It’s about to get more difficult for landlords to boot tenants in the city of Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles City Council unanimously passed an emergency moratorium today that will temporarily bar property owners from evicting tenants, unless they have “cause”—for example, they failed to pay rent or violated the terms of a lease.
The ban on “no-fault” evictions is a response to reports from renters, tenant lawyers, and housing advocates that tenants who pay low rents are being evicted to make room for new, higher-paying tenants before California’s rent control law goes into effect in January.
The city’s new ordinance—which will apply to most rental properties built prior to January 2005—is designed to help longterm tenants, said Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell, who he says are being kicked out by the “greediest” of landlords.
“What’s happening out there is shameful,” said Councilmember Bob Blumenfield.
The mayor signed the measure into law this afternoon, and chief assistant city attorney David Michaelson said the moratorium could go into effect as soon as tomorrow.
In a statement, Dan Yukelson, executive director of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles says the moratorium is a “knee-jerk reaction” to recent media coverage of evictions.
He said it will limit property owners’ abilities to remove problem tenants and damage their livelihoods and “their ability to ensure the comfort, security and safety of other residents living at their properties.”
Under the moratorium, landlords will still be able to evict tenants who do not pay their rent. That means property owners may still choose to jack up rents to levels that tenants are not able to afford.
“That’s a lawful way you can evict somebody,” Blumenfield said.
Councilmember Nury Martinez is working with the city attorney’s office to draft a separate temporary moratorium on rent hikes and on evictions caused by failure to pay rent. She said that could be ready for a council vote by as soon as the end of this week.
Olga Ford, an ACCE member who lives with granddaughter and great granddaughter, told the council that her rent recently increased from $1,337 to $2,350.
“It’s too much. We’re begging you all to do something,” she said.
The no-fault eviction moratorium is expected to cover about 138,000 renter households who do not live in units already subject to the city’s rent control ordinance, which protects renters from steep rent increases and arbitrary evictions.
It would apply to eviction notices that were issued before the moratorium is in effect, as long as the eviction notice has not expired and the tenant is still living in the unit.
“If my landlord gave me a 60-day notice to evict 40 days ago and in 20 days, I’d need to vacate… it would stop this eviction in its tracks,” said Michaelson.
Carlos Aguilar, director of organizing for the Coalition for Economic Survival, said that in the wake of Assembly Bill 1482 passing, his organization has seen a “surge” in the number of calls and clinic visits from renters who have been handed no-fault, 60-day eviction notices.
“Their lives have been upended,” he said.
Comments
"in the wake of Assembly Bill 1482 passing, his organization has seen a ’surge in the number of calls and clinic visits from renters who have been handed no-fault, 60-day eviction notices."
What did these dipshits think would happen? Rent control just makes the housing problem worse. He can also plan on seeing a surge in the number of new renters who will no longer be able to qualify for any rental housing because of drastically increased screening requirements now that rent increases are limited and you can’t choose to non-renew a lease to a crappy tenant. Take a chance on somebody? Maybe before, now, not a chance.
By disqusted on 10.22.19 1:45pm
"Take a chance on somebody? Maybe before, now, not a chance."
I will agree with you on that. Part and parcel of the reform should have been to reduce how long it takes to evict someone for non-payment and being a nuisance. Now who is going to want to take a chance?
By calzada on 10.22.19 2:48pm
@Calzada. Indeed, and a new state law banning so-called Section 8 "source of income" discrimination will NOT lead to an increase of voucher holders finding desirable housing. Landlords will now be ever more cautious and pay close attention to a potential tenant’s background, reference, and credit checks.
Expect landlords to give new tenants an initial 6-10 months lease or simply month to month. This way the landlord still has the option of doing a "no cause" eviction should any problems with the tenant come up, as such evictions are still allowed provided the tenant has not been living there a year or more.
By nobody_in_particular on 10.22.19 7:35pm
"Rent control just makes the housing problem worse".
In @disqusted-ese, means it makes life more difficult for the real estate developers and that aggrieved class, the landlords, to make $. Shillers gonna shill.
By Adrian Reynolds on 10.22.19 1:52pm
Rent control only makes sense to stupid people who don’t know any better.
