L.A.'s Pandemic Rent Cap to Stay in Place Until 2023

Landlords in Los Angeles "are prohibited from raising the cost of more than 650,000 rent-stabilized units citywide, which represents nearly three-quarters of L.A.’s apartment stock," according to an article by Liam Dillon for the Los Angeles Times.

The prohibition was one of the measures signed into law by Mayor Eric Garcetti in an emergency order in March 2020, explains Dillon.

So far, the pandemic rent cap hasn't affected the city's housing market, but one local expert, Richard Green, director of the University of Southern California Lusk Center for Real Estate, is cited in the article warning about the potential long-term consequences of the rent cap. "But he said he worries that the longer it continues, the less likely it is for upwardly mobile tenants to leave their existing apartments, keeping what would be lower-cost units unavailable for others."

In the meantime, tenants are benefitting from cap—as rental price have rebounded from pandemic lows in January 2021 and even surpassing pre-pandemic levels in an already expensive city. And landlords are unhappy, saying it's harder to balance the books when factoring in so many increasing costs, "including labor and materials for building repairs as well as city fees for trash pickup."

Dillon also provides a comparison about Los Angeles' rent stabilization emergency order compared to other large cities around the country—New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. Of those cities, Los Angeles is the only to leave its emergency rent stabilization rules in place beyond the first few months of 2022.