RED ALERT: Los Angeles City’s Housing Committee Considers Extending Rent Increase Freeze

Los Angeles City’s Housing and Homelessness Committee will consider a motion by Council Member Hugo Soto-Martinez (currently residing in an RSO unit) and seconded by Council Member Eunisses Hernandez, both declared Democratic Socialist of America members, to extend the existing rent increase freeze for an additional 6 months until August 1, 2024, thereby freezing rents for a total of nearly 4 ½ years (Agenda Item 12). We strongly urge all AAGLA members with rental properties in the City of Los Angeles to make phone calls and send emails TODAY to all five city council members on this committee, specifically Chair Nithya Raman, Vice Chair Bob Blumenfield, Monica Rodriguez, John Lee, and Marqueece Harris-Dawson. We also urge members to appear IN PERSON at the Committee meeting on Wednesday, November 1^st at 2:30 p.m. as the most impactful way to be heard. We must have this extremely harmful motion immediately voted down in committee!

The current rent increase freeze has been in place since March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and is currently scheduled to expire on January 31, 2024. This additional extension would be a complete breach of the promises made by the City Council that the rent increase freeze would remain in place no more than one year after the declared end of the COVID-19 emergency so that rental housing providers could finally be allowed to resume normal operations based on the existing RSO increase formula.

The existing RSO formula for rent increases would allow a maximum rent increase of 7% for rent stabilized units. This is nearly half of the amount that would have been given to owners had they been allowed to increase rent as normal during the last nearly 4 years. With a floor of 3% times 4 years, owners would have collected a maximum of 12% (before compounding). Thus, small owners will still not be made whole with the existing increase starting on February 1^st.

Rental housing providers have been forced to pay extremely higher costs for all types of goods and services due to inflation, including costs and fees related to City and County-imposed costs such as property taxes, RecycLA trash hauling fees, sewer charges, LADWP utilities, code enforcement inspection fees and soaring costs for ongoing repairs and maintenance by skilled trades, including electricians, roofers, plumbers, painters, etc. and significantly higher costs of property insurance and mortgage interest rates. No other industry has been forced to forgo payment and had pricing frozen for services provided during the pandemic – not grocery stores, not healthcare providers, and not emergency housing in hotels/motels. Rental housing providers alone were singled out to stop the normal course of their business for nearly four years. Even entertainment venues, restaurants and hair salons have already been allowed to return to the normal course of business. 

Just because a study is being done on the RSO formula (per the prior motion by Chair Raman and Vice Chair Blumenfield being heard tomorrow by the full City Council) to acknowledge costs incurred by rental housing providers throughout the existing freeze and prior moratoriums is no reason to delay an end to the existing rent increase freeze.  Per the previous motion, the main findings from the proposed study are to be brought back to the Committee within 3 months (January 2024) before the existing rent freeze ends. The motion also already assigned the study to be conducted by the Economic Roundtable under a sole-source contract. We are confident the findings will show that rental housing providers’ costs not only fully justify the upcoming 7% increase, but an even larger increase based on skyrocketing inflation, property insurance premiums and mortgage rates.

We demand that the City Council stay true to their promise and end the freeze on January 31^st as currently scheduled! To do otherwise is for the City Council to purposefully annihilate rental housing providers with the greatest harm falling on small, independent mom-and-pop owners providing the scare naturally occurring rental housing most needed in Los Angeles.

AGENDA

MOTION

To email all Los Angeles City Housing and Homelessness Committee Members, please click the button below:

EMAIL ALL HOUSING AND HOMELESSNESS COMMITTEE MEMBERS TODAY!

This email button works best for users using Microsoft Office Outlook, but should be functional for all email services. If you experience any issues with the email delivery due to "invalid email addresses", please try replacing the semicolons in between each email address to commas OR try sending the emails individually to each member as all email addresses provided have been checked and cleared for their validity. 

TO VIEW THE FULL LIST OF LOS ANGELES HOUSING AND HOMELESSNESS COMMITTEE MEMBERS, PLEASE CLICK HERE