Often, well quite often…very sadly, “history” repeats itself. You’ve heard that before, I’m pretty sure. This time, unfortunately, a not-so-distant history I will call a nightmare is back. A fear of mine has now come home to roost in 2025. That fear is the COVID-era toolkit being deployed once again in response to an emergency.

Looking back at the years 2021 through early 2024, and the COVID era moratoriums on not only evictions, but also on rent increases, I for once certainly had a suspicion we would again, someday, see these same emergency measures deployed and imposed unilaterally on one type of business only, that being the business of rental housing. And here we go again and so lucky we are!

We, as an organization that represents rental housing providers, are, of course, adamantly opposed to these measures that allow our renters to easily escape their financial commitments to us with no recourse, and measures that restrict our ability to raise prices while suffering under inflationary pressures. We know what’s coming – renters lie to us about their situations, stop paying their rent, at the same time they enjoy expensive vacations or new automobile purchases, and we the hardworking and struggling housing providers are left standing there holding the “bag” of unpaid rent and false promises to be repaid. I’m sickened at the thought of living through another round of eviction moratoriums and possibly a freeze (and rollback) on rent increases proposed by those complete fools in Sacramento – who’s driving that clown car up there at the state legislature anyway? Is it Newsome?

It was clearly most unfortunate that the County of Los Angeles has chosen to go back to their COVID-era playbook and reinstitute an eviction moratorium for non-payment of rent. After nearly four years in response to the global pandemic, housing providers were left, as I have said, “holding the bag” on more than $1 Billion in unpaid rental debt (and we had lost, according to my calculations, nearly $3 Billion in rent increases within the City of Los Angeles alone and likely untold millions of dollars in other jurisdictions during a period of significant inflationary pressures back in 2021-2023!).

Sadly, as we will soon see again, back in COVID-era days of our not so distant history, the eviction moratorium was interpreted by too many renters as a “rent holiday” leaving many housing providers going months and in some cases years of not collecting rent while residents took advantage of the emergency, while at the same time, property owners observed renters taking expensive vacations or buying luxury automobiles while they skirted obligations to pay rent. In some cases that had been reported by our members, renters who lived rent-free for more than a year or so were apparently able to “bank” enough money to put downpayments on properties of their own, then moved out, and then never paid any of their back rent – delightful to participate in the upcoming wealth transfer and fleecing of landlords once again.

It’s a crime and merely going back to the same playbook in Los Angeles County, covering all 88 incorporated cities and all unincorporated areas, will only cause more of the same financial turmoil to befall housing providers. Unfortunately, as we had seen before, there is no recourse for lying, and any renter is free to self-certify or provide false documentation of their wildfire financial impacts. Additionally, the financial threshold required by the County Supervisors of just 10% loss of monthly income is a complete joke and very easily manipulated by any scheming tenant.

As always, “we” housing providers are the “adults” in these situations – we are the responsible, at-risk parties. Only “we” housing providers will face severe consequences for what will again surely be tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid rent. If only verifiable proof could be provided housing providers under this awful, draconian measure, we may have a chance to persevere. Without there being recourse when renters are untruthful, when they are lying, there will be plenty of intentional misconduct to take advantage of the emergency and skirt lease payment obligations. This less than adult, criminal behavior should not be permitted by the County (or any jurisdiction) a second time around, but the County (nor any other jurisdiction for that matter) will ever carry out responsible for enforcement when tenants provide false documentation and outright lie.

Moreover, rental housing providers themselves are not immune to the impacts of these horrific wildfires. Many of our members and other rental property owners have lost housing due to the wildfires, and they should be allowed to occupy the property that they own. Any eviction moratorium should have excluded all owner occupancy where owners are victims of the wildfires and are facing financial distress.

On top of the County’s 6-month eviction moratorium, some of the cities within the County like Los Angeles, Culver City and Pasadena, and likely others, have or will consider imposing eviction moratoriums of varying lengths that will likely conflict with and cause confusion over the County’s moratorium.

