If there were such a thing, it had fatigued and/or rusted to such a degree that it clearly failed to contain sufficiency energy because a ceiling tile had to be replaced and the ceiling above that had to be patched. (Cheap rental house with ancient crap.) Don't rely on safety properties as a first-line defense, they are a fail-safe, and sometimes they just don't work.
Building code changes usually aren't applied to existing structures. Retaining cables were not a requirement in the early days.
Sometimes code changes are applied at the time of sale -- either by law, by the buyer as a condition of sale, or by a lender as a condition of loan.
Pretty sure retaining cables fall into the first (by law) category, for the safety reasons you mention. It's definitely something that building inspectors look for.
But yeah, rental property is infrequently sold and almost never managed proactively.
California municipalities will come looking for property owners who fail to perform seismic retrofits, but I've never heard of anyone hunting down retaining cable scofflaws.