Lakewood, CA Soliciting & Door-to-Door: Solicitor Permits (2026)

Lakewood's own code regulates charitable and religious solicitation directly, through the permit chapter at Sections 4279 through 4279.9, but it does not license commercial door-to-door peddlers or salespeople as a separate business category. For ordinary commercial solicitors, the operative rule is state law: Penal Code Section 602, which opens by declaring that, except for a handful of listed subdivisions, 'a person who willfully commits a trespass by any of the following acts is guilty of a misdemeanor.'

Subdivision (o) is the clause that actually reaches a solicitor who won't take no for an answer. It makes it a trespass to refuse or fail to leave land, real property or a structure that belongs to, or is lawfully occupied by, someone else and is not open to the general public, after being asked to leave either by the owner, the owner's agent or the person in lawful possession directly, or by a peace officer acting at that person's request who has told the solicitor they are doing so. A homeowner does not need a posted sign to invoke it, only the request to leave itself; posting matters mainly because it lets an owner or agent later file a single notarized request good for up to twelve months, so deputies can act on standing authority rather than a fresh call every time.

Subdivision (o) carves out an exception for people engaged in lawful labor union organizing protected by the Alatorre-Zenovich-Dunlap-Berman Agricultural Labor Relations Act or the federal National Labor Relations Act, and for people on the premises at a resident's or management's invitation who are not loitering or suspected of violating the law. Because Lakewood contracts with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department for police service, it is Sheriff's deputies, not city police, who respond to a trespass call against an unwelcome solicitor and can issue the misdemeanor citation.