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The Los Angeles Council prepares to vote for new tenant protections in the city of Los Angeles as tenant rights groups call for the eviction moratorium to be extended yet again or for a new measure to be adopted. new.
Among the main protections proposed for tenants is an ordinance that prohibits terminating a rental without just cause, not only for those protected by Rent Control or by the state of California.
A vote is also being considered to adopt protections for the landlord to provide financial assistance to the tenant for relocation to another rental property. The assistance would be for those who are being asked to evict because they cannot afford a rent increase.
The protections also seek to define up to how many months an eviction can be carried out for non-payment of rent. We are talking about a month, that is, for a rent debt of $2,000.
The eviction moratorium currently in place will expire along with the declaration of a state of emergency for covid in the city of Los Angeles, on January 31.
Lupita González, tenant organizer in Los Angeles from the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment-Los Angeles (ACCE), said that whether we like it or not, the moratorium will end because covid-19 no longer represents the crisis that we have experienced in recent years.
“There are many people who have not yet recovered from the economic impact, and therefore, they are going to expose themselves to being evicted. There are people who have already been verbally told by their landlords that they have to vacate.”
He made it clear that the protections proposed by the council members are a good help, but they will never be enough because we are in a housing crisis.
“You need to build affordable housing at the level of population growth. Today in downtown Los Angeles the same number of luxury apartments have been built as the number of homeless people living on the streets. This is housing that working families cannot afford.”
While the protections will help tenants, they are not the solution.
“At least it is good that the protection that a tenant is only asked to vacate a dwelling for a just cause such as vandalism, making a lot of noise and another valid reason becomes law.”
The Housing Committee approved the protections with some amendments, and now it will be up to the full Council to vote on them this Friday. If unanimous approval is not achieved in the first vote, there will be an opportunity for a second vote the following week, when only 8 councilors will need to vote in favor to make it law before the moratorium ends.
The Council has voted to end the covid-19 state of emergency by January 31, a move that will end the moratorium on evictions.
This means that landlords will once again evict tenants who don’t pay rent; and those who owe will have a grace period of 6 to 12 months to repay their debts.
Tenant advocates say the pandemic is not over and not everyone who lost their job or suffered other problems has made a full recovery.
“Lifting the moratorium now or before the protections are adopted will be premature,” they warn.
Shanti Singh, spokesperson for the state advocacy group Tenants TogetherHe said that politicians want to pretend that we have recovered. “They like to pretend that covid is over. Covid is not over. A lot of working families aren’t ready to move on, and it’s not their fault.”
Councilors are proposing to set up a fund to support financially vulnerable small landlords, based on an income cap, which wealthy homeowners do not take advantage of.
Daniel Yukelson, executive director of the Greater Los Angeles Apartment Association, said that contrary to popular belief that all landlords are wealthy, just over 80% of his association’s roughly 10,000 members are family landlords who own five or fewer rental units.
“Many are retirees and some have had to liquidate their retirement savings or face foreclosures, he said.
“Just because people own rental properties, they are not immune to covid. Some also got sick, lost their jobs and rent.”