With rents set to rise early next year, L.A. City Council faces next test on tenant protections

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Julia Wick, with a hand from Rebecca Ellis.

Nine months ago, Los Angeles City Council passed its most sweeping tenant protections in decades. The move came under the gun: This was late January, and the city’s long-standing COVID-19 anti-eviction rules were set to expire at the end of the month, potentially setting off a wave of evictions.

Now, a city beleaguered by a brutal homelessness crisis finds itself at the next crossroads in the long tail of the COVID-19 emergency. Come February, landlords will be able to raise the rent on many tenants for the first time since the emergency protections went into effect in early 2020. The rules apply to units that fall under the city’s rent stabilization ordinance, which generally applies only to apartments built before October 1978 and accounts for roughly three-quarters of all multifamily rental units.

Tenant advocates argue that allowing landlords to raise rents by 7% (or up to 9% if landlords pay utilities) could be catastrophic. It would push even more Angelenos into homelessness at a time when the city has been desperately trying to keep its most vulnerable renters housed, they say. Housing providers contend that they’ve already been unable to raise rents for more than three years, at a time of soaring inflation and many other increased expenses.

Last week, Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez introduced a proposal to freeze RSO rents for another six months, giving the city Housing Department time to complete an economic study on the formula setting for allowable rent increases in RSO units. Soto-Martínez has described himself as the only tenant on the City Council and lives in an RSO unit in East Hollywood.

That proposal was the subject of heated debate Wednesday in the city’s housing and homelessness committee, which is chaired by Councilmember Nithya Raman, another progressive who led the city’s earlier tenant protection efforts.

For roughly an hour, tenants gave impassioned testimony in English and Spanish about their fears of losing their homes if rents rise, and housing providers spoke about the difficulties they’ve faced maintaining buildings and paying rising fees as rents remain stagnant. Ultimately, Councilmember Bob Blumenfield proffered a compromise “that nobody’s gonna like� but would still allow the council to move forward, he said.

Raising potential legal issues about a continued rent freeze, Blumenfield suggested capping the amount at 4% instead of 7%. (Under that formula, the allowable increase would rise to up to 6% in situations where landlords pay utilities.)

“There’s no good answer here,� said Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson. “Any city where we’ve frozen rent for four years, and the cost of living has still gone up to the point where we’re close to New York — the idea of raising anybody’s rent is a terrible idea.�

On the other hand, he said, housing providers have to be able to pay for trash, utilities and upkeep, and the city still sends inspectors out to fine landlords because they haven’t done work “that we are not allowing you to raise money in order to do.�

Raman spoke about the precarity faced by the city at the moment, with more people falling into homelessness daily, even as hundreds of millions of dollars are spent to stanch the crisis, along with the challenging environment for small landlords. She supported Blumenfield’s amendment, she said, because she didn’t think the item would move forward otherwise and she wanted it to get to full council.

The compromise proposal will come before the full council on Wednesday, according to City Council President Paul Krekorian spokesperson Hugh Esten. That vote will be the council’s next major test on tenant protections, and it’s unclear whether Soto-Martínez may try to float another alternative proposal before then or during the meeting.

“We’re looking at our options, and if we have the chance to fight for something better, we’ll do it,� Soto-Martínez spokesperson Nick Barnes-Batista said Friday morning.

But it’s equally unclear whether Soto-Martínez and his allies would have the political will for a compromise that tenants like better than Blumenfield’s. Doing so would be an uphill battle; the amended version narrowly passed the committee on a 3-2 vote.

Councilmembers John Lee and Monica Rodriguez both voted against it, raising concerns about disincentivizing housing providers from operating in the city and having them disproportionately shoulder the burden.

If the council doesn’t accept Blumenfield’s 4% proposal or come up with something else, landlords will be able to raise rents in RSO units by 7% in February.

State of play

— SUSPECTED DUI: State Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo, who is running for an Eastside seat on the Los Angeles City Council, was arrested in Northeast Los Angeles early Friday morning on suspicion of drunk driving, authorities said. Carrillo, along with several other contenders, is fighting to unseat Councilmember Kevin de León in CD 14.

— LAWSUIT: Speaking of CD 14, anti-police activist Jason Reedy is suing De León and the city, saying the holiday toy giveaway where he was involved in a physical altercation with De León last year did not have sufficient security to protect the public.

— SLOWING THE ROBOTAXI ROLL: Mayor Karen Bass asked regulators Wednesday to increase their scrutiny of automated taxis and said the city should have a say in how they are regulated.

— COUNTY RENT RELIEF WOES: After a sluggish rollout, Supervisors Kathryn Barger and Holly Mitchell demanded an audit this week of the county’s rent relief program for mom and pop landlords. This January, the supervisors teamed up to ask the county’s Department of Business and Consumer Affairs to start distributing $45 million to small property owners for back rent owed starting April 2022. Nearly a year later, they say the department has barely started, leaving small landlords in the lurch.

— BALLOT DEAL: Los Angeles City Council President Paul Krekorian has struck a deal with the politically powerful hotel workers’ union to remove a measure from the March election ballot that would have required hotels to participate in a city program to put homeless residents in vacant hotel rooms.

— GAZA ESCAPE: A Los Angeles city employee who was trapped in Gaza for weeks has been safely evacuated from the besieged territory, according to the mayor’s office.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s program to combat homelessness did not conduct an operation this week.

• On the docket for next week: Friday is Veterans Day.