Editorial News Alert: L.A. City Prepares to Inflict All Electric Mandate

Editorial News Alert

L.A. City Prepares to Inflict All Electric Mandate

By Janet M. Gagnon

Senior Vice President, Government Affairs and External Relations

If you own multifamily rental property within the City of Los Angeles, brace yourself for a mandate from your fifteen esteemed city council members requiring that you remove all your gas appliances – furnaces, water heaters, stoves, and clothes dryers – to go all electric. If you are thinking that this will cost you a large amount of money to do as well as costing your renters high monthly electricity bills, you’re not wrong. Owners and property managers must speak out to voice strong opposition to the full city council NOW before this devastatingly costly new mandate cloaked in climate change goes any further. 

How Did We Get Here?

The concept of requiring the elimination of all gas appliances goes back to March 9, 2022, when Council Member Nithya Raman (a declared Democratic Socialist of America party member), former Council Member Paul Krekorian and former Council Member Paul Koretz, introduced a motion directing the Los Angeles Housing Department (LAHD) and other city agencies to participate in CEMO Assemblies and assist in informing the city’s decarbonization efforts. (CEMO Assemblies are community events hosted by the Climate Emergency Mobilization Office in Los Angeles to integrate community knowledge and inform the Climate Emergency Mobilization Commission.) Decarbonization means getting rid of fossil fuels, including natural gas. Based on that 2022 motion, LAHD came back with recommendations for “developing a citywide decarbonization program for new and existing residential buildings”.

During the interim period LAHD hired Arup, a sustainable development firm, to conduct outreach. At these outreach sessions, AAGLA zealously opposed this proposed new mandate that will cost tens of thousands of dollars per unit for existing rental housing providers, including many already under the City’s existing rent stabilization ordinance (RSO). In fact, LAHD’s 2022 report estimated costs for electrical work and appliances at $22,500 per unit. This does not include any amount for gas services to cap or remove existing gas lines, relocation fees (temporary or permanent for existing renters), nor lead or asbestos removal costs (which will be a substantial additional cost for many of RSO properties). For RSO properties alone, the total cost was estimated at $14.6 billion (again without these other costs being included).

AAGLA again spoke out against this extremely expensive mandate at the City Council meetings on December 4^th and December 10^th, when the motion to bring back a report for a new decarbonization program was passed unanimously with Council Member Katy Yaroslavsky heaping praise upon Council Member Raman for bringing this item forward. Unfortunately, AAGLA was the sole voice against the motion with no other trade associations nor individual rental housing owners attending the meetings. However, there were several speakers from the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), Act LA, Community Power Collective and Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE) that spoke in favor of the motion, despite it causing huge increases in electricity bills for renters. Apparently, these groups believe that a handful of renters potentially getting temporary jobs doing the conversion work is well worth ALL renters getting burdened with much higher electricity bills each month. The widespread “let them eat cake” attitude from the entire City Council towards rental housing providers and their renters was front and center with no debate over the item whatsoever and it being passed unanimously.

AAGLA strongly urges rental housing providers with multifamily properties in the City of Los Angeles, especially those under the existing RSO, to immediately obtain personalized estimates for changing to all electric appliances. Please be sure to obtain a detailed estimate with labor, materials and permits from an electrician AND a plumber to address existing gas lines along with the cost of the appliances themselves. Once you have obtained these estimates, please submit them to the full city council along with your personal email about how this new additional cost will substantially negatively impact your ability to provide affordable rental housing and copy AAGLA on your correspondence at advocacy@aagla.org. The City Council must be made aware of the true costs of their “pie-in-the-sky” ideals that are being paid for on the backs of mom-and-pop rental housing providers and their renters.

If rental housing providers again fail to act by reaching out to the full city council, then this new “all electric” requirement will be passed once the report comes back and more owners will be driven out of business by it with their properties taken off the market and renters forced to relocate. PLEASE VOICE YOUR OPPOSITION NOW before it is too late!

This article is for informational purposes only. If you have any questions regarding your property or specific tenancies and the requirements of any local law changes described herein, please consult with an attorney. 

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