The last of the longstanding renter protections implemented by the City of Los Angeles during the COVID-19 pandemic will expire on February 1. Among the protections expiring at the end of this month is the city’s rent freeze, the termination of which will require renters to pay back the full amount of any rental arrears that accumulated between October 1, 2021, and January 31, 2023. Additionally, renters with unauthorized occupants or pets taken on during the pandemic will now be at risk of at-fault eviction. Finally, the city will allow rent increases through its rent stabilization program, enabling landlords of certain rental properties to raise a tenant’s rent for the first time in more than four years.
With the loss of eviction-related protections, tenants in renter-households will be at renewed risk of housing instability brought on by housing unaffordability – an issue that has long plagued renters in Los Angeles. As NLIHC’s Out of Reach report makes clear, housing prices are considered unaffordable if a tenant pays more than 30% of their monthly income toward rent. Such housing “cost burdens” were commonplace among the city’s residents even before the start of the pandemic. At the city-level, 56% of tenants paid more than 30% of their income towards rent before 2020, while research conducted by the University of California at Los Angeles reports that in the years preceding the pandemic, about 600,000 people (or about 16% of renter households) in the Los Angeles area paid more than 90% of their income towards their monthly rental payments.
As a result, when pandemic-related job loss afflicted more than 1 million individuals in the Los Angeles area, it was no surprise that rental arrears accumulated in staggering amounts. Even with emergency rental assistance grants available to offset some of the rental debt accrued by renters, by the final quarter of 2022, more than 278,000 renters in the City of Los Angeles owed more than $981 million in rent – an average of $3,500 per household. Rising rental debt allowed landlords to continue to file eviction proceedings against tenants, despite the presence of a citywide eviction moratorium. Between April 2020 and December 2022, 15,000 evictions were carried out in the city. When the eviction moratorium expired in March 2023, moreover, eviction cases due to nonpayment of rent were filed at historic rates, with eviction filings in June 2023 reported as being 74% higher than they were at the same time a year prior.
Recognizing the threat of a looming eviction crisis brought on by the official end of the federal, state, and local eviction moratoriums, lawmakers in the City of Los Angeles were slow to sunset some of the eviction protections enacted at the start of the pandemic in March 2020 and even recognized the importance of enacting more permanent protections once the “Declaration of Local Emergency for COVID-19” expired after more than three years in place.
In January 2023, for example, the City of Los Angeles passed “just cause” eviction protections for renters. Under the law, landlords must provide a legal and verifiable cause to evict a tenant from their home, such as the nonpayment of rent or failing to uphold the agreed upon terms of the lease agreement. For tenants that are found to have been evicted due to no-fault reasons, including demolition of the residential structure, a landlord will be required to provide a tenant with relocation assistance (determined by the city’s “Economic Displacement Assistance Per Bedroom Size” calculator). Finally, tenants residing in certain rental properties covered under the city’s “Rent Stabilization Ordinance” (RSO) who are subject to a more than 10% rental increase within the first 12 months of their lease may also be eligible to receive relocation assistance from their landlord if they can no longer afford their monthly rental payments. Currently, Los Angeles’ RSO applies to properties constructed prior to 1995. For the 2024 calendar year, rental increases are capped at 4%, or 6% if a landlord pays for a tenants utilities costs.
Despite the imminent expiration of COVID-19 era protections, housing advocates and lawmakers alike will continue to advocate for permanent protections that keep renters stably housed. In 2024, Los Angeles city and county lawmakers will continue to push for the expansion of the city’s “Stay Housed L.A.” initiative to include permanent “right to counsel” protections for renters. Under the current “Stay Housed L.A.” program, which launched in 2020, income-eligible tenants living in ZIP codes prioritized for assistance and who are facing eviction will be given legal defense in court. Since its inception, the program has been able to support more than 7,000 households with legal assistance against harassment, wrongful eviction, habitability issues, and even by offering educational workshops informing tenants of their rights.
For more information on the protections that are set to expire, please visit: https://cityattorney.lacity.gov/tenant-protections
For more information about the City of Los Angeles’ existent tenant protections, please visit: https://housing2.lacity.org/highlights/renter-protections
For information about Los Angeles County’s efforts to establish a right to counsel ordinance, please visit: https://mitchell.lacounty.gov/right-to-counsel-ordinance/