HOUSING AND TENANTS’ RIGHTS
OVERVIEW
All Angelenos deserve safe, affordable, and stable homes. Families should be able to put down roots, workers should be able to live near their jobs, and young people should be able to grow up without the fear of being displaced from their neighborhoods. Yet, Los Angeles is experiencing a deep housing affordability and displacement crisis that undermines this basic expectation.
Our affordability crisis is especially extreme in CD11. CD11 is home to many of the most expensive neighborhoods in Los Angeles - 6 out of the city’s 10 most expensive neighborhoods to rent are in the District. For example, to comfortably afford a two-bedroom apartment in Venice in 2023, for example, a household would need a yearly income of $180,888. Venice alone averages rents 30% higher than the citywide norm.
With the high cost of housing, LA residents are struggling. Renters have to make nearly $50/hour (or 3x the City’s minimum wage) to afford the average monthly rent. As a result, roughly half of CD11’s households are rent burdened, spending over 30% of their income on housing costs, including rent. Of those, half are severely housing burdened, spending over 50% of their income on housing. The more a person pays for rent, the less they have available to pay for other basic necessities like groceries, healthcare, childcare, or transportation. As the rents continue to outpace wages, more and more people are becoming rent burdened and pushed onto our streets. Our current leadership seems more interested in sweeping unhoused people than preventing our community’s many rent burdened tenants from falling into homelessness in the first place.
For housing to be “affordable” to a person, it should cost no more than 30% of a person’s income. CD11 sadly lacks enough affordable housing to meet the need. Historically, our District has built fewer affordable housing units compared to other districts. As a result of our restrictive zoning practices and underdevelopment of multifamily housing, the Westside is now one of the most segregated places in the City - both racially and economically.
As unaffordability has become more extreme over the years, generations of families are unable to remain in their communities and workers must accept long commutes to access our job-rich neighborhoods. 89% of people that work in CD11 live elsewhere, which means thousands of people are commuting into our District every day. There is also a particular lack of housing for tourism and hospitality workers, teachers, health care workers, early career professionals, social service workers and others that contribute to our communities. High housing costs are leading to a loss of talent, creativity, artists, diversity, young professionals, seniors, small businesses, while also increasing traffic and other harmful environmental impacts.
At the same time, people are losing faith in the City to solve this crisis. Voters continue to support housing solutions, but are not seeing tangible benefits. Current leadership either stalls or blocks the real transformative changes we need to solve our housing crisis.
We don’t have the luxury of allowing this status quo anymore. We need more housing on the Westside, and we need real housing champions on our City Council.
INCREASE AND PROTECT OUR HOUSING SUPPLY
The number one way to solve our housing crisis is to build more housing - especially housing that is actually affordable to workers - while protecting our existing housing stock and using good community planning principles. Local government has different policy tools available to address our housing supply issues - from funding to zoning to eliminating red tape. We should use all the tools available to us to build more housing in CD11.
Unblock Approved Affordable Housing
Our current Councilmember hasn’t proposed or expedited a single new affordable housing project while in office. Instead she has blocked already approved affordable housing like Venice Dell or let other projects languish, like the proposed affordable housing developments at the Disability Community Resource Center in Mar Vista and at the historic First Baptist Church in Venice. On Day One, I will unblock these critical affordable homes. I will hire dedicated staff to identify project hurdles and move affordable housing projects through the byzantine city approval processes. Enough of the stall tactics.
Affordable Housing For Workers, Families, Seniors, and Artists
We have been talking about needing affordable housing for so long that we often don’t know what it means anymore. Affordable for who? When I talk about affordable housing, I mean housing that is accessible to our workers, our families, our seniors, and our artists. Housing for everyday people.
Housing for our workers.
With the airport and tourism, CD11 is a major job center for the City. But most workers cannot afford to live where they work. As a result, thousands of workers commute into the District every day for their jobs, increasing traffic and worsening our air quality. It also makes it difficult to recruit and maintain workers for small businesses as well as schools, hospitals and tourism. As Councilmember, I will prioritize building housing that is affordable for our workers - our teachers, airport workers, grocery clerks, healthcare workers, emergency responders, city workers, and more. This will create more thriving mixed income communities on the Westside, cut down on traffic, and reduce emissions. I will work with stakeholders like LA28, LAUSD, and the Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) to identify land and opportunities to build affordable housing for workers.
