The Los Angeles City Council has voted to make major changes to rent control, hoping to make housing more affordable in the city.
In a historic 12-2 vote on Wednesday, the Los Angeles City Council decided to cap annual rent increases. Updating the Rent Stabilization Ordinance formula to set the annual increase of rent to 4% for roughly 650,000 units across the city.
Previously, the formula to set rent was 60% of the consumer price index, but now it is being increased to 90%. Additionally, the ruling will allow an additional 2% increase for landlords who cover utilities.
Nithya Raman, chair of the council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, ahead of the vote, said, “Extraordinary rent increases are driving people out of the city.”
The RSO covers apartments built on or before Oct. 1, 1978, and lawmakers have spent months debating how to best alleviate residents from additional rent-related burdens. While also taking into account how to best balance the needs of housing providers.
Raman said, “What we have before us right now is an opportunity to make L.A. more affordable, because when people can afford to stay in Los Angeles this entire city thrives.”
Landlords and advocates against the measure say the updated formula will make it more expensive to provide housing.
To relieve any additional burden to landlords, they are also putting into effect an increase in funding for “Mom and Pop” landlords. Owners with 2-10 units will receive support for repairs and rehabilitation.
Most Angelenos are renters, and more than half spend more than 30% of their income on paying rent. With 1 in 10 residents using 90% of their income to cover rent.
“Can you describe rent prices in New York?” “High.” “Expensive.” ”Out of control.” ”The rent here is absolutely crazy.” “Very, very unaffordable. Two verys — yeah very, very expensive.” Median asking rent in New York City is up more than 7 percent in just the last year. It’s now about $4,000 per month. That’s made the cost of housing a key issue in the mayor’s race, with the top candidates each proposing changes to a core New York City housing policy: rent stabilization. Nearly half of the apartments in New York are currently rent stabilized, which means that their rent increases are determined by a government agency controlled by the mayor. That makes rent stabilization a hot button issue for hundreds of thousands of voters. After front-runner Zohran Mamdani revealed what he pays in rent — “$2,300 for my one bedroom in Astoria.” — rival Andrew Cuomo argued he was unfairly occupying an affordable apartment and shouldn’t qualify for rent stabilization because he makes $142,000 a year. “Rent-stabilized units, when they’re vacant, should only be rented to people who need affordable housing.” Many rent-stabilized tenants are low income, but about 16 percent of rent-stabilized households do earn at least $150,000 a year. If elected mayor, Cuomo says you could only qualify for a rent-stabilized apartment if your rent is 30 percent or more of your income. Let’s say this couple is looking for an apartment. Their salaries are $35,000 and $45,000 a year. They find a rent-stabilized apartment for $2,000 a month. That’s 30 percent of their income. So under Cuomo’s plan, this couple will face less competition for this lease because anyone who makes more than them could not apply for the the apartment. Means-testing is popular with voters. About 65 percent supported it in a recent Times-Siena poll. But critics argue that Cuomo’s plan reflects a misconception that rent stabilization is an affordable housing program. In fact, it’s a form of market regulation with roots in the postwar era. “After World War II, you had returning G.I.s starting families.” The rent gets too damn high and the government takes a look to say, ‘Is there something we could do about it?’” Some apartments in this period were rent-controlled. The system that eventually effectively froze 1970s rents in place like the famously low-rent apartments from “Friends” and “Sex in the City.” “You have a rent-controlled apartment? I suggest you stay there.” In reality, only about 1 percent of apartments are rent controlled today. Most are now covered by rent stabilization, which first became law in 1969. “It really was this broad-based sense that tenants needed the government to come in and kind of limit that increase in their rent. Rent stabilization was not designed to take into account the income of the tenant at all. Rent regulation was really put into place to say when the vacancy rate is so low, landlords can’t use that as an opportunity to gouge tenants for increases in rents.” Today, rent stabilization applies to most apartments in buildings with at least six units that were built before 1974. That covers about one million units and two million New Yorkers. Rent increases are set by the mayor-appointed Rent Guidelines Board. “So you’re not at the mercy of your landlord solely. They can only go according to the increased percentage rate that the Rent Guidelines Board decides.” Joanne Grell is a tenant advocate in the Bronx. She moved into a rent-stabilized apartment nearly 25 years ago and still