In San Diego trash is covered by property taxes, so we can take that off the table.
For anything that’s metered in common (water to an apartment complex, for example), it’s common for the landlord to average that over a year and factor it into the rent. I’ve never heard of a landlord doing penny-ante nickel and dime accounting of this stuff on a month-to-month basis. Same for dumpster service if the complex uses dumpsters instead of city bins.
I’ve only rented out SFRs, and in that case, they only utility bills are water/sewer, gas/electric, and television/cable, and all of these are in the tenant’s name. There is no reason why you would want to keep these in the landlord’s name and lots of reasons not to.
