Apartment Association Files Lawsuit To Stop Rent Freeze On Majority Of LA Apartments

A Los Angeles landlord group is taking the city of LA to court in the hopes of getting a quick end to the rent freeze in effect for the city's rent-stabilized units.

The Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles filed a complaint this week in Los Angeles County Superior Court seeking to void the rent freeze, which prevents rent increases that would normally be allowed once a year on roughly 650,000 rent-stabilized units – almost three-quarters of the apartments in the city, according to the Los Angeles Times. The percentage that rents on those units can be raised normally changes yearly but can be as much as 8%, based on inflation.

Representatives for City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto wouldn't comment on pending litigation. 

Additionally, for some renters who were given a rent reprieve during the early days of the pandemic, back rent is due beginning Aug. 1.

The rent freeze began in connection with the pandemic. When the city ended the local emergency it declared following the arrival of the coronavirus, it ended or began the countdown to end related programs. 

"No other type of business or entity, not food suppliers, medical professionals, nor the government itself, have been burdened by what will ultimately be a four-year mandated ‘freeze’ on income from which housing providers will never be able to make up," AAGLA Board of Directors President Cheryl Turner said in a statement. 

AAGLA Executive Director Daniel Yukelson said the association is asking for the court not only to void the rent freeze, causing it to end before February 2024 as planned, but is also hoping to have it declared inconsistent with the state constitution.

Doing so would "leave the door open for our members to seek what I believe is about $2.6B of lost rent increases over a four-year period and also to be sure that the city never uses this type of tool against property owners ever again," Yukelson said. 

"We just want to make sure that the thing is completely off the table, never to be seen again," Yukelson added. 

AAGLA has tried before to sue the city to halt the rent freeze and the eviction protections commonly referred to as the eviction moratorium, but it did so in federal court and was ultimately unsuccessful. 

Still, tenant advocates are watching the case closely, as they say the stakes could be high for Los Angeles renters.

"The economic recovery has been uneven," Strategic Actions for a Just Economy Executive Director Cynthia Strathmann said. "A lot of very low-income Angelenos are still in a pretty precarious economic position. The back rent is going to be due soon." 

Under state law, tenants who missed rent payments beginning in the earliest days of the pandemic have two deadlines to meet, with the first rapidly approaching, the Los Angeles Daily News reported. Back rent accrued between March 1, 2020, and Sept. 30, 2021, must be repaid by Aug. 1. Any back rent accrued between Oct. 1, 2021, and Feb. 1, 2023, must be repaid by Feb. 1, 2024. 

"I think to pile on rent increases on top of that could be very difficult for some tenants to manage," Strathmann said. 

On Thursday, Mayor Karen Bass announced new public information campaigns launching around the first repayment deadline intended to combat that concern. 

"We will only be able to solve our city’s homelessness crisis if we work to prevent people from falling into homelessness in the first place,” Bass said in a statement. "On August 1st, certain COVID-19 rental protections will expire and I have worked with our partners on the City Council as well as the Los Angeles Housing Department to prepare resources for those who may be impacted. We will do all we can to ensure that a wave of evictions does not hit our City as we continue confronting the homelessness crisis.”

AAGLA is also suing the city over new tenant protections, Commercial Observer reported. Those new regulations were instituted in an attempt to take the place of some of the stronger renter protections that the city enacted at the height of the pandemic. 

AAGLA received a preliminary injunction in late 2022 that impacted the county of Los Angeles' eviction protections, but those are separate from the city's.