CommentsAFFORDABLE HOUSING CATASTROPHE--While much focus regarding our housing crisis has been on issues like San Francisco State Senator Scott Wiener's disastrous SB 50, falsely promising affordable housing when it’s really a vehicle to boost developer profits through the building of luxury units, the slow pace of providing housing for the homeless, the inadequate enforcing of the city’s Airbnb ordinance and new state rent gouging law, the lack of legislative movement to repeal Costa Hawkins and the explosion of “cash for keys” tenant buyouts to get them to move, one thing has been constant.
One of the main contributors to our affordable housing catastrophe and tenant eviction remains in place. That is the notorious Ellis Act. A state law that allows evictions when a landlord claims to be going out of the rental market.
The City of Los Angeles continued to see more Ellis Act Eviction applications filed by landlords and developers in 2019. Over the last year, 1,659 more rent-controlled units were lost due to the Ellis Act. In the 4th Quarter of 2019, 251 units were “Ellised.”
This brings the total of Los Angeles rent-controlled affordable units lost since 2001 to an astounding 26,562 units!
That is the equivalent of losing nearly five Rent Stabilization Ordinance (RSO) units lost per day.
The Coalition for Economic Survival (CES), in conjunction with the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, just released an update of its web-based interaction map, showing where 26,562 rent stabilized affordable units have been destroyed in the City of LA from 2001 through 2019 due to the Ellis Act.
The Ellis Act, a state law passed in 1985, which undermines local rent control laws, provides landlords the ability to evict tenants in order to remove housing units from the rental market.
The map can be accessed by going to the EllisEvictionsLA site.
The map, using data provided by the Los Angeles Housing + Community Investment Department (HCIDLA), visually shows the devastating impact the Ellis Act has had on tenants being displaced and affordable rent-controlled housing lost.
The housing loss impact has been in neighborhoods across the city, thus worsening Los Angeles' affordable housing shortage.
We can't adequately address our homeless and housing crisis if more and more people are being thrown out of their homes, with many ending up on to the streets, because of the Ellis Act. The Ellis Act must be eliminated.
(Larry Gross is the Executive Director of the Coalition for Economic Survival.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
