As someone who travels for work a decent amount (sometimes in California) I can confirm that the hotel’s policy is to have a credit card on file, if the reservation was made directly to the hotel they’ll usually allow you to use the same card used for payment for the hold they place for incidentals and room damage, this isn’t the case if they used Expedia or another third party booking service. In that case you would have to give them a debit or credit card at check-in to cover the deposit.
Interestingly, I’ve stayed in LA/Long Beach area enough to where I’ve booked pretty decent rooms and I’ve also booked the $60 a night flop houses after a 15 hour day of work when all I need is to get sleep before traveling home. The shittier the hotel, the stricter they’ll be about deposits, I found a $70 room one time that I had booked online, in Long Beach in a situation where I was flying in to town around midnight and to be at work at 6 so I saved the company some money and got a cheap room (the kind Lucas would definitely frequent) and when I arrived they wanted a $100 cash deposit. After arguing with the guy and proving I wasn’t a homeless degenerate with my business card and company credit card that had matching info he instead took a photocopy of my credit card and apologized, citing homeless and drug addicts as the reason he has strict guidelines about checking in. They also had strict security to ensure nobody had visitors.