The City Council last week discussed options for tenant protection and rent control.
The council took no formal action.
The city attorney will come back with an ordinance at future date. Council members agreed on limiting rent increases in apartments, as well as helping tenants with the cost of relocating.
The following is not a transcript, but highlights from the discussion.
“This is a consideration for you to provide direction to staff as to whether you want to enact any tenant protections greater than what are allowed in state law,” said City Attorney Scott Campbell.
“What state law currently provides is that the maximum that a landlord may uh increase a rent for an apartment and really these are only apartments is 5% a year plus the amount of inflation but the maximum 10,” Campbell said.
“Cities are allowed under the state legislation to adopt stricter rent control. Examples are 3%, 4%, 5%,” Campbell said.
“Any rent control that you enact would only apply to buildings that were constructed prior to 1995. Given your housing stock, it’s most of the apartments,” Campbell said.
“If you were to put on rent control, you would need to create some mechanism for landlords to ask for an excuse or a relief from that,” Campbell said.
He said typically that would be a rent control board appointed by the council to hear landlords ask for an exemption.
“That’s a public hearing. There’s an adjudication there,” Campbell said.
He said the city could also increase the requirements for relocation benefits. “Right now the state law really says it’s one month,” he said.
According to Campbell, some cities require three months.
“What we’re asking for is give us direction. We would then come back with a draft ordinance for your consideration based upon your direction,” Campbell said.
According to Campbell, this was purely discretionary.
According to Mayor Anni Marshall, it has to be based on a certain number of units. “It’s not just like two apartments or three apartments. Does it have to be like 15 or 20 or 30 or something?” Marshall asked.
“I don’t think so,” Campbell said.
“I think it’s an definition of apartments, but we but we can look at that because I know that many apartments at least on over town are four to six and it does apply to them,” Campbell said.
“I used to live in an apartment that had four apartments and rent control applied the LA rent control applied to that,” Campbell said.
Councilmember Mary Schickling asked about relocation. “That’s limited to the same places? It’s not over-arching?” she asked.
“You can make that broader,” Campbell said.
Schickling turned to the other council members. “I think that would be a good thing, because when people have lived in the same place for a long time and then the owner wants to sell, and they get kicked out and there’s just nowhere to go,” Schickling said.
She suggested increasing the time period for relocation to two months because people will have to spend money while they are looking for a permanent home.
Marshall said some cities even help people move their possessions.
There was no formal vote, but the other council members appeared to agree with two months for tenant relocation.
Marshall asked about a remodel, one that requires the tenant to move out for 30 days.
“Can they turn around now and increase that person’s rent?” she asked.
“They would ask for that and that would be something that the uh rent control board would, or whatever entity, would consider,” Campbell said.
According to Campbell, remodels are allowed because if you have substandard housing, you want to encourage people to upgrade the housing.
“Then the question is: Should the cost be borne by the landlord or can they come to the board and say part of this cost should be borne by the tenant because they’re actually benefiting from that,” Campbell said.
“Could we as council set that amount or would it have to be the rent control” board Schickling asked.
Schickling asked if the city council establish a percentage.
Campbell said he was not aware of any city that had done that but his law firm could look into it.
“I think West Hollywood was the most aggressive and they haven’t done that,” he said.
“But they can’t increase the rent but once a year,” Marshall said.
Campbell said that was correct.
“I like the city of Los Angeles’s ordinance with the regard to prohibiting landlords from retaliatory responses,” said Councilmember Lisa Lavelle.
She asked for the city attorney to look into that.
“Basically, for those in the public, it prohibits landlords from engaging in abusive or harassing behavior towards tenants, including removing housing services provided in the lease, threatening to disclose a tenant citizenship status, withholding repairs, or refusing to accept rent payment or other bad faith behavior,” Lavelle said.
“It provides a private right of action for tenants to enforce violations against their landlords and mandatory damages,” Lavelle said.
Schickling said they hadn’t talked about the 5 or 10% maximum rent.
“If we did, would we have to have the rent registry? Would the landlord have to register?” Schickling asked.
“You can create that as a requirement under the ordinance to be able to enforce this because you’re going to have to have one way that the landlords are going to be able to report to the city what the increases are so that you can monitor it and make certain that the that the landlord is complying with your ordinance,” Campbell said.
“You can create that,” Campbell said.
Schickling asked if the city could set a fee.