By LADude on 10.22.19 2:07pm
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
By corner soul on 10.22.19 2:21pm
Adrian was calling out that it’s a standard developer talking point to say anti-gouging rent control, with max allowable increases of 9%+ a year, is going to slow down investment in new apartment buildings. Even the smarter YIMBYs don’t believe that. You can still charge whatever you want after you build the units and when someone moves out. Not the end of the world, not even close. Anti-gouging doesn’t work without no fault, the state forgot to put it in.
By calzada on 10.22.19 2:56pm
IIRC, the local LA official NIMBY group specifically didn’t take position on rent control, mostly because so many of its members lived in rent-controlled apartments and enjoyed those benefits.
By Greyvagabond on 10.22.19 5:22pm
@Calzada. You’re correct, but there are militant tenant rights groups that are actively lobbying for the repeal of Costa Hawkins. Although they do not directly admit it, a BIG part of their agenda against the law is the current ban on cities/counties setting the rents on units that become vacant.
If Costa Hawkins is overturned, you will see housing development decrease, as the potential that rent control would apply to new construction AND that local governments would set the rental rates would be too high a risk to justify construction.
By nobody_in_particular on 10.22.19 7:45pm
i agree with you 100%. The ONLY thing that makes no fault eviction bans and anti-gouging rent control tolerable, for most of us, is that there is no vacancy control. Remember, Costa-Hawkins forbids cities from adding vacancy control if it wasn’t there before 1995. Even if Costa-Hawkins were repealed it wouldn’t automatically mean vacancy control. The cities would have to approve that and few ever have, except I believe Beverly Hills?
While I’m not a fan of rent control in general, I don’t think the way it’s been allowed to exist in CA has been that bad for owners. If you compared two buildings, one under LA’s RSO and the other not and both at market rents, there would be almost no difference in the value/price. Sure there are a lot of cases where the RSO building has way lower rents than an identical non-RSO, but that’s because the owner didn’t raise the rents much, for many years, by his own decision.
When he goes to sell the new buyer is going to pay less than he would have if the rents had been increased more frequently and kept closer to market (which AB 1482 allows you to do). The new owner is happy because he didn’t pay very much for the building. Even an RSO landlord can go to market rent when someone moves out. The guy who really cleans up is the one who buys an RSO at a low price, because of several low rent tenants, and ends up turning over those units quickly to market rent, through normal human aging, job transfers or buyouts.
This happens all the time and is another reason RSO buildings, even with several low rent tenants, aren’t cheap in a high demand area like LA. Of course sometimes you lose that bet and end up with tenants who stay forever at those low rents. More risk means a slightly better return on the RSO building, a 4% cap rate instead of a 3%. AB 1482 isn’t going to change that dynamic much.
I could see the Supreme Court deciding that vacancy control, in a situation where the Ellis Act is also repealed, would be a "taking" because that truly would destroy property value and absolutely stop any new construction. You might as well go full commie at that point because no one is going to want to work. (If there was vacancy control with Ellis intact you would see thousands and thousands of units go TIC and wide-spread homelessness.)
So far the rent control we’ve seen wouldn’t come close to meeting that definition. But upzoning residential neighborhoods would because property values would plummet. See the point Justin_Junior makes below. This is why I like our checks & balances system — if the states, cities, developers and tenant groups on the West Coast get too greedy against homeowners/landlords, we would hope a more conservative court would protect our rights and reign them in. This is one reason I support Trump until a better alternative comes along.
By calzada on 10.22.19 9:12pm
It makes sense to people who are already in and enjoying the benefit of a rent controlled apartment in a city where rents are skyrocketing. It may not make sense to the jerk landlord/developer shills.
By Adrian Reynolds on 10.22.19 4:03pm
Or to any lateral or future renters, since their rents are driven up due to the lucky few who benefit. What do you call enjoying a benefit at the expense of literally everyone else…most would call it ‘greedy’…
By disqusted on 10.23.19 2:56pm
If you’re benefiting from rent control as a tenant, you like it and you want to keep it. If you’re a predictable shill for developers and landlords, you’re going to hate it. Rents are very high and tenants need all the protection they can get. Is it perfect? No but it’s not like rent control prevents landlords from raising the rent.
By Adrian Reynolds on 10.23.19 10:24pm
Who do you think builds housing?
