More than a half million renters have been evicted in Los Angeles County over the past eight years, according to a new report by Public Counsel and the UCLA School of Law that calls on county supervisors to adopt permanent rent control measures.
Between 2010 and 2018, landlords filed 505,924 eviction proceedings in Los Angeles County Superior Court, a figure that the report, titled “Priced Out, Pushed Out, Locked Out,” calls “shocking” and “staggering.”
That figure is “just the tip of the iceberg,” says Doug Smith, a lecturer with UCLA’s law school, as it does not include evictions that are not processed in court. The report references a separate study that estimates there are two “informal” evictions for every court eviction.
The report’s authors say a cap on rent hikes—along with a number of other tenant protection measures—could cork a swell of homelessness that has left 58,936 residents without permanent homes in LA County.
“The county has made enormous investments in addressing homelessness, but these efforts are not enough,” says Nisha Vyas, director of Public Counsel’s homelessness prevention law project. “What we’re seeing is that as soon as people are housed in shelters, they’re replaced on the streets by people who are newly homeless.”
That’s corroborated by the the Los Angeles County Homeless Services Authority’s 2019 Homeless Count, which found that while 24,493 homeless residents were placed into interim housing in 2018, about 37,000 homeless residents were without shelter for the first time.
In a press call, the report’s authors also reiterated alarming statistics on the number of residents in Los Angeles who are rent burdened, meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent. According to an analysis of 26 point-in-time Southern California homelessness counts, an estimated 600,000 LA County residents spend 90 percent of their income on rent.
“It would be naive to ignore the connection between evictions and homelessness,” says Vyas. “We need to make housing more secure for people at risk of homelessness.
The report draws on court records, census data, and interviews with renters.
“The risk of homelessness was heavy on the mind of nearly every renter we spoke to,” says Smith.
It focuses on unincorporated Los Angeles County, where until recently there were “virtually no protections” for tenants, says Public Counsel staff attorney Greg Bonett, one of the report’s lead authors.
In November, the LA County Board of Supervisors approved a temporary rent control ordinance limiting rent increases in unincorporated Los Angeles County to 3 percent. The ordinance is set to expire on December 31. (Several incorporated cities in the county already have permanent rent control measures on the books, including the cities of Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and West Hollywood.)
There are 88 unincorporated communities in LA County, covering 2,653.5 square miles, including Marina del Rey, East Los Angeles, Altadena, Rowland Heights, Walnut Park, and dozens more.
The report estimates that there are 403,290 tenants living in unincorporated LA County, up since 12 percent since 2010. Of those, it’s estimated that more than 150,000 live in properties eligible for rent control under Costa Hawkins, a state law that places restrictions on local rent control laws.
“There is a devastating connection between the county’s lack of tenant protections and its increased rates of homelessness,” says Smith.
In addition to rent control, the report’s authors recommend that county supervisors mandate relocation payments to tenants who are evicted “without cause” and provide legal counsel to tenants facing eviction in court.
The report also imparts the importance of keeping renters in their home to help stabilize communities. Households that stay intact can help build generational wealth, leading to public investments in parks, streets, and schools.
When tenants are forced out because of exorbitant rent increases, it “tears at the very fabric of our communities,” says Pamela Agustin, an organizer with Eastside LEADS and the Unincorporated Tenants United Coalition.
“While thousands of families have been able to breathe a little easier because of the temporary rent freeze, to feel truly secure, they need long-term protections that only a permanent rent stabilization ordinance can bring,” Agustin said in a statement.
Comments
Well, I’m not "shocked" or "staggered".
By LosFeliz$ean on 06.10.19 1:31pm
"Several incorporated cities in the county already have permanent rent control measures on the books, including the cities of Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and West Hollywood."
There are no homeless in these areas, so obviously rent control works super great.
Meanwhile, King County (i.e., Seattle) just built a shit ton of market rate housing in the past few years, and their homeless count dropped 17%, as compared with LA County’s significant increase.
By disqusted on 06.10.19 1:31pm
Spot on. They are relying on correlation and making a conclusory argument for causation.
By LADude on 06.10.19 2:26pm
But that’s because 8% of that 17% now are living on the street here in LA. (joking not joking)
By Or_NAH on 06.10.19 4:06pm
It’s amazing how many people choose to be homeless rather than just moving 45 minutes east where rental prices are the same as their pre-rent increases rentals in Los Angeles.
And it’s great that the people interviewed for this post were a lecturer for a law school and an activist making conclusory statements that this is causation and not correlation.
"landlords filed 505,924 eviction proceedings in Los Angeles County " The number of proceedings is irrelevant. How many were actually evicted for "without cause" evictions.
By LADude on 06.10.19 1:32pm
Good luck going up against Landlords. Using landlords as a scapegoat. Why evict some of the illegals. Oh I forgot , the city is breaking the law; by harboring illegals. Hypocrisy much.
By Wackyone1968 on 06.10.19 1:34pm
Eliminating evictions is like telling employers they can’t ever fire or lay off any worker. I guess some ignorant people will think there will be full employment then, but it doesn’t work like that. Countries that make it hard to lay off workers like France actually have higher unemployment because of these rules than comparable countries. Employers just become more reluctant to ever hire anyone.
Make it tougher to evict anyone and the response is that landlords will raise their credit and other standards so only people with no blemishes and almost perfect credit will get to rent.