Campbell said the fee would have to be based on the cost to the city of enforcing provisions of the ordinance.
Marshall asked city staff and the city manager if they would find that cumbersome.
“In my opinion would be it’s going to be cumbersome,” said City Manager David Maistros, “because we’re going through with tracking short-term rentals and we have a better mechanism to do that with host compliance as compared to tracking rental units.”
Campbell said many cities have left it to the tenants to bring the matter up to the city and then that would be a code enforcement action.
“Now some tenants obviously are reluctant to come forward and to tell on their landlord for fear of retaliation and stuff. So the you know the rent rental registration requires then the landlord to do that. So that we’re not putting the onus on the tenant,” Campbell said.
“There have been a couple of landlords who have automatically now increased the rent by the full 10%,” Lavelle said.
Marshall said: “They’ll go, ‘I better grab my 10%.’”
“Right,” Lavelle said.
“I am concerned a little bit about the cost of registration being an added disincentive to provide rental properties, which we know we need. I’m worried about the extra work for City Hall,” Lavelle said.
Turning to the percentage increase landlord would be allowed, Lavelle suggested 8%.
“We’ve received letters from people who primarily are landlords for multiple units or unit buildings that didn’t want to have any kind of changes to anything,” Lavelle said.
“I don’t know if we start by doing just maybe the tenant protection ordinance and the moving requirement and then see how those adjust and then go from there or if we look at percentages too,” Lavelle said.
Councilmember Yesenia De La Rosa said: “Definitely one of the things that I think we see a lot is the listings when they’re looking for new tenants and they spike their rent up to an enormous amount. So would the percentage help with that?”
Campbell said no.
“Under the law, once with very, very small exceptions, once a unit becomes vacant, the landlord is allowed under state law to set the rent at the market level,” Campbell said.
Campbell said the landlord sets the market.
Councilmember Michael Ponce said he was with Landau on protecting renters.
“It does feel weird to put some protections in place for certain people and other people can’t benefit from it. And so, I don’t like that idea at all,” Schickling said.
The council members seemed to prefer protecting renters from retaliation. Placing limits on rent increases would only apply to apartments built before 1995.
According to Campbell, the city does not have a rent control board to protect tenants.
Schickling asked if the city had anyone on staff to deal with a tenant saying they think their landlord was ripping them off.
“It would come through the Building Department and we would provide that in formation and that we’d be able to answer anybody’s questions on that,” said City Manager David Maistros.
“Cool. Because I have heard a lot of those kind of complaints and people were actually scared to report it because they’re afraid they’re going to get kicked out. And number two, they didn’t know who to call,” Schickling said.
“So, if that’s happening to anyone out there, call the city,” Schickling said.
“I live in a shining example of how my rent has increased with absolutely no improvements and I’ve lived there for 18 years,” Schickling said.
“I just want I want people to be able to voice their concern about their living condition without fear of losing their residence,” Schickling said.
“Is there any protections that we could do for folks that are getting a 30 to 60-day eviction but either have financial hardship or are low housing stock?” asked De La Rosa.
According to Campbell, that would depend on why they are being evicted.
According to Campbell, the city can provide protections for no-fault evictions where the landlord wants to make improvements. He said the council has indicated the council indicated a minimum of two months.
“We’re in a cafeteria now, a cafeteria of rent and of tenant protections. And you put what you want on the tray and we’ll bring it back in the form of an ordinance,” Campbell said.
“Could we have an amount for relocation off island because it’s not cheap to get all the crap off the island, all furnishings,” Marshall said.
Campbell said you could probably put that in. “That’s because you are we we’d have to make findings that Avalon is a unique entity, but of we could we could put that in there. We just need to determine how much if it’s all the moving expenses,” Campbell said.
“If that’s the council’s direction in terms of looking at what those costs would be, we could obviously do we could talk with the freight company get some idea of that,” Campbell said.
Schickling said there were few places that charge less than $2,000 a month. She speculated that someone could move to the mainland for $4,000 (for two months).
Campbell said in his experience, his law firm would draft the ordinance, they would bring it back to the council, and then everyone will show up.
The council members seemed to agree on placing an 8% limit on rent increases for tenants of apartments built before 1995. Campbell said the city could make the maximum 5% plus inflation. He said inflation was capped at 8%.
The council members agreed on giving tenants two months for relocation plus the cost of relocation.