By Chugach Chief on 10.22.19 8:14pm
I would question the motives of most developers, they’re not motivated by the fact that housing is a human right nor are they in the charity business.
By Adrian Reynolds on 10.23.19 1:09pm
Are you in the charity business? I assume you draw paychecks for the work you perform…so greedy!
By disqusted on 10.23.19 2:57pm
Sure, I get paid for my work, and so do landlords and developers, but I’m not trying to evict people or jack up rents to line my pockets, nor am I a shill for landlords and developers like you.
By Adrian Reynolds on 10.23.19 10:30pm
"Everyone who has an opinion I don’t like is a shill!"
Such a tired argument. Yawn.
By disqusted on 10.24.19 3:04pm
But that’s what you do constantly on Curbed LA, consistently 100% pro developer and pro landlord, and insulting renters as a class. So here I am offering the counterpoint, insulting the pro developer j.o.’s. Yawn.
By Adrian Reynolds on 10.24.19 4:10pm
Actually it will help developers. Many Mom ‘n Pops will not be able to operate under these conditions and will be forced to sell to developers who will Ellis the rent controlled tenants replace the charming 1920s duplexes and four- plexes with fugly eight units and more, sometimes whole city blocks, and will be able to set the rents in the stratosphere because new construction is not rent controlled.. But the city councilmembers don’t care at all about the plight of low and moderate income renters. All they care about is the contributions developers and the hotel industry give them for serving their interests and allowing them to tear up our neighborhoods and destroy our city.
By lahope on 10.25.19 3:19pm
Great post and you are right about strict rent control (not AB 1482) having that effect on current Mom & Pop landlords and helping developers. I don’t agree with what you said about the city council folks — they pushed back hard on SB 50 and that, more than anything else, is what stalled the damn thing. SB 50 is 100% developer-driven and so is its author Scott Weiner. Everyone knows this. I still remember how nuts disqusted went when the LA City Council took their stand.
In the McMansion thread you can read where Reuven Gradon, a developer, is against Costa Hawkins. I can see a developer being against rent control of any kind but being against the ban on strict rent control (aka vacancy control), which is the main component of CH? The reason for that position is to distress current Mom & Pops so that developers can get the buildings for cheap to do condos.
We need to distinguish between current homeowners and future homeowners, and between current landlords and future landlords. The developers are NOT on the side of current landlords anymore than they are on the side of current homeowners.
They are about building big structures to flip, whether they be new homes or apartment buildings. Therefore they care about the future landlords and homeowners, not the current ones.
By calzada on 10.25.19 5:27pm
A complete ban on no fault evictions runs afoul of the public takings clause and is likely unconstitutional. Other court’s have held that less intrusive rent control laws were constitutional because they still allowed the owners to reclaim the apartments for their own use or demolish the buildings so long as it wasn’t replaced with apartments. However, a blanket ban on evictions where the owner cannot even reclaim the property for their own use is clearly unconstitutional.
This past summer landlords in NY filed a major lawsuit challenging NY’s new rent control laws on the basis that they constituted an illegal taking of property because the rent control laws deprive the landlords of market rent and devalue the properties and the rent control laws cannot be justified since they don’t actually help as they result in low-turnover and higher rental prices. As liberal states try to solve the problem of a lack of housing with more egregious rent control laws (rather than upzoning and increasing supply) it is only a matter of time before they are declared unconstitutional.
By LADude on 10.22.19 2:24pm
You raise an interesting point. While traditional rent control (% increase caps) have avoided being struck down under the takings clause, the prohibition against "no-fault evictions" goes to a core concept of ownership-the right to exclude others-and gives non-owners an lifetime leasehold of sorts on other people’s property. That may go too far, particularly with the conservatives controlling the Supreme Court. Will be interesting to follow.
By MyrnaMinkoff on 10.22.19 3:32pm
I think this is what irritates me the most about this: The sense of entitlement renters have to property that ultimately does not belong to them. The whole concept of renting is a contract between a landlord and tenant in which use of a property is granted in exchange for a fee. How do you modify the terms of an existing contract, effectively binding a landlord to terms not initially agreed to?
By jackulas on 10.22.19 4:04pm
My reply to landlords and their shills: tough shit. Keeps things balanced. If you don’t like it, don’t get in the property business.
By Adrian Reynolds on 10.22.19 4:30pm