Yes on 10, But Wishy-Washy in Los Angeles

Obviously, Yes on 10 will pass in Los Angeles. With 64% renters, according to LA Curbed (it was just 54% in 2017, they wrote!) it’s a shoo-in. And we’re no dummies: rent fees are ENORMOUS in Los Angeles – most of your income for many folks.

And it appears that lawmakers agree: the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors gave a thumbs up to it, leading the way, and yesterday the LA City Council waded in, perhaps influenced by the protests outside, perhaps listening to their own conscience, and also said yes.

But let’s look at the history: There has not been one law or measure or code to help no-rent control (non-RSO) tenants in 40 years…since the start of Rent Control in 1978! Do ya think city folks in power might have noticed this all these years?

Here’s what Mayor Garcetti had to say recently:

“I’ve always believed that those who live closest to a given block or a street know what’s best. Local government should have control over their own city.”^[

That’s a Yes on 10. But is he really aware of renters at all, or how it all works? An aide in his office sent me a letter Garcetti wrote to the LA Tenants Union and Housing Now (might as well save some time and toss all those groups together!) in August of 2017.

I can’t figure out how to cut and paste from that Acrobat doc, but in that whole 2 page letter, the advancements Garcetti claimed for his office affected only tenants WITH rent control. The rest of us (which is now over 1,100,000 renters in Los Angeles!) can go to hell.

All Councilmen have to join Committees. Over a year and a half ago, the Housing Committee switched places with the Homeless Committee, or at least the numbers did: Housing was 5 Councilmen, but they pushed them over to Homeless, to jump that to 5, and now Housing only has 3 members. So now you know who they value most.

• Councilman Gil Cedillo (Chair) – I went to City Hall to meet with his aide – then they never returned a call or email
• Councilman Krekorian – said since we aren’t in their district, they’re not interested in talking
• Councilman Harris-Dawson – Impossible to get any phone call or email returned

Cedillo proposed Council File: 17-0454 to change no-fault evictions (we are being evicted for no reason right now), to Just Cause evictions, in June of 2017.

“Right now a tenant not protected with rent control can be evicted without any reason whatsoever and thrown out onto a rental market which they likely won’t be able to afford,” Larry Gross said.

“With just cause, tenants are protected on the front end against abuses,” said Aimee Inglis of the statewide advocacy group Tenants Together. “It’s basic fairNerf. [to require] a landlord to cite a reason for eviction, rather than allowing this to happen arbitrarily.”

Landlords have come out against the proposal, saying there is a financial incentive to keep units occupied and most landlords are not evicting people to bring in higher-paying tenants.

Hahahahaha! And THIS is why you shouldn’t trust the LA Times to deliver the news. They wrote this with a straight face. 

In any case, Cedillo let the proposal die. I tried to resurrect it in October of 2017, and it lurched over to the Director of Rent Control, Anna Ortega, for her to write a “report” on it – ie, call the other 13 cities who have Rent Control to see how this worked for them. I just called her recently, and in the year she has been writing this report…nothing has happened. There is no proposal to vote on.

If I was a Council member and Committee Chair like C. Cedillo, and if I wrote a proposal with my NAME on it, and then talked to the LA Times about it, and my constituents were being evicted left and right waiting for it…I would have done something by now. Where is your integrity, sir?

So that’s the Mayor and the City Council in a nutshell. Even when Yes on 10 passes, there’s no guarantee Los Angeles will be able or willing to implement it.

Does everyone understand this? Yes on 10 isn’t a coercive law at all: it’s an opportunity, if a city wants it, to start Rent Control for their citizens. It tells you the gross amounts people are paying right now:

b) Research by Apartment List indicates that the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in California is $1,410, an increase of 4.5% in just one year. A one bedroom apartment in Los Angeles costs $1,350 per month. In San Francisco, it costs $2,450. In San Diego, the cost is $1,560.

But it also adds that the landlord is guaranteed a fair rate of return.

How very odd that this isn’t mentioned in the No on 10 campaign. Actually, a lot isn’t mentioned there. All their talking points are about negatives: what this proposal (every proposal) is missing. Negative space is important in art; in politics, it’s just a big fat zero.

Plus, without Yes on 10 you’ll end up just like us here at 2965 Waverly Dr.. And that is NOT where you want to be. Vote Yes on 10.