By LA Denizen on 06.10.19 2:28pm
yep..it’s gonna be like applying for a mortgage. 1st month rent, last month rent, plus security deposit. $10K total. Plus a Minimum fico score required. Institutionalized renting. It will be so expensive to move, you won’t be able to cuz you won’t have the money, or fico too low or debt to income ratios too high. You’ll be stuck! Just how a house mortgage payment is locked, so will your rent with small increases. Many people will be stuck paying rent their whole life, and they’ll never own the home. Big institutional landlords make out in the long run, because you’re essentially paying a mortgage your whole life to them, but you never own the home. When you get old, no house paid off, just still more rent to pay every month.
By laysclassic on 06.11.19 8:16am
It seems like the billions we are spending to try and get someone off the street and into housing in expensive LA is a futile effort. How long can all these people hang on here – even with some help from various government programs. It seems to me that somehow getting them to move away to less expensive markets is really a better long term solution and a whole lot more cost effective. I have no idea how on earth we could do that but look at the insane numbers of dirt poor people that call LA home. And more keep coming, and reproducing etc. It’s a big mess.
By LAoneWay on 06.10.19 2:40pm
it never made sense to me why we have to provide people housing IN LA. Ludicrous. Tons of space east of us…
By WehoLady on 06.14.19 12:38pm
Have you really considered it?
By LosFeliz$ean on 06.14.19 3:25pm
so this week we are blaming the homeless issue on the economy boom and evictions? Got it.
I’m curious as to how many of the 55K homeless within LA were LA residents before they became homeless? "505,924 eviction proceedings were filed" ok, so how many of those were actually evicted? And out of those that were evicted how many became homeless? because if 505,924 were filed but only 20,000 were evicted, and out of that 20K only 2,00 became homeless this report is just a bunch of smoke.
By Or_NAH on 06.10.19 3:53pm
That’s an excellent analysis.
By Wackyone1968 on 06.10.19 9:44pm
Well, NAH, why don’t you look into getting your questions answered? Or are you satisfied just making assumptions in a comment section? It’s the second thing, isn’t it?
By enter ranting on 06.11.19 10:03am
The article itself is worse than a comment as its based on lame assumptions and minimal/incomplete data.
By MartyinLA on 06.11.19 10:23am
if i was Being paid to conduct a study and issue a report I would have researched these questions. My comment was bringing awareness that this report isn’t fully complete and there are holes in the theory it is presenting…
So, enter ranting, do you actually have anything of value to add or do you just respond with malarkey to random people in a troll like manner hoping to engage in an argument?
By Or_NAH on 06.11.19 11:29am
It’s all a bunch of BULLSHIT
By Transplant Trash on 06.11.19 4:21pm
I took in a homeless lady for the night last week. She had arrived from Vegas 4 months prior with dreams of becoming a singer. She seemed to suffer from acute delusions of grandeur and definitely did not have the firmest grip on reality when it came to that one topic (of her career). She babbled a lot about how she’d be famous soon. She came to LA with no plan of how to sustain herself, she had no friends. The person I helped before her had come down from IDAHO. He was a former firefighter who developed meth psychosis from fighting the crater lake fire. This is just two out of the 60k and neither were from LA. Neither had been evicted. This is a drug/mental health crisis.
By WehoLady on 06.14.19 12:42pm
Stop trying to shove this false rhetoric down our throats that housing prices are causing the spike in homeless numbers. People who can’t afford to rent in L.A. move elsewhere. If they can’t afford that they find friends/family who can take them in. When that doesn’t work, they will find shelters/programs like section 8 to help them get back on their feet. You know what they don’t do? Camp out freely on Venice Beach, smoking god-only-knows, pooping on the street and shouting obscenities at tourists and passers-by. Those are a different breed of homeless…and there are more and more and more of them by the day here.
By jackulas on 06.10.19 4:13pm
Tenants get evicted for a reason; most have become deadbeats. Landlords don’t simply goto court and file papers to evict someone. It’s a long challenging process.
The problem is the person/tenant. The solution should not be to punish landlords. Hurting landlords hurts real housing affordability. Cities that are pro-landlord probably have far better housing affordability.
By Constituents on 06.10.19 4:21pm
Not following the logic. So a booming economy where everyone who wants one has a job makes it harder to afford rent? So having an income isn’t the answer. Evictions? That doesn’t seem like a big number for a county of 10M spread over 8 years, but OK—but for every eviction, someone else gets the unit, so there’s no net loss, is there? And what are those evictions for? Disruption? Non-payment?
Landlords cherish good tenants, they don’t evict them. Of course, if lots of people are going to pour into the County, and locals don’t allow enough new building, what do we expect?
By morley drury on 06.10.19 4:31pm
You’re not following the logic, because you don’t understand the first thing about it.
By enter ranting on 06.11.19 10:04am
For many of us who have spent years fighting evictions at city hall- and losing— we know exactly how our city hall has rigged the system to make it seem like there is a fair appeals process in place for tenants fighting evictions and neighborhoods fighting big developers. One thing should be clear, we can not expect the people who profit wildly from homelessness and death to be the ones to fix the problem.
By uphouse project on 06.10.19 5:08pm
You obviously haven’t been in the eviction courts because every free resource in the world is given to the tenant and the landlord (who’s a rich millionaire who inherited the property from his/her wealthy family of course) is expected to figure it out on their own.
By Logicthinktank on 06.11.19 8:26am
"we can not expect the people who profit wildly from homelessness"
We presume you must mean the homeless consultants and service providers?
By disqusted on 06.11.19 1:06pm