Housing for families.
Too often I hear about families who used to live in CD11 but were priced out and had to move to other neighborhoods of the City. As Councilmember, I will push for housing projects with more unit sizes to accommodate renting families in CD11.
Housing for our seniors.
Too many of CD11’s older adults are retiring into financial insecurity. Fixed incomes such as social security aren’t able to keep up with rising housing costs, and many seniors who were displaced by the Palisades fires aren’t able to afford to rebuild their homes. I will secure investment from Measure ULA and Measure A to build more affordable housing for lower income seniors in CD11 so they aren’t pushed out of our communities, or worse, onto our streets. People deserve to age with dignity in their communities here on the Westside.
Housing for our artists.
CD11 has a history of being a hub for artists. But too many artists now cannot afford to stay here. As Councilmember, I will pursue artist housing such as live-work housing, adaptive reuse to reimagine vacant commercial space as artist housing, and affordable housing projects that reserve apartments for artists, like the Venice Dell project.
Simple Single Portal for Affordable Housing
Too many people do not trust or are misinformed about our affordable housing system. People don’t know who owns or manages our affordable housing,where it is located or how to access it.
As Councilmember, I will support the creation of a single database to track all the covenanted affordable housing units in the City to provide transparency to the public. New York City already has a portal like this, which allows residents to find and apply for affordable rental and homeownership opportunities. There is no reason why LA, the second largest city in the country, can’t have the same system. I will also explore pairing a streamlined application portal with a community preference policy for neighborhoods facing high displacement pressure.
Legalize Apartments and Condos in Single Family Areas
72% of LA is zoned for single family homes only, which severely limits the areas where more housing can be accommodated, especially in high opportunity areas with access to good jobs and schools like CD11. While single family homes have been and will continue to be a cornerstone of CD11 neighborhoods, there are also many other types of housing in our neighborhoods: 3-4 story apartment buildings with 10-20 units, townhouses, garden style apartments, courtyard apartments, dingbat apartments, mobile home parks, and backyard accessory dwelling units. Many of these units are rent stabilized and provide crucial “missing middle” housing for middle class families and workers. We have to build more apartments and condos to accommodate our neighbors and families and address our housing shortage. If we don’t, the Westside will continue to become more unaffordable. I support legalizing apartments and condos in more zones in CD11, including single family areas.
With smart, thoughtful community planning, which includes carve outs for high fire severity zones, we can commit to a density approach that works for our CD11 neighborhoods and help us achieve our goal of multi-generational, mixed income communities across the District that integrate into existing neighborhoods.
Affordable Transit Oriented Development and Inclusionary Housing
I support strong inclusionary housing policies that mandate affordable housing be included in new market rate buildings, creating affordable housing without needing public money and facilitating more mixed-income communities. In recent years, the City and State have adopted a number of inclusionary housing and transit oriented development policies, such as the Citywide Housing Incentive Program (CHIP) and SB 79. While increasing density for more housing, these policies also mandate the inclusion of affordable housing in projects. Collectively – and along with other state and city streamlining – these policies will create thousands of more affordable homes near transit. Transit oriented development is smart land use planning. It concentrates housing density along major commercial and transit corridors. Combined with other effective city planning, density along these streets creates walkable, mixed-income communities, supports small businesses along these corridors, increases community safety, and reduces car usage.
Transit oriented development without displacement.
As Councilmember, I will work to implement the CHIP and SB79 thoughtfully to ensure we maximize housing production without displacement along our major transit and commercial corridors, and with consideration for our neighborhood uses.
Implement inclusionary housing in the coastal zone.
In addition, we could be building a lot more affordable housing in the coastal zone in CD11. But coastal zones are currently exempt from city inclusionary housing programs, which leaves affordable housing on the table. As Councilmember, I will push to finally adopt an updated City Mello Act Ordinance to ensure that coastal development serves everyone, not just the wealthiest.
Instead of fighting good land use policies like the current Councilmember, I will seek out community input so I can best implement them in CD11 in order to create housing opportunities for everyone in our community.