lives in it today. “I moved here back in 2002 with a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old, not knowing exactly how I was going to be able to be a single mom and afford to live in the city. Fast forward 23 years later, I raised my children here.” When she moved in, her rent was about $950 a month. She earned a moderate income, but if means-testing had been in place, she wouldn’t have qualified for her unit. “When I moved in here 23 years ago, it might have been 20 percent of my salary. So if Cuomo’s means-testing proposal was in place when I applied for this apartment, I would have never been able to get it.” Now, she does spend more than 30 percent of her income on rent, which has gone up to $1,750 a month. Grell plans to vote for Mamdani this election because she believes his proposal to freeze the rent would help struggling tenants like her and 69 percent of voters in the Times-Siena poll agreed. “My upstairs neighbor said to me, ‘If I get another increase, I will not be able to keep my apartment.’ That’s how serious it is.” David Reiss said that Mamdani’s rent freeze would help tenants in the short term, while Cuomo’s means-testing would be an administrative nightmare that could make life difficult for many. Ultimately though, he said neither of these policies address the root cause of high prices: that there aren’t enough apartments to go around. Both mayoral candidates have said they support building hundreds of thousands of units to help address the housing shortage. “We need more housing, a lot more.” “Get the supply up. The rents will come down.” But Reiss says neither candidate’s plans would meet the demand and don’t account for factors like population growth or apartments being demolished. “Politicians from President Trump to Andrew Cuomo to Zohran Mamdani, have all proposed policies to address housing affordability. But it can’t just be doing what we’re doing now, but a little bit better. Fundamentally, if you want to increase affordability, you have to build more housing.”
The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to formally codify an existing rule requiring landlords to file eviction notices with the city, a procedural step that aims to improve enforcement of tenant protections and spot patterns of evictions.
Under the newly adopted ordinance, landlords must submit a copy of any written notice ending tenancy to the Los Angeles Housing Department (LAHD) within three business days of serving the tenant. The amendment, originally drafted by the City Attorney’s Office in April, specifies that notices must be submitted either electronically or using a form approved by the LAHD and the City Attorney.
City officials and housing advocates say the rule is part of a broader push to increase transparency around evictions and ensure renters aren’t being forced out of their homes illegally.
In a statement, Sharon Sandow, director of communications for the city’s Housing Department, said the amendment requires landlords who don’t file eviction notices online to instead mail the notice along with an LAHD Eviction Filing Cover Sheet.
“This ensures that LAHD receives all necessary tenant information directly from the landlord,” she said. “Tenant information is essential for providing tenants with valuable renter protection and referrals to appropriate legal services, thereby safeguarding tenant rights.”
Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival, a longtime tenants’ rights nonprofit, praised the move, saying it strengthens tenant protections and enables groups like his to help tenants fight unlawful evictions.
“Tenants are in some cases unaware that they’re being evicted, until they get the notice to appear in court,” Gross said. “So landlords play a lot of games with these notices and this will hold them accountable.”
He also connected the ordinance to broader tenant protection infrastructure, like the city’s Right to Counsel Program, which provides eligible tenants with free legal representation.
“ It goes hand in hand with the city’s commitment to funding Right to Counsel,” Gross said, “to ensure that tenants, particularly low-income tenants, are represented with legal representation when they have to fight an eviction in courts.”
But landlord groups criticized the move as overly burdensome. Daniel M. Yukelson, executive director and CEO of Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles, said the measure adds yet another layer of bureaucracy for landlords already grappling with complex rules.
“The city is doing everything in its power to make it more difficult for property owners to collect legally owed rent or deal with problems that tenants are causing, whether they be conducting criminal activity, destroying property, creating a nuisance,” he said.
Yukelson said that under the city’s eviction-filing rules, even small technical errors, such as forgetting to list the number of bedrooms, or failing to submit the required forms within three business days, can allow a tenant to raise an affirmative defense in court. That means a judge could delay or dismiss the case, forcing landlords to start the eviction process from the beginning.