A Rent Freeze and Rollback? Oh My!

If more bad news is needed, working its way through the State Assembly, starting at the Assembly’s Judiciary Committee on March 4, 2025, we have proposed Assembly Bill 246 (A.B. 246), the “L.A. Rent Freeze and Rent Rollback Bill,” which would impose a FREEZE on ALL residential rent increases on ALL types of residential rental properties located ONLY within the County of Los Angeles and County of Ventura, including any rental properties that are exempt from state and local rent control such as single-family homes, condominiums and new construction. In addition, housing providers would be required to ROLL-BACK all rents to January 7, 2025, and issue REFUNDS to tenants. Under A.B. 246, housing providers could face penalties of up to $10,000 per infraction.

The County of Los Angeles and many local jurisdictions within the Counties of Los Angeles and Ventura already have very low rent caps, and in light of double digit or more increases in property insurance, increased City fees for utilities and trash hauling, higher mortgage rates, and overall inflationary pressures impacting all costs of providing housing services from maintenance to supplies, any freezes and rollbacks on all rent increases would be devastating to all rental housing providers.

It is as though our government officials think that every renter in the Los Angeles Area has been severely impacted by the recent wildfires and believes that there exists a need to use a “blanket’ approach by cutting off any ability to raise rental pricing, anywhere. We taxpayers would be far better served to utilize a more targeted approach by providing rental assistance to those renters who were impacted by the wildfires and who either could not afford or were too irresponsible to purchase renters insurance that would have provided them with significant relocation benefits. But, as always, Big Government always seeks to take private property and impose private welfare rather than doing the job that government is responsible for.

This All Troubles Me Terribly

Imposing these horrific moratoriums, on evictions and rent increases, bothers me deeply. It’s sad because by in large, housing providers reacted quickly to help wildfire victims relocate and get settled. Within two days, our association’s rental listing website was filled with thousands of listings at www.aagla.org/listings, and our members who are large property managers were working overtime to help relocate their displaced residents.

It is just a complete shame, that what must come purely out of their greed, there are these renter rights groups that attack those of us in the rental housing business who are merely trying to help during an emergency. Sure, some pricing mistakes were unknowing made by those few new to the rental housing business, and if these infractions were pointed out to these few owners, corrections would have surely been made immediately, but city attorneys and the California Attorney General’s Office was ready to pounce and blow some minor infractions and lack of knowledge on the part of some property owners out of proportion to gain a few headlines. It is quite disgusting if you ask me.

While I am certain some price gauging exists, I am just as certain that it does not exist on a large scale and has been blown out of proportion by tenant rights groups seeking to influence the County of Los Angels, the City of Los Angeles, and possibly other local jurisdictions to re-deploy COVID-era protections in the form of moratoriums on rent increases and evictions. The limited instances we have seen of alleged price gauging are most often single-family homeowners who are not informed of the state anti-price gauging law or owners who have been presented with above asking rent by a wildfire family with insurance benefits. Other instances we have seen include rental units priced prior to January 7th and later increased post-emergency declaration as it became evident that there was a growing need for furnished rather than unfurnished rental units, and owners responded by renting furniture and passing through only their out-of-pocket costs without mark-up, which of course, it perfectly legal.

Written by Daniel Yukelson

Daniel Yukelson is currently the Executive Director of The Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles (AAGLA). As a Certified Public Accountant, Yukelson began his career at Ernst & Young, the global accounting firm, and has since served in senior financial roles principally as Chief Financial Officer for various public, private and start-up companies. Prior to joining AAGLA, Yukelson served for 15 years as Chief Financial Officer for Premiere Radio Networks, now a subsidiary of I-Heart Media, and for more than 3 years as Chief Financial Officer of Oasis West Realty, the owner of the Beverly Hilton and Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills where he was involved with the development and construction of the Waldorf. Yukelson was formerly Chairperson of the City of Beverly Hills Planning Commission and served on both Beverly Hills’ Planning Commission for 6 years and Public Works Commission for 3 years.