Cut Red Tape to Build More Housing, Faster
Outdated and burdensome administrative processes in the City can substantially increase development times and housing costs. We must cut the red tape to build more housing.
Streamline the permitting process.
Entitlement isn’t the last stop in the housing approval process, it’s typically the first step. Even after securing the necessary land-use approvals, projects must still navigate a range of permit applications for demolition, building, utility connection, and more. By streamlining these processes, the City can inject confidence and attract developers to the local housing market. This could include requiring timely notification of permit review, clarifying well-defined standards and minimizing subjective interpretation in the permitting process, implementing a ministerial approval process for all projects that comply with those standards and expediting approvals from local utility providers for housing projects, and implementing a self-certification process and third party review for certain housing projects.
Make more housing by right.
The State has passed a number of streamlining bills in recent years to make more housing “by-right,” meaning a project wouldn’t need to get a zone change to be built. These measures reduce development costs and can speed up our housing production efforts. But even with these streamlining rules, political interference can still create red tape, adding cost and delay – as has happened with the Venice Dell project. As Councilmember, I will propose policies that will: reduce the number of times a project has to come to Council for approval; delegate more approval of projects to our departmental experts; and replace subjective, discretionary rules with specific, clear, objective zoning rules that are easy to follow and quick to approve, and reduce opportunities for political interference.
Affordable Homeownership Opportunities
Too many people are locked out of the dream of homeownership because it’s too expensive to buy a home. In Los Angeles, only the top 25% of families earn enough to purchase a “starter” home. And in Westside neighborhoods like Venice and Mar Vista, where the average home costs almost $2 million, purchasing means monthly payments of around $10,000, limiting ownership to a very small fraction of the most wealthy Westsiders. We can combat rising home costs by incentivizing the development of more starter homes that young and working class families can actually afford to purchase. We can bring down the cost of buying a home if we build the missing middle housing we need.
Reduce the minimum lot size requirement.
Reducing the lot size requirement would allow the building of smaller, lower-priced homes and townhomes.
Locally implement state laws.
State laws like SB 1123 and ADU legislation streamline smaller, denser, more affordable housing development.
Expand City first-time homebuyer programs.
The City already offers programs to help first-time, low-income and moderate-income homebuyers purchase homes by providing loans to cover downpayment, closing, and acquisition cost. The City should expand these programs to help more middle class families enter the market.
Promote New Social Housing Models in the City
We should also be investing in housing models that are outside of the speculative, profit-motivated market. “Social housing” is permanently affordable housing, for rent or ownership, that is community-controlled and resident-managed. Community land trusts (CLT) and cooperatives are well-tested models of social housing that can create permanent affordability managed by residents. These models can be bolstered by adaptive reuse of underutilized properties and through the acquisition and rehabilitation of existing residential buildings. Through Measure ULA and Measure A, we have more tools to fund these housing models to create permanently affordable housing for communities. As Councilmember, I would prioritize making sure that these dollars come to CD11 and are utilized effectively.
Protect our Public Housing and Covenanted Affordable Housing Stock
In addition to building more housing, we must also protect our existing affordable housing stock.
Protect our public housing.
CD11 has one of the last remaining public housing developments in LA at Mar Vista Gardens, which has provided stable affordable housing for generations of MVG families, but federal cuts are threatening its future. As Councilmember, I will support efforts to ensure our public housing remains funded and supported and our Mar Vista Gardens families can stay in CD11.
Build more public housing.
Public housing guarantees stable and affordable housing for some of our lowest income neighbors. Los Angeles is below its federal and state limits of public housing units and has the ability to build more. Los Angeles could follow the lead of Berkeley and explore building more public housing in collaboration with the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA).
Prevent affordability covenants from expiring.
In many affordable units across Los Angeles, affordability is legally mandated through covenants placed on those units. Thousands of those covenants are set to expire, and if that happens units are allowed to reset to market rate, often leading to the eviction of existing tenants. We must intervene before that happens and ensure that those buildings get re-covenanted, such as at the Breezes Del Mar community in Venice.
