If it is indeed the intent, as she says it is, of Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly Mitchell to make housing in the county affordable for renters without hampering the ability of mom-and-pop landlords to stay in business, why is she pushing a measure that could destroy the livelihood of tens of thousands of small landlords here?
That is the question all Angelenos should be asking her and two of her supervisorial colleagues.
They voted this week for Mitchell’s motion to ask county staff to draft changes to the county’s current “rent stabilization” law. What Mitchell wants is to bar many landlords in unincorporated L.A. County areas from raising rent by more than 3% a year.
Some other “Small property owners could increase rent by up to 4%, while owners of luxury units would be capped at 5%,” reports Rebecca Ellis in the Los Angeles Times.
Where exactly do these percentages come from? What other crucial businesses in the county are told by the supes how much they can charge for their products? Where is the economic science behind the numbers, or were they just pulled out of a hat?
Angelenos need to ask their electeds these questions before the motion — there is another vote necessary — is allowed to go forward. Its passage could easily exacerbate, not ease, the ability to find rental housing here, which is already in drastically short supply.
During the board’s deliberations, small county landlords told the supervisors that they are already at the brink of having to sell their properties and get out of the business because of rising costs, especially the skyrocketing cost of insurance. How are they supposed to keep their rental units available if the numbers don’t pencil out and they can’t pay their own mortgages on the properties, much less maintain them well?
Good on Supervisors Janice Hahn and Kathryn Barger, who voted no.
“We’ve once again put these struggles on the back of landlords,” Barger said, the Times reports.
Bad on Supervisors Lindsay Horvath and Hilda Solis for joining Mitchell in this disastrously naive crusade, which pretends to Robin Hood-rob the rich in defense of the poor but really could end up with even more Angelenos homeless on our streets.