“ Believe me, evictions are a last resort in any situation,” he said. “They’re very costly and time-consuming and nerve-wracking for property owners to go through, so nobody wants to do it. And the city is just creating even more burdens on property owners through this latest action. It is basically death by a thousand cuts.”
The item passed Tuesday without discussion. The updated ordinance amends sections 151.09 and 165.05 of the Los Angeles Municipal Code to clarify how landlords must comply with the city’s eviction filing rules, which was enacted in January 2023 as part of a broader package of pandemic-era tenant protections.
This rule applies to all written notices terminating a tenancy for at-fault reasons, including those for nonpayment of rent, lease violations, nuisance complaints or other tenant misconduct under the city’s Rent Stabilization and Just Cause ordinances.
Notices for no-fault evictions — such as owner move-ins or demolition — must be filed separately through a Declaration of Intent to Evict, which includes an application fee and paid relocation assistance to the tenant.
The LAHD maintains a searchable database of notices filed under the ordinance, which tenants can use to check whether their landlord has complied. If a landlord fails to file the notice properly or on time, tenants may be able to raise an “affirmative defense” in court — a factor that can delay or even derail the eviction process.
In a July 2023 report, LAHD noted that while it had received roughly 40,000 eviction notices since the rule took effect, many were submitted on paper, creating backlogs and straining staff capacity. To streamline the process and bolster enforcement, the department recommended a technical amendment requiring landlords to either upload notices electronically or submit them on a standardized form approved by LAHD. Tuesday’s vote codified that recommendation.
John Fabbricatore enforced federal immigration laws in his position as an ICE field office director until two years ago, and now he hopes to help secure America’s borders as a congressman.
The Republican candidate in Colorado’s 6th Congressional District is drawing on his career with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as he runs against U.S. Rep. Jason Crow in the Nov. 5 election. Crow, a Democrat, just finished his third term in Congress as the representative of the district, which includes Aurora, Littleton, Englewood, Greenwood Village and Centennial.
The odds weigh heavily in Crow’s favor. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report doesn’t consider the fight for the 6th District to be competitive. It’s ranked as solidly Democratic, in part because Crow, 45, won all three of his elections by double-digit percentages and redistricting in 2020 resulted in boundaries more favorable to Democrats.
That’s a change from 2018 when the district was seen as a battleground and Crow won his first race by unseating then-U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, now Aurora’s mayor.
But this time, Fabbricatore, 52, says voters are looking for a candidate who will prioritize the economy and lower taxes — and he contends that he’s the person for the job.
“They want someone that wants to fight,” Fabbricatore said.
He and Crow share certain traits. They’re both veterans: Fabbricatore served in the U.S. Air Force, and Crow was an Army Ranger. They’re hunters, each having longstanding experience with firearms. Neither hails from Colorado originally, with Fabbricatore raised in New York City and Crow in Madison, Wisconsin.
And the candidates, both fathers of two children, reside in Aurora.
Beyond that, their stances on major issues diverge — including on immigration, which Fabbricatore refers to as his “subject matter expertise.”
He argues jobs are going to immigrants compensated with lower wages, taking positions that could be filled by Americans for higher pay. Fabbricatore says he supports “legal, vetted” immigration and more stringent enforcement of existing laws.
“If we actually just enforce those laws, we will be doing much better than we are doing today with immigration,” he said.
In recent weeks, Fabbricatore has raised the alarm alongside former President Donald Trump and other conservatives about the presence of Venezuelan gangs in Aurora — while Crow has called out exaggerations and criticized Trump for distorting the problems in certain apartment complexes.
Crow notes that he represents “one of the most diverse districts in the nation,” with nearly 20% of his constituents born outside of the U.S. He wants to use federal grants and other programs to help immigrants and defend them against racist rhetoric.
He said he backed a bipartisan immigration deal that ran aground earlier this year after failing to earn enough Republican support. It would have boosted the number of border patrol agents, immigration judges and officers that oversee asylum cases, as well as established more legal pathways for migrants and others without documentation.
Fabbricatore said in a Denver Post candidate questionnaire that he would not have supported the bipartisan bill, instead preferring another bill with a greater focus on border security.