Supercharge Funding for More Affordable Housing
We need more affordable housing quickly. Measure ULA and Measure A have created unprecedented ongoing funding streams for affordable housing and tenant supports, but we need even more funding options. One way we can supercharge these funding streams is by bonding them - a power the City of Los Angeles routinely uses. This could significantly increase the available dollars for affordable housing development in the near term, allowing us to begin building housing that would otherwise only receive funding from future years of ULA and A revenue. The Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency (LACAHSA) is already discussing bonding their portion of Measure A money so we already have a roadmap.
We should also leverage the City’s depository power to push banks to comply with the Community Reinvestment Act and invest back in our communities, including providing 0% interest social impact bonds to fund capital needs for affordable housing projects in the City.
TENANT PROTECTIONS & SUPPORTING SMALL LANDLORDS
In CD11, renters are the majority. Neighborhoods like West LA/Sawtelle, Venice, Mar Vista, and Del Rey are home to high concentrations of renters. Our District also has some of the highest concentrations of rent-stabilized housing stock, which has helped our communities remain stable despite the affordability crisis.
Still, rising rents are displacing our neighbors and leaving more and more people vulnerable to eviction and homelessness. More specifically, speculation in our real estate market, short-term rental conversions, loss of affordable housing, and weak tenant protections have created instability that disproportionately harms low-income renters, immigrant households, and communities of color.
On top of CD11’s affordability challenges, the quality of its existing rental housing is often poor. Many rental units suffer from deferred maintenance, leaving tenants to live in unsafe and unhealthy conditions. This reality was especially pronounced in the wake of the fires that ravaged the Palisades and dropped ash and other carcinogenic materials on households throughout the district. Aging rental housing stock in CD11 is also not ready for a changing climate, lacking cooling for extreme heat, insulation against worsening air quality, and resilience to flooding or sea-level rise in coastal communities.
Our City’s dual affordability and habitability crisis is not abstract: it pushes thousands into precarity each year. From mass evictions like the one at Barrington Plaza to rent gouging after the January wildfires, housing insecurity erodes community health, disrupts children’s education, destabilizes workforces, and compounds racial inequities.
Keep People Housed Through Income Support and Rental Assistance
Measure ULA sets aside millions of dollars annually for rental assistance and income support for seniors and people with disabilities. It has already provided $30 million to help struggling low-income renters who are at risk of homelessness to stay housed, $10 million in income support to seniors and people with disabilities at risk of being displaced, and funded legal representation for tenants facing eviction. Unfortunately, a lot of low-income residents in CD 11 are not aware of these resources.
As Councilmember, my top priority when I walk into City Hall every day will be bringing these and other resources into our District. My District offices will be centers where residents can apply for emergency assistance and receive in person support to access city services. My District team will include outreach workers that are in the community looking for buildings that are at risk of mass evictions and tenants who need financial help, and will be a strong partner to those working to address the housing crisis and help them navigate City processes quickly.
Enforce and Strengthen Tenant Protections
As a long-time tenant attorney, I have had the honor of working alongside tenant organizers and advocates to win historic tenant protections in the City of Los Angeles, including eviction protections during the pandemic, universal just cause protections, a threshold for nonpayment evictions, stronger tenant-anti-harassment protections, and lower rent increases for rent stabilized tenants. Along with the Stay Housed LA program, we have put in place a strong safety net in place for renters. As Councilmember, I will fight to enforce and strengthen protections for our renters to keep people stably housed in CD11.
Better support for CD11 renters.
Many struggling renters in CD 11 are unaware or unable to access services to keep them in their homes, and our current Councilmember has made little effort to change this. As Councilmember, I will prioritize an increase in services available from Stay Housed LA and other resources to enforce and protect the rights of CD11 renters. I will have dedicated staff on my team to respond to renter concerns and connect renter constituents to legal help and resources. Other Council Offices already do this and have prevented countless Angelenos from falling into homelessness. CD11 renters also deserve this level of support.
Enforce a public rent registry.
Renters in Los Angeles face widespread uncertainty about the legality of their rents. Many tenants do not know whether their rent levels comply with rent stabilization laws. A public rent registry would record and track rent levels and increases across all covered rental units, creating transparency and accountability. LA already requires landlords to register, and now we just need to make this more accessible for renters.
