The Los Angeles City Council Wednesday approved recommendations aimed at preventing the abuse of a state law that allows landlords to evict tenants when removing their property from the rental market.
Council members voted 12-0 in favor of a motion introduced by Nithya Raman and Eunisses Hernandez last year, which called for “mechanisms” to ensure that tenants receive the maximum protections when facing eviction proceedings, under the state law known as the Ellis Act.
Council President Paul Krekorian and Councilman Curren Price recused themselves because they are landlords. Councilman Kevin de León was absent during the vote.
“We worked as a council collaboratively to pass some of the strongest tenant protections in this city’s history really since the adoption of the RSO (rent stabilization ordinance) four decades ago,” Raman said, who chairs the council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee. “Today — and this has been the case for some years now — we are at risk of losing some of those very RSO units due to Ellis Act evictions.”
Since 2001, more than 27,000 rent-controlled units have been removed in the city using the Ellis Act, according to the Los Angeles Housing Department. Rent-stabilized units make up roughly 75% of the total rental housing stock in the city with an estimated 3% of the total rent-stabilized stock being lost due to Ellis Act evictions.
Raman noted that the Ellis Act had a “very clear purpose” when it was first created, which was to support long term smaller landlords who were looking to leave the rental business entirely. But throughout the years, the state law has been used by some landlords in “bad faith,” she added, and has contributed to significant losses of affordable housing and displacement of vulnerable tenants.
“I introduced a motion in September (2023) to think about how the city could do more to ensure that the Ellis Act implementation was acting in the way that it was originally intended,” Raman said.
City staff will look at several pathways of ensuring the Ellis Act is not abused by landlords. Among these efforts, council members instructed LAHD to work with the mayor’s office and the chief legislative analyst to lobby for changes at the state level.
These changes would require one-year extensions for all tenants if at least one unit qualifies for an extension; to allow cities to regulate rent for the first 10 years if a property returns to the market; and to require property owners provide a reason for their Ellis Act filing, which would give cities opportunity to reject them if there’s another way to address certain concerns.
It also instructs LAHD and the City Attorney’s Office to draft amendments in order to strengthen the city’s rent-control laws, ensuring that tenants have more time to relocate, appeal or receive aid when facing evictions related to an Ellis Act filing.
The Department of Building and Safety would also be tasked with establishing a “bad actor” policy, where owners are unable to pull permits for new projects if there is a record of unresolved citations and failure to comply with rent-control laws’ Ellis provisions.
Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez introduced an amendment, which was approved, adding that the recommendations be reviewed to see if they fall within the California Housing Crisis Act. Specifically, the councilman wants to understand how the city’s authority and obligation to protect tenants and rent-controlled units has increased since that state law took effect.
Raman’s motion was prompted after Barrington Pacific LLC, owners of the Barrington Plaza Apartments, filed a notice of intent to withdraw their property and evict its 577 tenants.
Under the Ellis Act, tenants must vacate their rental units within 120 days of the notice of intent to withdraw.
According to the LAHD, elderly tenants or those with disabilities at Barrington Plaza Apartments were able to request a one-year extension, allowing them to remain until May 8. Of the 577 tenants, 183 tenants were granted one-year extensions and 394 tenants were required to move out by September 5, 2023.
Barrington Plaza owners had previously cited concerns regarding their sprinkler systems and necessary fire safety improvements for filing to remove their property off the market. The property owners provided funding assistance to help tenants, and coordinated with LAHD and other organizations to provide relocation services.
The Los Angeles City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee approved these recommendations on April 3.