LOS ANGELES—A day after a bid to keep the city’s COVID-19 state of emergency in place until permanent tenant protections are implemented failed by one vote, some councilors are pressing their colleagues to move quickly to enact protections for renters who could face eviction after the end of the month.
Temporary tenant protections are set to expire on Jan. 31, with the end of the emergency. The council has voted twice to end the state of emergency at the end of the month, with two amendments seeking to extend it failing.
Four councilors joined tenant groups outside City Hall for a rally on Jan. 11 morning, laying out three protections they would like to see implemented before the emergency expires: Universal just cause to require a reason for evictions, relocation fees for rent increases of more than 10 percent, and a one-month grace period for rent before evictions.
The council voted in December to set an end date for the emergency after extending it indefinitely every month since March 2020. It must vote on continuing the emergency each month.
Councilors Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo Soto-Martinez again filed an amending motion on Jan. 10 to scrap the end date, which fell one vote short of the eight required. A similar motion fell two votes short in December.
Councilman Soto-Martinez said that these tenant protections could help slow down the increase in homelessness.
Council President Paul Krekorian backed the end date, seeking to separate tenant protections from the COVID-19 state of emergency. Krekorian also pledged to place items on the agenda pertaining to tenant protections once they are passed out of committees.
Potential protections would first be discussed in the Housing and Homelessness Committee, chaired by Raman. If the committee cannot come to a consensus, Krekorian could move to bring the matter directly to the council.
“We have 20 days to push those three policies forward so we don’t see thousands of evictions in the city of LA,” Hernandez said.
Last October, the council voted 12–0 to approve a package of recommendations from a council committee to sunset the renter protections.
Under the council action, landlords will be able to resume increasing rent on rent-controlled apartments, which account for three-quarters of the units in Los Angeles, beginning in February 2024.
Tenants who have missed payments since March 2020 will have to meet two repayment deadlines. Under state law, they have until Aug. 1, 2023, to pay back missed rent between March 1, 2020, and Sept. 30, 2021.
Under the city’s moratorium, tenants will have until Feb. 1, 2024, to repay rent accumulated from Oct. 1, 2021, to Feb. 1, 2023.
