County Board of Supervisors votes down measure affecting landlords in unincorporated areas.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted against extending certain residential tenant protections for one year throughout the county after a lengthy public debate.
The measures that failed to pass included a prohibition on landlords from evicting tenants without just cause and protection for tenants from eviction who have added extra occupants and/or pets during the COVID-19 pandemic. Another measure that would have capped rent increases by 3 percent or the year-over-year change in the local Consumer Price Index (CPI) for landlords in unincorporated areas also failed to pass.
Supervisors Hilda Solis and Lindsey Horvath voted in favor of the measures, while Supervisors Janice Hahn and Kathryn Barger voted against them.
“If we are going to solve this crisis, we must stop the inflow of people falling into homelessness by keeping them in the housing they are already in,” Horvath said in a statement.
Supervisor Holly Mitchell abstained from the. Hahn stated that extended protections for renters were fine a year ago, but with unemployment low and the COVID-19 pandemic abated, it was not the right time to impose more emergency regulations on the 88 cities in Los Angeles County nor place restrictions on landlords in unincorporated areas.
“At this point, I feel like for me, it feels like an overreach now to impose these on the incorporated cities,” Hahn said.
Many tenants who face eviction or higher rents, joined renter rights groups in speaking in favor of the failed resolution. However, as reported by the LA Daily News, more than 20 speakers in opposition, including “mom and pop” landlords and representatives of apartment owner trade groups, argued that the resolution would have placed undue burdens on landlords.
As reported by the Daily News, statistics from 2019 showed that 55 percent of all renters in the county, about 989,000 households, spent more than 30 percent of their income on rent. Also, more than half of these households were “severely cost-burdened” and spent more than half of their income on rent.
