(The Center Square) – The Los Angeles City Council is voting for a one-year eviction moratorium on Friday for anyone “economically impacted” by the wildfires, which the regional apartment association said could lead to a citywide “rent holiday,” as happened after COVID-19.
After the pandemic, some eviction protections lasted until the end of May 2024.
The full council Friday will vote on an amended measure advanced in committee that prevents evictions for non-payment of rent until Jan. 31, 2026 for residents who can attest to lost income and economic hardship from the 2025 fires.
Owners say these rules, like the previous COVID-era moratorium, could result in billions of dollars of losses for owners, whose costs have risen more quickly than rents. Just last week, the state’s largest property insurer submitted a 22% rate hike to state regulators.
“Unfortunately, as we had seen before, there is no recourse for lying, and any renter is free to self-certify or provide false documentation of their wildfire impacts,” said Daniel M. Yukelson, executive director of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles, to The Center Square. “Only housing providers will face severe consequences for what will again surely be tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid rent.”
“It is as though the City Council thinks that every renter in the city was impacted by the wildfires,” Yukelson continued. “The city would be far better served to utilize a more targeted approach by providing rental assistance to those renters who were impacted by the wildfires and who either could not afford or were too irresponsible to purchase renters insurance that would have provided them with significant relocation benefits.”
Yukelson also noted that a one-year moratorium could allow renters to accumulate a large amount of debt that may never be paid back, while a shorter, three-month moratorium would be more reasonable for renters and owners.
Last week, the council passed an eviction moratorium for taking in new residents or pets in a manner that violates their leases, and banned rent increases on rent-controlled apartments for one year. Because insurance companies do not cover properties with certain dog breeds, property owners warned that this move could result in many owners losing their insurance coverage. According to a Forbes analysis, most insurance companies ban pit bulls, Rottweilers and Dobermans.
The motion under consideration was put forward by Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo Soto-Martinez, who argued that employment for tenants and regional GDP growth could be impacted by the fire, necessitating eviction protections.
“A 2019 MIT study found that eviction rates nearly double after severe natural disasters,” wrote Hernandez and Soto-Martinez in their motion. “The economic outlook for tenants is similarly grim, with employment generally diminishing immediately in the wake of this kind of fire, then in additional waves 1 and 2 years out. Meanwhile, wildfires lead to a significant decrease in the regional GDP growth rate.”