Los Angeles real estate agent Laura Kate Jones is trying to find a home this week for a client whose Pacific Palisades home was reduced to rubble. The woman and two children were left with only the clothes on their backs and no belongings.
Jones is scouring the West Los Angeles rental market for a home her family can rent for the next eight months or more. On Friday morning, she noticed something odd about the rents on at least three of the properties she was tracking. It went up 15-20% overnight.
Jones was surprised by the sudden jump in rents, but it was consistent with what she had noticed since wildfires began burning in the Los Angeles area on Tuesday. On Thursday, Jones and a client were touring a rental home in Beverly Hills when the listing agent raised the monthly fee by $3,000 on the spot. Agents and landlords recognize that some displaced Angelenos may be willing to pay, given the circumstances.
“Right now, people are so panicked and desperate to get into their homes that they're just throwing money away,” Jones said. “People taking advantage of this. It's scary.”
California's state of emergency, declared Tuesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom, prohibits price gouging on a variety of goods and services, including rental housing. This means that rent increases of more than 10% since the start of the state of emergency will be illegal for the duration of the crisis.
But since Tuesday, some landlords and their agents have increased prices beyond what California law allows. These price hikes come as hundreds, if not thousands, of displaced Los Angeles residents seek transitional housing while figuring out their next steps, and rental housing in an already strained area. This is making the market even worse.
Reviews of active rental properties on Zillow show rents for several properties in West Los Angeles have increased by more than 10% since Tuesday. These price increases range from a 15% increase on a five-bedroom home in the Century City neighborhood to an astonishing 64% increase on a one-bedroom rental in Venice.
“There's a sense of desperation on the part of people who need housing, and there's a lot of pressure on property owners,” said Rachel Bogardus Drew, senior research director at Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit organization that provides affordable housing. will have an opportunity to take advantage of that.” Dr. Drew studied how disasters affect the rental housing market.
Samira Tapia, a real estate agent in Los Angeles, is also working to help families affected by the fires. Among her clients is a couple with a one-and-a-half-year-old baby, but their Altadena home is no longer standing. The North Hollywood rental home the family visited rose $800 a month to $5,700 on Wednesday.
Tapia obtained price data from the agency's listing service this week and found that out of more than 400 listings in the central Los Angeles and San Fernando Valley areas, about 100 have increased rents by more than 10 percent since Tuesday. I discovered that
“Working with these families, I have witnessed an untold amount of illegal price gouging,” said the Pacific Palisades resident who was spared but works with area residents who lost their homes. said Trey White, a real estate agent. “It takes advantage of displaced families who are already in a state of crisis and emergency.”
Chelsea Kirk, director of policy and advocacy at Strategic Action for a Just Economy, a small Los Angeles nonprofit focused on tenant and housing rights, said the fires have disrupted the Los Angeles housing market. , he said he expected it would put further strain on the former housing market in particular. Homeowners choose to rent temporarily or permanently. Landlords in the city have already been demanding “exorbitant” rents this week.
Rising rents in Los Angeles are not a new concern for Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival, a community-based organization that holds weekly tenant rights clinics. In the past, his organization has helped tenants report illegal rent increases and file complaints with authorities when emergency orders have been issued prohibiting rent increases of more than 10 percent.
But Gross said it is the tenant's responsibility to report and fight rent increases, complicating enforcement of the price gouging ban.
“We've been through different events like this before, so we're on our toes,” Gross said.
Mimi Dwyer contributed reporting from Los Angeles.
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