L.A. City to Vote on Reducing First RSO Rental Adjustment Since COVID-19 from 7% to 4% TOMORROW

We need every L.A. City rental housing owner to call and email the full L.A. City Council TODAY and tell them to VOTE NO on Blumenfield’s proposed amendment to reduce the RSO rental adjustment from 7% to 4% and to VOTE NO on a proposed extension of the rent increase freeze for six months (as proposed and supported by Democratic Socialist of America members Council Members Hugo Soto-Martinez, Eunisses Hernandez and Nithya Raman) (Agenda Item 24)! We also need owners and property managers to show up and attend In-Person or at least via Call-In to the City Council meeting on Wednesday! Owners’ voice must be heard, and numbers make a difference!

Enough is enough!  The COVID-19 emergency ended many months ago and so must end this wrongful manipulation of the existing RSO formula. The City Council MUST honor their year-long promise and end the rent increase freeze on January 31, 2024, and allow the current formula that has existed for 45 years to resume.

Pick up the phone and/or send an email stating:

• The COVID-19 emergency officially ended months ago on February 1, 2023. So too must this wrongful manipulation of the RSO formula. Rental housing providers must finally be allowed to resume normal, pre-COVID-19 operations and the promised end-point for the moratorium on rent increases of one year AFTER the cancellation of the local emergency must be honored. Enough is enough!
  
  
• The City Council breaking its stated promise to mom-and-pop rental housing providers struggling to hang on after almost 4 years of NO rent increases during periods of skyrocketing costs is UNACCEPTABLE. This City Council has already been plagued with multiple ethical violations and cannot ITSELF, as a collective body, now breach its commitment to the single industry targeted with and harmed by extremely damaging policies forcing it to forgo revenues during AND now for a full year AFTER the end of the COVID-19 emergency. The City Council cannot afford to further erode the public’s trust by repeatedly breaking its word at the 11^th hour on the whim of a few radical members! We must have an honorable and reliable City Council!
  
  
• Council Member Hugo Soto-Martinez must be barred from voting on both the freeze and Blumenfield’s amendment as he has a direct and obvious conflict of interest. As he has admitted in open City Council meetings, he is a current renter in an RSO unit and would directly financially benefit by either extending the freeze or reducing the amount allowed under the RSO formula. As current RSO rental housing owners are not allowed to vote so too must RSO renters be equally excluded from voting!
  
  
• Large corporations have vast financial resources enabling them to better survive periods of losses because they generally own and manage new properties that have no restrictions on how much rent can be increased, and they have access to capital markets not available to independent owners. Mom-and-pop owners that own a single RSO property for their retirement have no such resources to survive periods of lost revenue. 
  
  
• RSO properties are older buildings costing much more to maintain than newer buildings and already operate with severely limited returns. The City Council is causing retirees to lose their life’s savings by endless “extensions” and “reductions” in revenue, which does not benefit renters when moms-and-pops are forced to sell their properties to corporations that replace affordable rentals with luxury rentals or condominiums.
  
  
• The City Council must VOTE NO on any further extensions of the rent increase freeze or reductions in revenue, or at least limit them to apply ONLY to corporations and limited liability companies with corporate owners. To do otherwise will drive the moms-and-pops out of business and their properties into the arms of large corporations to be knocked down and replaced with new luxury developments.

AGENDA

BLUMENFIELD'S AMENDMENT

ORIGINAL MOTION

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