RODNEY DRIVE TENANTS ASSOCIATION (RDTA)
We are residents of a rent-stabilized building in Los Feliz. Our tenancy ranges from a few years to over two decades. Some of us are seniors and disabled; all are of modest means. Our affordable homes are the base from which we contribute to our vibrant community as artists, clergy, educators, and activists. As neighbors, we care for one another. Four years
ago, a new landlord bought our building and was able to do so on the cheap because it is rent-stabilized. Within days, he began a series of attempts to intimidate, harass, and entice us out with the aim of retenanting our units at maximum rents. We organized and, with legal aid, successfully fought to stay in our homes. Now, we are defending our homes against his use of the Ellis Act, a California law providing landlords legal pretext to evict rent-stabilized tenants and shrink the availability of affordable housing. We received our 120-day
Ellis Act eviction notices January 8, 2015. Email: [email protected]
Tel: 323.362.2952
AFFORDABLE HOUSING DISAPPEARING
IN LA
Since 2001, some 13,000 rent-stabilized units in Los Angeles have been lost under the ELLIS ACT, a 1985 state law enacted to “permit landlords to go out of business” (Cal. Code § 7060.7). Under Ellis, longstanding tenants—many elderly, disabled, and working class whose quality of life depends on access to rent-stabilized housing—are evicted and forced to relocate, inevitably to much costlier housing in less livable neighborhoods well away from where they call home. What’s supplanting our lost affordable housing? Absurdly skyrocket-rate rentals that only the rich and top-salaried professionals can pay. With renters funneling on average 47% of their income into housing, Los Angeles now surpasses San Francisco, New York, and Boston as the least affordable rental market in the U.S.[1]
WHY IS THIS HAPPENING? The Ellis Act condition that landlords exit the rental business opens the very loophole they exploit to not only stay in business, but become richer doing so. Invoking Ellis, they temporarily take only rent-stabilized buildings off-market, “legally” evict occupants, then, at the earliest possible moment, retenant at maximum rents. In effect, they go out of business on paper, not in practice. Ellis has produced an overclass of greedy evictors who mock the law, and renters’ lives, to generate more coin for their coffers. HOW CAN LANDLORDS DO THIS? Behind the guise of shifting corporate aliases, Ellis landlords with multiple properties selectively evict rent-stabilized tenants while continuing to collect rents from market-rate properties. This plainly suggests they do not intend to go out of business. Worse, evictees typically fail to monitor next actions after the Ellis trauma; many accept defeat and simply go away. This, coupled with reduced post-eviction oversight by the City, entices landlords to circumvent municipal requirements governing rent-stabilized properties. While the City requires Ellised buildings to remain off-market for two or five years, it does not routinely inspect them to enforce this. Unless former occupants return to investigate, who knows if landlords are not prematurely retenanting? IS THIS USE OF THE ELLIS ACT LEGAL? Make no mistake: it is neither ethical nor legal to twist the language of a law to force an outcome opposite the law’s stated intention. The Ellis Act warns against exploiting it to “[o]verride procedural protections designed to prevent abuse of the right to evict tenants” (Id.), yet landlord-developers do exactly this when they swoop into neighborhoods to which they have no personal connection and snatch up low-priced, rent-stabilized buildings. Why? Because they come with the premeditated intent to evict submarket renters, eradicate affordable housing, and irrevocably disfigure the essential character of targeted neighborhoods. This is economic tyranny. CAN WE FIGHT THIS? Yes! Pressure landlords like they do us. Shame them. Find out where they conduct their daily lives and return the assault: Picket their homes, workplaces, rental properties, and houses of worship! Demand answers: “Why do you buy rent-stabilized properties in our neighborhoods?” “Why force us out of the homes and communities? Local media sometimes report on how attacks on L.A.’s Rent Stabilization Ordinance (RSO) threaten our communities. Share your experience with them and others. Create blogs and pages. Most Angelinos are renters! We have a transformative voice at the polls if we only organize and raise it. Let’s make our leaders accountable: demand they show the political will to stand with renters, take bold action against Ellising, and save L.A. from going the way of San Francisco, where increasingly only the rich can live. Make them heed the warning of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors: “Our housing crisis is so serious, that we must use every strategy in the book to keep this City diverse, retain families, and preserve the character of our neighborhoods.” How about it, L.A. City Council and Mayor? OUR DEMANDS TO THE CITY OF L.A.
1. Direct the Housing and Community Investment Department (HCID) to advocate for tenants: provide transparent advice on exercising rights, decry coercive landlording, and investigate claims of bad-faith use of Ellis.
2. Direct HCID and other City departments involved with land use and neighborhood preservation to investigate every application for market-withdrawal of rent-stabilized buildings.
3. Request that the City Attorney implement a program for investigating and prosecuting abuses of Ellis and similar laws.
4. Amend the RSO so that it mandates (not merely permits) interventions against Ellising landlords, supports burdened households, and empowers HCID with the tools and authority to act as decisive tenant advocates.
5. Incentivize landlord-developers to redirect their capital toward increasing L.A.’s stock of affordable housing rather than destroying, replacing and withdrawing it.
6. Support efforts in Sacramento to meaningfully amend Ellis by working closely with the other California cities with threatened housing. For example: Senate Bill 364 introduced by Mark Leno should extend beyond San Francisco to include and protect renters in Los Angeles! Los Angeles Times, January 11, 2015
“One in four households [in L.A.] spends at least half its income on housing. Roughly half of middle-income households were rent burdened in 2011, compared with just 11% in 2000, according to a UCLA analysis. One in three households earning $50,000 to $75,000 spend more than a third of their income on rent.”