Enforce replacement and relocation obligations.
Increased housing construction might result in demolition of current rental stock. State law and the City’s Resident Protection Ordinance have provided a balanced approach requiring protections for low-income tenants who are displaced with higher relocation payments and the right to return and benefit from the new denser housing. But enforcement of these protections is weak. As Councilmember, I will work with displaced residents to ensure that developers are complying with their obligations under City and state law.
Reform Ellis Act implementation in LA.
The Ellis Act is a state law that allows landlords to evict tenants when the landlords genuinely intend to remove and withdraw units from the rental housing market. The withdrawal process is regulated by city and state law, but has been misused outside of its intended purpose by some landlords with little oversight. As a result, thousands of affordable housing units have been lost and people displaced through the Ellis Act. CD11 has the highest rate of Ellis Act evictions in the City, including almost 1,000 since the current Councilmember took office. In 2023, corporate landlord Douglas Emmett illegally used the Ellis Act to wrongfully evict hundreds of households from rent stabilized housing in CD11. Our current Councilmember did nothing to challenge those wrongful evictions and accepted large donations from the landlords who carried them out. As Councilmember, I will intervene to protect tenants from unlawful usage of the Ellis Act and prevent a situation like the mass eviction at Barrington Plaza from happening again. To accomplish this, I will add more withdrawal protections to the Just Cause ordinance and require the City to verify that an owner’s intent to withdraw units from the rental market is genuine. I will not rubber-stamp Ellis Act applications, and will step in whenever the act is being misused.
Enforce the Short-Term Rental Ordinance.
Short-term rentals continue to erode Los Angeles’ already scarce housing stock. There are over 5,000 short-term rentals such as Airbnb in Los Angeles. Apartments that should house local residents are instead being operated as de facto, unregulated hotels, particularly in beachside districts like CD11. While the City has regulations to restrict this practice, enforcement has fallen woefully short due to the inherent difficulty of enforcing laws against a decentralized network of individual hosts. To protect tenants and preserve our housing stock, Los Angeles must shift enforcement responsibility onto companies like Airbnb. Platforms should be required to verify licenses, disclose the location and ownership of listings, and block unpermitted rentals from operating.
Ban algorithmic rental price fixing.
Just a week after LA’s deadly fires started, we saw landlords try to rent gouge, in some cases blaming algorithms or rental listing platforms for the gouging. Like in San Francisco, Berkeley and Santa Monica, the use of algorithmic software to set rental prices should be outlawed in LA. In addition, tools that use algorithms or AI to screen prospective tenants should be banned, so that tenants are evaluated holistically and without discriminatory barriers when applying for a place to live.
Implement a disaster renter protection ordinance.
LA has experienced many unprecedented emergencies since 2020 - COVID-19, the LA fires, and ICE raids - that have worsened housing instability for residents. Every time an emergency has happened, advocates have mobilized to pressure local governments to adopt additional measures to protect and prevent evictions. As we see more emergencies in an era of climate change, the City should adopt an Emergency Renter Protection Ordinance that becomes effective automatically when a state of emergency is declared. Sonoma County, which faces high fire risk, has adopted a model we could follow. Such an ordinance will allow the City to be immediately responsive in the wake of our next emergency and de-politicize each crisis.
Fight for More Habitable Housing
As a tenant lawyer, a common complaint I have heard from tenants is that their landlords refuse to make repairs to their units or use construction as a tactic of harassment to force tenants to leave. The City has a Rental Escrow Account Program (REAP) to address persistent slum conditions, but a property can be in REAP for years without true resolution of issues.
Modernize code enforcement.
Los Angeles led the country in proactive enforcement of habitability standards in 1998 when it adopted the Systematic Code Enforcement Program (SCEP), which mandated regular inspections of rental housing and held landlords and property owners to a strict timeline for correcting dangerous, unsanitary, substandard and otherwise deficient conditions. After the foreclosure crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, the SCEP program has stalled. Advocates have identified several necessary improvements. With my experience and knowledge, I will catapult this process from stalled to modernized, ensuring accountability from landlords and real results for renters.
Right to Cooling ordinance and indoor air temperature threshold.
