CIV § 1929 Repair damage from own lack of ordinary care (CIV § 1929)

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We copy this text from the official publisher and re-check it against that source on every page load, but we cannot guarantee it is complete, current or free of error, and we accept no liability for any reliance on it. An amendment can take effect before a consolidation catches up. The publisher's own copy is linked below; where the two differ, it is the official one that counts.

This page reproduces the text of CIV § 1942 in force at the date shown and explains it in general terms. It is not legal advice and takes no account of the circumstances of your case, which can change the answer completely. For a live dispute, for limitation periods, and before taking any step in court, consult a qualified lawyer in California.

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