Most SLO renters don't know their rights

Author

Carly Heltzel
November 10, 2025

Good morning. It’s Monday, and I’m reading through the complete list of 2026 Grammy nominations. Onto the five Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and California stories you need to know for today.

1.

Most of SLO renters don’t know their rights, city council said. Roughly 62% of the city are renters and a statewide tenant protection act applies to 36% of the rentable units in SLO. This act places restrictions on the amount landlords can increase rent and protects renters from being evicted without good reason. The city is hoping to increase awareness of these protections. “Renters, from seniors to students, are struggling,” one city official said.

2.

During hazing prevention week, experts and frat bros argued that hazing is an unsafe practice with real-life risks, including deaths from alcohol poisoning. In a keynote address, one expert said that making people feel unsafe isn’t the way to bond with new members and can deter people who would otherwise thrive in the Greek system. “I don’t think you can create true meaningful connections by breaking somebody down, forcing them into a mold,” one brother said.

3.

SLO parents are campaigning to force PG&E to pay $7.5 million to local school districts. The state allowed Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant to continue operating past its decommissioning date, but PG&E, which operates the plant, no longer has to pay a tax to local governments to compensate them for the risk of living near a nuclear plant. That’s causing the budget deficit of $7.5 million for local schools wreaking havoc on programs and services offered.

4.

In other nuclear plant news, California’s commission to protect the coast is demanding PG&E conserve thousands more acres of land in order for Diablo Canyon to continue operating. The commission argues that this is warranted to offset the negative environmental impact the plant causes to the cove nearby. Diablo Canyon dumps 2.5 billion gallons of warm water used to cool the plant’s reactors into the ocean every day, fundamentally changing the cove’s habitat. 

5.

Steps away from Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, where celebrity handprints and signatures are imprinted into the sidewalk, lies another strip of sidewalk nodding to a different genre of celebrity: porn stars. The mainstream walk boasts 18 blocks to the porn industry’s one block, but nonetheless their immediate proximity legitimizes the parallel rise of the porn industry alongside, and at times outpacing, studio actors’ stardom. One professor of cinema said the porn walk prints “belong in a museum, frankly.”