LA County Adopts Temporary Rent Control For Older Apartments
Rent hikes for some 50,000 older apartments in unincorporated Los Angeles County will be capped at 3 percent for six months, giving county leaders time to evaluate a panel’s recommendation that the county enact rent control permanently.
Following two hours of comments from more than 100 speakers, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 on Tuesday, Sept. 11, to approve a temporary rent cap aimed at helping struggling tenants keep their homes in one of the nation’s most expensive housing markets.
County staff now has two months to draft the final language of the proposed ordinance, which also will include “just cause eviction” provisions, limiting when landlords can oust tenants in good standing. Rents in effect as of Tuesday will serve as the baseline for future hikes.
“A bright light is shining on our board today. And part of it has to do with the relief (we’re providing renters),” Supervisor Hilda Solis said at the start of the hearing in downtown Los Angeles. “We know that we’re not going to be able to build enough houses in the immediate future. … We need more remedies. We need more tools in our toolbox. “
The action comes a week after the board gave final approval to a similar rent cap for mobile homes. And it follows recommendations from a 10-member citizen “working group” last month that the county adopt permanent rent control.
Supervisor Kathryn Barger cast the sole vote against the measure, saying she could support such a motion only if amended to guarantee landlords the ability raise rents on vacant units and other safeguards.
“Tenant protections can have the effect of backfiring,” Barger said before the vote. “We have all heard stories of how rent control helped people who they are not meant to assist: High-wage earners.”
Chanting “Fight, fight, housing is a human right,” about 30 rent control supporters marched through downtown Tuesday morning, then were joined by about 70 more for a rally on the steps of the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration.
“Landlords don’t need to gouge tenants to make a return on their investment,” rent control supporter Beverly Roberts, owner of a South Los Angeles rental home, told the crowd.
Renter Pauline Torres said she’s going to have to vacate her apartment in unincorporated East Los Angeles because her building’s new owner raised her rent by more than $300 a month.
“We don’t want to be homeless,” she said.
Under the state’s Costa-Hawkins Act, rent control is limited to apartments, duplexes and triplexes built before 1995. County staff estimated unincorporated areas of the county have about 50,000 units — about 4 percent of all apartments countywide — eligible for rent control under Costa-Hawkins.
Currently, just six Southern California cities — including Los Angeles, Santa Monica and West Hollywood — have rent-controlled apartments.
Board Chairwoman Sheila Kuehl said it’s too soon to say whether rent control would be expanded to houses, condos or newer apartments if California voters approve Proposition 10, a measure to repeal Costa-Hawkins on the Nov. 6 ballot.
Representatives of the Los Angeles Coalition for Responsible Housing Solutions, whose members include landlords, Realtors and business associations, opposed the rent cap, saying rents aren’t going up this year as fast as they were over previous years.
“There’s no reason for them to support this,” Beverly Kenworthy, vice president of the California Apartment Association, said in an interview before the meeting. “Rents are not going to go down until we increase our supply. … Rent control does not address that.”
Throughout the meeting, landlords and others opposing the rent cap conceded that housing is unaffordable and action is needed to help renters.
The coalition said it supports such tenant protections as relocation funds when apartments are sold, tenant-landlord mediation and increased code enforcement inspections. But not rent control.
Landlord after landlord came forward repeating the same phrase: “Rent control does not work.”
“Existing research and existing economic data out there says it’s harmful,” said David Kissinger, government affairs director for the South Bay Association of Realtors, who attended the working group’s meetings. Kissinger took issue with Kuehl’s recent statement calling such assertions “mythology.”
“This is not mythology. This is math and science,” Kissinger said. Tuesday’s vote, he said, amounts “de facto rent control” that likely will remain in effect “for the foreseeable future.”
Several small owners and landlord representatives said rent control will spell the downfall of mom and pop landlords, some who mortgaged their homes and bought properties based on market rents.
Mom and pop landlords are “being clubbed like baby seals with this rent freeze,” said Janet Gagnon of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles. “Make no mistake. This rent freeze is a lethal injection to all mom and pop landlords. You will see for sale signs popping up all over when this measure passes.”
Kuehl agreed that mom and pop apartment owners “are going the way of mom and pop farmers.” Not because of rent control, she said, but because rentals are being bought up by private equity firms like Blackstone.
Numerous renters and tenants right’s activists came forward with stories of families unable to make ends meet because of rising rents. Susan Hunter of the Los Angeles Tenants Union described one tenant as so distraught “she was going to hang herself.”
Speaking through an interpreter, an elderly Manuel Galarza’s voice cracked as he told supervisors of getting a $350 a month rent hike.
“It’s not that I don’t want to pay,” Galarza said. “It’s just that what I get from the government is not sufficient.”
— Sarah Favot contributed to this report.
Author: Jeff Collins
Source: Orange County Register