Gun violence is what motivated Crow to run for office. He backs a ban on assault weapons and supports universal background checks. He’s also working to pass a bill that would apply the same restrictions to out-of-state residents when they purchase long guns and shotguns as they face when buying handguns — requiring that the gun be shipped to a federally licensed seller in their home state, with a background check performed there.
Gun violence is “just an unacceptable, avoidable, ongoing national tragedy,” Crow said. “We don’t have to live with mass shootings.”
Fabbricatore says he believes in gun rights and is instead pushing for investments in mental health.
The candidates differ on abortion. Crow favors abortion rights, saying he aligns with the majority of Coloradans who back legal access to abortion — and he would support a federal law establishing that as a right. Fabbricatore says Congress should leave abortion’s legal status to the states. He opposes abortion, but he says he recognizes a need for exceptions, including in cases of rape.
“Having been someone who worked in sex trafficking and saw what many women went through, I could never tell a woman that she couldn’t have a medical procedure to end what happened to her,” he said.
Fabbricatore points to the economy as his No. 1 issue, saying it’s impacted by energy policy and immigration. He sees Colorado’s potential to participate in the energy sector through solar, wind, fracking and coal.
He says he wants to leave the younger generations with a prosperous economy, reliable job market and reasonable housing prices.
Crow says the nation’s inflation and interest rates are dropping, but he contends that prices are still “way too high for many Coloradans.”
He points to corporate price gouging as a contributing factor. Crow argues that the labor shortage, which drives up prices, could be addressed through immigration reform.
“There’s more work to do, but we’re on a good path — and certainly need to keep on the path that we are to make sure things are affordable,” Crow said.
Alexa Castelvecchi was glad when she and her roommates found their new apartment about a year ago, in a modern building in Hollywood with a big, sleek kitchen and oversized windows. It was nothing like the aging, rent-controlled apartment she once sublet in Venice, where she often had to cook using a toaster oven.
But with the end of her lease on the three-bedroom apartment fast approaching, she has found herself worrying about how much the already high monthly rent of nearly $4,000 might increase.
Little did she know that she has some of the strongest protections available. Unbeknownst to many tenants across the city, an obscure city rule requires some newly built rental properties to be put under the city’s rent stabilization ordinance, commonly referred to as rent control.
Developers have built more than 10,000 such units since 2007, city records show, adding a new crop of rent-controlled housing across the city.
The buildings offer a counterpoint to real estate industry claims that rent control limits new construction. But they also raise a question: do their tenants even know they live in rent-controlled units?
Castelvecchi said she had no idea that she lived in a building with rent caps until a Times reporter told her recently.
“Nobody said anything,” she said.
Generally, the city’s rent control law only applies to buildings built on or before Oct. 1, 1978 — a cutoff date many landlords and at least some renters are acutely aware of. Under the rules, landlords can set the rent whenever a unit becomes vacant, but face limits on how much they can raise rent on individual tenants annually, usually between 3% and 8%, depending on inflation.
Newer buildings typically do not have those protections, but they can depending on what was there before. Under a 2007 city ordinance, newly constructed apartments, townhomes and condos must be rent controlled if an older rent controlled property was demolished on site.
The data show that developers across the city frequently pursue these projects despite their buildings being subject to rent caps the moment a lease is signed.
The apartment building at 5800 Harold Way in Los Angeles, CA is under rent control.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Leeor Maciborski, owner of ROM Residential, which currently owns Castelvecchi’s building, purchased that building after another investor built it. However, he said he’s developed five or six other properties in Los Angeles knowing they’d fall under the city’s rent stabilization ordinance.
The projects made financial sense because he could set the initial rent at market rate and was allowed at least a 3% increase each year, he said.
“If I could build something … and I can count on 3% to 4% annual increases, I am happy,” the developer said.
Tenant advocates, meanwhile, say that even if some new rent-controlled apartments are being built, replacing older rent controlled units for new ones is devastating. Not only are people evicted, but new construction demands a premium when the unit is initially rented.
“The only ones who make out with this trade off is the developers and the landlords who are pulling in more and more profits and income on the backs of those people they have displaced,” said Larry Gross, executive director with the tenants advocacy group Coalition for Economic Survival.
