RUBS

In Alicia Yu’s first post-college apartment, a studio in Burbank, monthly utility costs were calculated through a process she’d never heard of. Her landlord had hired a third-party service to determine her share of the building’s utility costs using a formula unrelated to her actual usage — a system that critics say can leave tenants with wildly unpredictable bills. Her bills, calculated using what’s called a Ratio Utility Billing System, or RUBS for short, were initially manageable, typically totaling $40 to $80 per month. But when Yu moved to a different studio apartment in Koreatown, in another building managed by a landlord that uses the same approach to billing, her utility costs shot up to around $140 per month, a total that, she said, varies based on behind-the-scenes calculations that she is unable to assess.