A key Los Angeles city council committee on Wednesday rejected an effort to freeze rents citywide, but advanced a series of eviction protections for people economically impacted by the fires.
In a 3 to 1 vote, the Housing and Homelessness Committee approved a motion that would bar landlords from evicting tenants for a variety of reasons, including for non-payment of rent or if an owner wanted to move into a unit. Such evictions would only be prohibited for tenants who were economically harmed by the fires and the prohibition would last one year.
The motion heads to the full City Council, where it’s unclear it has the votes to pass.
A previous version of the proposal, which included a citywide rent freeze in addition to the eviction protections, was heard last week at council, but was sent back the Housing and Homelessness committee amid fears among some councilmembers that both the rent freeze and eviction protections were too broad.
Since the fires broke out Jan. 7, there have been widespread reports of illegal price gouging, but it’s unclear just how much rental prices as a whole have risen across the region.
Housing and disaster recovery experts have said they expect rent to increase to some extent, because thousands of homes were destroyed in an already tight market.
Most homes lost appear to be single-family houses and because of that some experts said they expect rent to rise most in larger units adjacent to burn areas, with upward pressure on costs diminishing as units become smaller and farther away from the disaster zone.
The council has taken some steps to protect tenants. On Tuesday, it gave temporary approval to a proposal that would ban landlords from evicting tenants for allowing people or pets displaced by last month’s fires to live with them.
On Wednesday, Housing and Homelessness committee members rejected a rent freeze, despite pleas from tenants and their advocates at the meeting.
Committee members instead advanced the eviction protections for people economically hurt by the fires. Voting in favor of that proposal were Councilmembers Adrin Nazarian, Ysabel Jurado and Nithya Raman, the committee chair.
Councilmember Bob Blumenfield voted no and expressed concern the eviction protections were too sweeping, a sentiment landlords and their representatives shared at the meeting.
Instead, Blumenfield said he’d like the council to explore giving tenants who are economically impacted by the fires an additional grace period to pay rent.