As climate change increases temperatures in Los Angeles, many renters without adequate cooling face higher health risks. Just as California requires landlords to provide heat in winter, Los Angeles should adopt a “Right to Cooling” standard to ensure safe indoor temperatures during extreme heat. By setting an enforceable maximum indoor temperature of 82 degrees, the city can address both the health crisis of unsafe heat and the structural shortcomings of its rental housing stock. Los Angeles County (unincorporated), already adopted such protections—Los Angeles must follow suit.
Enforce the Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance.
LA adopted a Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance in 2021, and strengthened it in 2024. However, since adoption enforcement by the City has been a problem, with a Controller audit finding that of 11,000 complaints, only 4 citations were issued. Inadequate staffing has limited the Housing Department’s ability to enforce this critical tenant protection law. As Councilmember, I would commit to stronger proactive investigation and enforcement of the TAHO for CD11 tenants.
Recognize and penalize construction harassment:
In Los Angeles, it is alarmingly easy for landlords to carry out major renovations or even unpermitted construction with little oversight. For many tenants, these tactics are used deliberately to make life unbearable and force them out, especially in rent-stabilized housing where displacement means higher profits for landlords. Los Angeles should explicitly classify excessive or illegal construction as a form of tenant harassment, with real consequences for violators. This means strong penalties, clear tenant protections during renovations, and proactive enforcement against unpermitted or disruptive construction.
Publish a bad landlord watchlist.
Using rent registry, eviction, harassment, and complaint data, LA should publish a Bad Landlord Watchlist to identify the worst landlords in the City. Since 2014, NYC has published its own Worst Landlord Watchlist, which is an information-sharing tool that enables tenants, public officials, advocates and concerned people to identify which property owners consistently flout city renter protection laws. The watchlist serves as a tool to deter landlords from violating the rights of tenants and help tenants organize against bad actors.
Regulate Corporate Landlords and the Speculative Market
Almost half a million rent-stabilized housing units are owned by organizational entities. Of those, almost forty thousand were owned by the largest thirteen entities combined. Corporate ownership of housing has dramatically expanded since the 2008 financial crisis, and has been linked to higher eviction rates and higher rents. As Councilmember, I will more strongly regulate predatory corporate landlordism in the City.
Adopt and fund a Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA)/Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA).
Opportunity to purchase acts ensure that tenants and community organizations get the first chance to purchase rental housing that is put up for sale by the landlords. When appropriately funded, it can create pathways for homeownership for tenants or for community owned permanently affordable models like CLTs. The City should adopt ordinances enshrining these rights, and work with funding streams like ULA to help support tenants and community groups in the acquisition of these properties.
Support LA land bank.
Land banking is a tool that allows a government to acquire underutilized lots, take land off the speculative market, and hold it in a “bank” for later development of affordable housing or for community ownership. LA County is currently piloting a land bank and the City should also follow suit. A land bank could, for example, be a useful tool to keep land in the LA fire burn areas in community hands.
Beneficial ownership disclosure policy.
In Los Angeles, many large corporate landlords shield their identities by holding properties under layers of LLCs and shell corporations. This lack of transparency makes it difficult for tenants to identify who ultimately owns and controls their building, complicating accountability when problems arise. Los Angeles should adopt a beneficial disclosure requirement mandating landlords to publicly disclose the true individuals or entities who own and benefit from rental properties when they register (or re-register) their rental units. This policy would ensure accountability, allowing tenants to know who is responsible for the conditions in their homes and enabling the city to better regulate corporate landlords.
Support Responsible Small Landlords
Small landlords are not the same kind of market actor as big corporate landlords. For many, their rental property might be their only asset and income. Because they do not have access to big sums of capital from having a large portfolio, small landlords face higher pressure during rough inflationary times. At the same time, the solution to these struggles shouldn’t be to pass the financial burden down to their tenants. Instead, I support City tax and fee relief, a property maintenance fund, dedicated technical assistance, and expedited access to City requirements like permitting for responsible small landlords.
I also hope to explore ways to help small landlords afford to make units more climate resilient by replacing gas stoves with safe energy efficient electric and heating systems with electric heat pumps. There are incentive programs through the state but many small landlords are not aware of the programs.