Utility Charge backs to existing tenants

[Joe Black]

Hello,

I plan to purchase a 5 unit apartment. Currently the owner pays for all utilities. Of course I'd like to increase NOI by billing tenants for gas/electric utilities.

My questions are:

1) can I legally do this (I live in California) to long term tenants who are on month to month leases?

2) Many of these tenants haven't signed an updated lease in years, so would that impede my ability to require them to sign an updated lease that includes utility bills?

3) do utilities qualify as a "rent increase" in CA? We now have statewide rent control so I'm not sure how this impacts my ability to charge back their full allocation of utilities.