Simi Valley, CA Gambling & Gaming: Card Room Licensing (2026)

Simi Valley Municipal Code Chapter 6 outlaws card rooms outright rather than licensing them. 01 defines a "card room" broadly: any business house, house, room, apartment, or place where cards are played for money, checks, chips, credit, or any other representative of value. 02 then makes it unlawful for any person to keep, conduct, or maintain a card room, or to knowingly permit a building, room, or place he owns or controls to be used as one. There is no permit process, no application to the Chief of Police, and no zoning overlay that legalizes the activity, unlike the city's separate sexually oriented business or massage chapters.

03, exempts card games played in private homes for purely social purposes: a poker night among friends with no rake, no admission fee, and no one running the game as a business. Charging a seat fee, taking a cut of pots, or opening a room to paying customers falls under the prohibition. Because Chapter 6 sets no chapter-specific penalty, enforcement runs through the Code's general violation provisions in Title 1. ) requires cities that want licensed card rooms to adopt an authorizing ordinance; Simi Valley never did, so the state licensing framework is simply never triggered here.