LOS ANGELES — Two decades ago, when Jeff Clayton first moved into his rent-controlled, studio apartment in Valley Village he was pinching himself.

It had been months since he started his search — and finding a landlord who would accept a Section 8 voucher, he said, was like “a needle in a haystack.”

But in the last three years, Clayton feels his luck has run out. The building he lives in has come under new management. And according to Clayton, he and some of his neighbors are now dealing with daily harassment from their new on-site property manager.

Verbal threats, unlawful eviction cases, utility shutoffs and excessive construction. Clayton says he’s experienced it all, and that despite multiple complaints to the city’s housing department, nothing has changed.

“I never dealt with anything like this in my life. It was really bad,” Clayton said. “It took all the joy out of... the minute I would open the door in the morning, I would look on the door to see if there were any notices, rather than look out at the sunshine.”

The property manager, who denied our request to be interviewed, says these complaints are coming from people who don’t follow the rules.

But Clayton, who pays a fraction of the average market rent, believes he’s being pushed out so the landlord can flip his unit and charge double what he pays.

It’s why tenant advocacy groups and some city officials — including Councilmembers Hugo Soto-Martinez and Nithya Raman — are attempting to strengthen the language in an existing law in Los Angeles: the anti-tenant harassment ordinance. It passed in August 2021, making harassment illegal against all renters.

Councilmember Soto-Martinez says the motion would ensure “that the penalties are much more strict, or that the attorneys working on these cases would actually want to take them, because often times, they’re just not lucrative for them.”

According to a report from the Los Angeles Housing Department, thousands of harassment complaints filed by tenants are going unanswered.

Since the law went into effect in 2021, about 13,000 complaints have been filed. Of those, only 26 were sent for criminal filings — and of those, only four have resulted in citations sent to a landlord. None have resulted in civil lawsuits.

Landlords, including Daniel Yukelson who heads the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles, say the low citation numbers reflect what he believes to be true — that many claims of harassment, which should show proof of threats, verbal abuse or a refusal to make repairs, are simply not valid.

“I hate to hear about any harassment going on,” said Yukelson. “Whether it’s the tenants being harassed or the owners being harassed. Unfortunately, a lot of these claims just aren’t substantiated.”

Yukelson added that if his association is made aware of harassment going on, they would take action, removing that member from their ranks.

In court documents obtained by Spectrum News, Clayton’s property manager has been accused of harassment and discrimination. In at least one previous court complaint dating back to 2004, tenants claimed the manager would “repeatedly yell and scream” at young tenants for playing outside and “regularly threaten to terminate the tenancy of families with children if their children were found playing outside.”

In his own complaints to the housing department in 2023, Clayton was told by city officials that evidence of potential harassment had been found, and a letter was sent to his property manager informing him about the Anti-Tenant Harassment Ordinance.

The LA City Controller’s office is also conducting an audit of the anti-tenant harassment law to determine if it’s working. But for tenants like Clayton, any additional delay in enforcement only adds to his anxiety of losing his home.

“If you don’t have a place to lay your head, I don’t even know how you would get through one day in this world,” Clayton said.

So, he continues to speak out, desperate to hold on to his home — while hoping city officials take action to protect him and all renters in LA.