A landlords association has filed another lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles over a COVID-19 pandemic-related rent hike freeze that’s not scheduled to end until early next year.
The Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles is asking a judge to overturn the rent hike freeze and to prohibit the city from enforcing it, saying in a complaint that the local COVID-19 state of emergency has ended and that city officials have not reconsidered their ordinance in light of recent inflation.
“Since the adoption of the Rent Freeze Ordinance, inflation has pushed the costs of living and the Consumer Price Index (‘CPI’) for the Los Angeles area higher and higher. … Despite these increases year-over-year in CPI, the City has not re-evaluated the ban in relation to current economic circumstances,” reads the complaint, filed Monday, July 24, in Los Angeles Superior Court.
Daniel Yukelson, executive director for the apartment association, said on Thursday, July 27, that in addition to immediately overturning the rent hike freeze, the organization seeks to persuade a judge to declare the freeze unconstitutional under the state Constitution, to prevent similar policies from being enacted in the future.
Faizah Malik, an attorney at Public Counsel, which belongs to the tenant rights group known as the Keep LA Housed Coalition, on Friday, July 28, criticized the apartment association’s decision to sue.
“Rather than do something to help fix our housing crisis, AAGLA is focusing its energies on repeatedly suing the City of Los Angeles to worsen it,” Malik said in a statement.
The ordinance at the center of this debate, which the L.A. City Council adopted in May 2020, applies to housing units subject to the city’s rent-stabilization ordinance, which regulates how much rent can be increased annually on rental housing constructed before 1978. There are about 624,000 such rent-stabilized units in L.A.
Property owners to whom the rent hike freeze applies were…
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