[ca] Can Our Landlord Push Us Out Early And Still Make Us Pay Rent Through The End Of Our Lease?

Location: San Diego County, California. We've rented the same single-family home for 10 years. We've always paid on time or early and kept the home in excellent condition. It's owned by a family trust. Our current fixed-term lease runs June 2026 to May 2027, and the lease states the property is exempt from just cause and rent cap rules.

Our son, now 19, has been listed as an approved occupant on every lease since he was 8 years old. That includes our 2025-26 lease, which the landlord signed when he was already 18. The only lease he isn't on is the current one, because he wasn't living at home when we signed it in April. He's been living with us again since early October.

The landlords now say there are too many people in the home. But our 2025-26 lease listed the exact same six occupants: my husband and me, our son, and our three younger children. Same people, same count, approved and signed by the same landlord one year ago. The home is 2 bedrooms plus an office (which can function as a third bedroom) and 2.5 bathrooms.

The lease addendum says guests staying more than 3 days a month "may" be a breach, and the owner "may" require an application. I told them it never crossed my mind to consider our son a guest in the home he grew up in. We're actually the ones who let them know he was home: the HOA requires vehicles to be registered through the homeowner, so we reached out to register his car.

We proposed a resolution: add him back to the lease through the end of our term, and we gave formal notice that we won't renew in May. They haven't explicitly said no. But they've said that even if he applied, they don't think he'd be approved because he doesn't have much credit history. We'd only be asking to add him as an occupant, not as someone financially responsible for the lease.

Instead, they proposed we move out by mid-January, calling it a resolution that helps both of us. When we talked about it being mutually beneficial, one of them said the benefit to us was that they wouldn't serve us formal notice. The landlord also said more than once that this is "just a discussion" and "nothing is set in stone."

I told them we'd be willing to leave in January, as long as the lease ends at that point and we're released from further rent. They've been hesitant to directly respond to this other than a, “Well, we’ll still have to do some work like painting and carpets and anything else…” Obviously, without that, we'd be on the hook for rent until the home is re-rented, which means potentially paying two rents. We were up front and told them we can’t afford that possibility.

Nothing has been served; everything has been verbal. That's unusual for them. They normally handle things like this by email, but on this issue they've only scheduled phone calls and haven't put anything in writing.

It feels like they want us out early so they can paint and update the home between January and May, while we keep paying rent on a place we no longer live in.

My main question: can they do this? Can they use this situation to push us out early and still hold us responsible for rent through May?

Related questions if anyone can speak to them:
How strong is their breach or overcrowding claim, given they approved the identical household last year, when our son was already an adult?

If we leave early at their request without a signed termination, what rent exposure do we realistically have?
What should we insist on before agreeing to leave early?

(I used AI to help organize and write this post, but all the facts are our own.)