LOS ANGELES — One day after LA City Council voted to end COVID-inspired eviction protections at the end of January, housing justice advocates rallied on the steps of LA City Hall to demand that the council take action on tenant protections and affordable housing. Flanked by renters, service employees and housing rights activists, four council members made their case for a series of actions to bolster renters’ rights and stem the rising tide of homelessness.
“As of right now, we have exactly 20 days to do something about this issue,” said Hugo Soto-Martinez, a former union organizer serving his first term on the council representing District 10. “There’s three things on the table that we absolutely have to win.”
Soto-Martinez is advocating for universal just cause for all LA tenants to limit landlords’ ability to terminate a lease for any reason. He also wants to ensure that tenants are not evicted for being late on rent unless they are at least $5,000 in arrears. And he is pushing for a tenant’s right to counsel when facing an eviction hearing in court.
“When we talk about housing is a human right, it’s not just simply about having a roof over your head but the kind of equity and negotiating power that those tenants have against landlords,” Soto-Martinez said.
The rally came a day after the council voted to confirm LA Mayor Bass’s state of emergency declaration on homelessness for six months. According to the most recent point-in-time count from February 2022, 41,980 people were experiencing homelessness in the city.
“We are trying to put the cart before the horse ending the eviction moratorium,” said Eunisses Hernandez, a former community organizer serving her first term on the council representing District 1. “We are in the midst of another COVID wave or also a new variant, and we are talking about ending protections that are keeping people housed right now. We cannot do that.”
Hernandez is one of six council members who supports three motions put forward by City Council member Nithya Raman, who represents District 4.
“I’m here to talk about what we’re going to win, not what we’re going to fight for, but what we’re going to win over the next weeks here in this City Council,” Raman said. “Before these new council members came in, we tried over and over again to ensure that before we ended the eviction moratorium that we would have real protections in place, and that failed over and over again.”
Raman has proposed motions for universal just cause, relocation fees for tenants whose landlords increase their rent above 10%, making it unaffordable and causing them to move and ensuring one month of rent owed cannot be means for an eviction if a tenant is unable to pay due to hardship.
“These are not radical, radical changes to our system right now,” Raman said. “This is commonsense tenant protection. This is commonsense eviction protection.”
Housing activists with groups such as the Alliance for Community Transit-Los Angeles and Keep LA Housed are pushing the city to do even more to protect renters. They would like the city to adopt a tenant bill of rights that includes limiting how much landlords can increase rent, proactively enforcing building codes to ensure safety and removing discriminatory barriers to housing.
They are also calling for the city to codify a tenant’s right to counsel when facing eviction, to commit to community-led implementation of Measure ULA (which voters approved in November to build affordable housing) and to repeal 4118 — the anti-camping ordinance City Council approved in 2021 to ban sleeping, sitting and lying down in public rights of way. In addition, they would like the city to implement a social housing program to create tenant-led, permanently affordable housing in LA for low-income renters.
“Housing is a human right just like water is a human right,” Boyle Heights renter Eva Garcia said at Wednesday’s rally. “Without water, we die. Without a roof over our head, we will die. And that’s why we’re standing here today.”