One of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history, the fires in and around Los Angeles will rewrite the story of housing there. Accounts already abound of skyrocketing rents and price gouging as thousands of Angelenos, some of them monied, are forced into an emergency housing market after losing their homes. The cost and environmental impact of rebuilding thousands of lost homes is another thread entirely.
All of those issues matter. But this disaster is going to have a long tail in the housing market — years and years, experts say. And many of them believe that it will ultimately reach and deeply affect those who already struggle for a place to call home in Los Angeles: the most vulnerable.
“Prior to this, Los Angeles was facing the most severe affordable housing crisis in the nation,” said Larry Gross, with the Coalition for Economic Survival, an L.A.-based nonprofit that advocates for low- and moderate-income renters. “This is going to exacerbate that to levels that I can’t even imagine.”
A report last year by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health found that more than half the households in the city of Los Angeles are housing burdened, meaning that residents spend at least 30% of their monthly income on housing. More than a quarter of those households are severely burdened, spending 50% or more of what they make on a place to live.
Those numbers dip only slightly at the county level. Across all levels, they’ll almost certainly increase if, as expected, the current spike in rents raises the cost of housing everywhere — including units that once might have been considered within reach for lower-wage earners in a brutally tight market.
In addition, low-wage earners in multiple affected communities held jobs that have been obliterated, as fires destroyed the businesses or homes where they worked: cooks, servers, gardeners, nannies, care providers. For them, the loss of income can mean almost immediate jeopardy when it comes to meeting rent obligations.
And tenant rights groups are already concerned about unscrupulous landlords trying to push out existing renters, knowing they can relist the units at massively inflated prices. California law prohibits landlords from raising existing rents more than 10% from their current rate once an emergency has been declared, as it has in Los Angeles. But moving in new renters altogether is another story.
For all these reasons, several L.A.-based organizations are pushing both the Los Angeles City Council and the County Board of Supervisors to protect vulnerable renters by doing two things: declaring a rent freeze and placing a moratorium on evictions.
Both levers were employed in California during the pandemic, and evictions dropped markedly during that time. The eviction rates returned to pre-pandemic levels soon after the restrictions ended.
“Many tenants have been directly and indirectly affected by L.A.’s fires,” the group Keep LA Housed posted on the social media app Bluesky. “No one should be evicted during or as a result of this emergency.”
Local tenant organizer Chelsea Kirk, meanwhile, launched a public spreadsheet noting Zillow listings in which rental rates had been jacked up in apparent defiance of the 10% emergency-declaration cap. And Gross is among those who’ve said they’ll be watching to see how many landlords of rent-controlled buildings try to convert units to Airbnb short-term rentals to take advantage of the crisis — possibly by illegally forcing out existing tenants.
“Long-term, low-rent tenants are the ones who are going to have a target on their backs, and for the most part those are low-income wage earners, seniors on fixed incomes, the disabled and people of color,” Gross said. “The rent gouging is a form of looting, and our leaders need to make examples of those who profiteer off the misery and tragedy that we’re facing.”
On Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council took a step toward protecting tenants, asking the city attorney to draft an ordinance banning evictions for a year for those who have extra people or pets living with them as a result of the fires. A separate proposal to freeze some types of evictions and place a one-year pause on rent increases was referred to committee.
Those measures could provide short-term relief to some of those whose lives have been turned upside down in the past week. At the same time, advocates say, the enforcement of both rent and eviction laws is notoriously weak. Constant vigilance will be critical.
Over the longer haul, the loss of housing anywhere in L.A. only increases the likelihood that those at the lower reaches of the income scale, who’ve long depended upon finding affordable rent, will be at risk. And this isn’t just a housing issue: As Los Angeles public health officials noted years ago, the link between unaffordable or substandard housing and poor health outcomes is well established.
“The road ahead is extremely rocky — for all of us,” Gross said. It’s all the more reason to get renter protections in place as soon as possible, and keep them there.
