California Dems Are Skittish About Freezing Rents In Los Angeles

SACRAMENTO, California — Efforts to help struggling renters in Los Angeles after the devastating wildfires are hitting strong resistance and dividing California Democrats.

An ambitious proposal to freeze rents in Los Angeles County is facing considerable skepticism in Sacramento. And the LA City Council already rejected a separate proposal for a citywide freeze amid concerns that it would devastate mom and pop landlords.

“I don’t think that a rent freeze is the answer here,” said Assemblymember Diane Papan, a moderate Bay Area Democrat, during a recent committee hearing on the new legislative proposal, which is still pending at the Capitol.

The effort to tame rising rents is playing out in an area with some of the most expensive real estate in America and comes after similar standoffs between the powerful landlord lobby and tenants rights activists during the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, renters, homeowners and business groups are all jockeying for resources in the wake of the fires, which burned tens of thousands of structures throughout Los Angeles County, straining the already-tight rental market.

But renters’ advocates are quickly finding that the more expansive the proposal, the more politically fraught it becomes — even in blue California, after entire neighborhoods were leveled by one of the costliest natural disasters in the nation’s history.

“Sometimes the path forward for bills, specifically for renters, has been narrow,” said Assemblymember Matt Haney, a San Francisco Democrat who leads the legislative renters caucus. “But it's there, and especially in this moment, when the concerns for vulnerable renters and homeowners post-fires and in the midst of a terrible housing squeeze are really top of mind.”

Haney added that the Legislature must directly address rents and home prices as part of its broader focus on affordability — particularly now, in the fire-ravaged city.

Progressive City Council members in Los Angeles — where 65 percent of residents are tenants — couldn’t get eviction safeguards or a rent freeze across the finish line, even after trying to narrow their proposal. The California Apartment Association, which has condemned illegally hiking rents after the disaster, pointed to the city’s decision as it urged the state to follow suit.

“Why would you do this when the city said ‘no’?” asked Debra Carlton of the Apartment Association in an interview. “The city should know best.”

After council members rejected those proposals, they did temporarily ban landlords from evicting tenants while they complete renovations — an effort dating back to last fall.

Los Angeles County supervisors were able to pass a more limited set of fire-related renter policies, approving six months of eviction protections for low- and middle-income tenants whose livelihoods were affected by the disaster. Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who wrote the policy, said she accepted some compromises to get it through — enacting it for six months instead of a year and pledging to send rent relief dollars from a proposed fund directly to landlords instead of tenants.

Horvath said it was “shocking” the City Council didn’t pass its own set of policies to help renters after the fires.

“I understand that there are concerns because of fears from Covid,” Horvath said. “But you're leaving more than half of your population at risk if you don't do something.”

Average rent in Los Angeles County was more than $2,800 as of Jan. 31, according to Zillow — more than $900 higher than the national average.

The extent to which landlords have used the wildfire-impacted rental market to dramatically raise housing prices remains subject to debate.

The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and other outlets reported spiking prices. Bryan’s bill analysis cites the Post’s reporting, which says rents shot up by 20 percent in the county. The Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles refuted the publication’s analysis, saying “instances of rent gouging are overblown.”

Tenant policy has been a thorny political challenge in California, where voters rejected a rent control expansion for the third time in November.

Isaac Bryan, a state lawmaker representing Los Angeles, last week had to defend his Los Angeles County rent-freeze proposal from fellow Democrats’ critiques. They questioned whether it would disproportionately affect small landlords and if its enforcement mechanism — a civil court process — would be effective.

The move, he argues, is necessary to prevent price-gouging in a housing market thrown into turmoil by the loss of more than 16,000 structures.

“We're talking about massive, unprecedented displacement,” Bryan said in an interview. “If the market had responded with open arms and opportunity, I think there'd be a different reaction. But instead, folks took crisis and then tried to squeeze people … who have been experiencing this crisis.”

The California Legislature, which has historically included a sizable share of landlords, now has a renters caucus that has grown from three members to 11 since Bryan helped establish it in 2022. But, as Assembly Judiciary Chair Ash Kalra noted, lawmakers are still typically more receptive to bills addressing the needs of property owners, who tend to be more affluent and more likely to vote.

A separate committee discussion on a mortgage forbearance proposal for fire-affected homeowners received far less resistance than the rent-freeze bill. Banking and real estate groups registered “concern,” but they didn’t outright oppose the policy, and lawmakers expressed gratitude for the legislation.

Fueling the opposition to new tenant laws is a set of programs Democrats enacted statewide and in Los Angeles to help renters during the Covid pandemic, including eviction protections for tenants paying at least 25 percent of their rent.

Carlson said some small operators did not receive rent for years, and the state “lost housing” when they decided not to rent anymore.

For years, landlords have blamed such policies for making it more cumbersome and less profitable to do business. In Los Angeles, some property owners were subject to a pandemic-era rent freeze that lasted until early 2024, which they said prevented them from being able to keep up with rising expenses.

The Apartment Association and real estate interest groups have used those arguments — as well as playing up the impact of statewide policies on non-corporate landlords — to persuade Democratic leaders to avoid a repeat of the Covid-era experiment.

Bryan’s rent freeze bill is running up against those concerns, which are colliding with rising insurance premiums and other cost pressures on landlords after the fires. That makes it a heavier legislative lift — especially because it will require a two-thirds vote to take effect this year, requiring the vast majority of Democrats to get on board. Bryan will likely need to make significant concessions for his proposal to have a real chance of becoming law.

“There is this tension right now around who should bear that cost,” said Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, a Bay Area Democrat, in committee. “And it isn’t clear to me that it should be a mom-and-pop landlord.”

Papan, another Democrat, floated a 5 percent rent cap as an alternative, which would still allow landlords to increase prices.