OAKLAND — Owner-occupied duplexes and triplexes will no longer be exempt from Oakland’s rent control and tenant protection laws.

City Council members voted early Wednesday morning to end the exemption, which tenants rights’ activists called a “loophole” often abused to drive up longtime tenants’ rents or force them out. Council members Rebecca Kaplan, Sheng Thao, Dan Kalb, Noel Gallo and Nikki Fortunato Bas voted in favor of the ordinance after midnight, in the seventh hour of Tuesday’s City Council meeting. The ordinance is scheduled for a second and final vote June 4.

Council members Lynette Gibson McElhaney and Larry Reid had left the meeting before the item was considered, and council member Loren Taylor, a duplex owner, recused himself from the vote.

“We need more protection. Even though we have protection in a certain way, there’s landlords that take advantage of a lot of tenants who don’t know their rights,” said Maria Cuevas, who said she has been harassed by her landlord who claims to be living in her duplex.

The council’s decision extends the city’s tenant protection ordinance to tenants of owner-occupied duplexes and triplexes. It provides a procedure for tenants or the city attorney to sue landlords who harass renters or fail to maintain the building.

Tenants’ rights group Causa Justa/Just Cause said on its website that it has encountered cases when landlords would raise tenants’ rents by more than 300 percent after moving in or having a relative move in.

Tensions were high between landlords and tenants at the meeting; a few squabbles followed speakers’ testimony. Several duplex and triplex owners who live in their units felt as though they were being vilified for the actions of a handful of people.

Some owners said they relied on renting out the other units to pay their mortgages, and not being able to raise the rent could put them in a tough financial situation. Some have said it would take away the incentive to rent out their other units, and result in a loss of housing stock.

“We’re not the one-percenters trying to make a huge profit of off this, but now it feels like we’re being punished for a housing crisis that we didn’t create,” said duplex owner Vincent Chang.

Several landlords had urged the City Council to hold off on the vote, since the city staff had not yet gathered information as to how many owner-occupied duplexes and triplexes there are, and how many tenants had their rents unfairly raised.

Gibson McElhaney, before leaving for the evening, urged her colleagues not to vote until more information was available. She said that waiting would not affect any tenants, since a moratorium was still in place barring landlords who live in their duplexes and triplexes from raising the rent above 3.4 percent.

Under the new law, owners of newly covered units can petition for a transitional rent increase equivalent to the Consumer Price Index increase of the last three years as permitted under the city’s rent control ordinance.