Since mid-2007, owners have removed more than 13,000 older rent-controlled units from the market , leading to concern the demolition is worsening the city’s affordability and homelessness crisis.
Over the same time frame, housing department data show 10,252 new units have been put under the city’s rent stabilization ordinance.
New buildings can be exempt from the rules if they open for rent more than five years after the old property was removed from the market, or if the developer dedicates a certain number of new units as income-restricted affordable housing — though units will revert to rent control once those income restrictions expire in coming decades, according to the housing department.
About 3,000 additional units fall into the latter, temporarily exempt category, although some are already income restricted.
In theory, newly constructed rent-controlled properties could increase the overall number of apartments with rent caps in the city, because developers often knock down a small building to build more units. For now, that hasn’t happened.
The real estate industry — as well as many housing economists — have long argued that far fewer developers would build if they are subject to rent caps, leading to even higher rents as supply shortages worsen. As a result, rent control ordinances across the country typically exempt new construction.
Until recently, state law in California outlawed rent caps on properties built after Feb. 1, 1995, and even earlier in some cities like Los Angeles, with the exemption for newly built properties that replaced older rent controlled units.
Then in 2020, a new law took effect and put statewide rent restrictions on buildings older than 15 years, though these caps are less strict than in places like Los Angeles, whose rules remain in place.
The state bill’s author, then-Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco), had proposed 10 years as a cut off, but it was extended another five years to lessen opposition. At the time, the California Apartment Assn. took credit for the change, saying it would “mitigate the bill’s impact on future development of rental housing.”
Fred Sutton, a senior vice president with the California Apartment Assn., said the fact that some developers build under the L.A. rules does not mean housing construction would not decline if rent caps were placed on all new buildings. As restrictions are added, fewer projects can be expected to turn a reasonable profit — even if some go forward, he said.
“Can people still figure out a way to do it?” Sutton said. “Yes, but you’re not going to get as many people as you need.”
Two developers told The Times they didn’t know about the rules before building. One said he’d do so again, while another wouldn’t because rent control gives him less flexibility to earn a profit.
Maciborski said he’d take a different tack. He’d be willing to build another rent-controlled building, but only if the project would expect a greater return than before, to buffer him from potential actions by the Los Angeles City Council that might undercut his revenue stream.
The pandemic pushed the council to freeze rent in controlled buildings for nearly four years. Only a few months ago did officials allow landlords to raise rent.
“I’d consider it,” Maciborski said of constructing another rent-controlled property. “But now knowing what potential tools the city council … has at their disposal, it’s definitely a little scarier.”
Renters who live in any rent-controlled buildings — old or new — should know about it. The Los Angeles Housing Department requires the landlord to alert tenants by posting notice at the property. But several residents who spoke to The Times at the newer buildings said they had no idea.
After learning about her building’s status, Castelvecchi checked her lease and noticed that rent control is mentioned in a section she had previously overlooked. And she found a sign in the building outlining the rules, which she hadn’t previously noticed.
It would have been better, she said, if she had simply been told verbally about the rules when she rented the apartment.
“It’s extremely unnerving that it wasn’t communicated by anyone I met,” she said. “When you have to read the fine print, it feels difficult to trust.”
Maciborski said that if a tenant asked, a leasing agent would tell them if a building was rent controlled, but when dealing with legal issues his company relies on putting it in writing.
“It’s verifiable,” he said, adding written notices can also give more detailed information than a leasing agent may have on hand.
Gross, the tenant advocate, said it’s a constant struggle to educate tenants of their rights, with many residents of older properties not understanding they have rent control protections. He believes the problem is even worse in newer buildings, because even if people understand rent control exists they often believe all new properties are exempt.
“There’s not enough education and outreach,” Gross said.
Monique Mendoza, who pays $3,800 a month to live in a townhome in Boyle Heights, said she also had no idea that her newer unit also falls under the city’s rent control protections. It would have given her some relief just to know, she said. She is constantly worrying about the cost of rent and probably couldn’t afford a big increase.
Even without a rent hike, she said, “for us, as a family, it’s not affordable.”
