Sometimes a bit of perseverance, outside help and connections pays off. Then again, also, a few unabashed comments and artful writing style come into play too. That is how it happened in getting my editorial, “How Some Bad Math Could Ruin Housing in Los Angeles” published by the Los Angeles Times, the far-left leaning anti-landlord media outlet. I felt as though I might as well have won the lottery!

All that about our hometown regional newspaper being said, that’s not really what I want to share with you here. The point of the editorial, and we all know this, is that housing providers are being tormented and financially crushed under an ever-increasing array of burdensome regulations and legal landmines developed to allegedly protect those who, for whatever reason, choose to live in rental housing or follow along a path in life and lifestyle (e.g., choices made in education, career, work / life balance, etc.) that only allows them to afford rental housing with no chance of ever purchasing property on their own.

But we know that the real reason all these regulations exist is that there are more renters, far more than housing providers, who are out there and we “landlords” are being used for political expediency to keep our public officials in office long enough to secure the golden goose of a public pension – that we have, in large part, paid for. For our political expediency and vote getting, we are labeled as “evil,” “slumlords” and “rent gaugers,” among possibly numerous other labels. So long as politicians want to remain in office, these seemingly constant attacks on housing providers may never let up until the last of us are left standing. Let’s not hope we are in some warped dystopian episode of the “Handmaid’s Tale.” Let’s hope for hope.

Anyway, back to my editorial. It first makes a point about the burden of regulations faced by housing providers and the negative impacts they’ve had on housing in Los Angeles: “If the city of Los Angeles set out to intentionally destabilize its own housing supply, it could hardly have designed a more effective wrecking ball than its current regulatory regime.” Yes, they’ve designed a wrecking ball for us, and it hurts to be on the receiving end.

I then discuss how all this pain and suffering that has been and continues being inflicted on us housing providers has built up over many years:

“City Hall has discovered a policy cocktail that looks compassionate on a campaign mailer but acts like dry rot in an old building. It is quiet, slow-moving and ultimately structural. The formula is dangerously simple: cap rent increases at politically pleasing levels while letting every major cost category — insurance, utilities, labor and seismic mandates — rise at full speed. The result isn’t an abstract market tension. It is a widening budget hole that eventually consumes the very properties tenants rely on for shelter.”

The point of all this is that we are being left with limited maneuverability and, quite frankly, very little room to breathe, and for many of us, that means we are going to look to the “exit ramp” on this housing shenanigans before it is too late – and perhaps for some, it already is too late.

We have seen the ill effects of overzealous housing regulations elsewhere. We just need to look to New York City with its vacancy controls, punishing tenant protections, huge housing shortages, growing vacant apartment units because landlords cannot afford turnover costs, dilapidated buildings, lenders bailing out of funding rental property owners and lenders going bankrupt, a looming possible rent freeze, and still high cost of living. With the New York track record in clear view, we know what’s coming for us in California because we’ve watched it happening there.

It’s been a slow build that I feel is getting us closer to the precipitous of the breaking point. On that, I make the following point in my editorial:

“New York City learned this lesson the hard way over the last decade. Its housing system didn’t crumble overnight; it eroded over years as the economics of regulated buildings were pushed past the limits of financial solvency and the willingness of investors to operate in the market. Today, tens of thousands of those New York apartments sit vacant — “warehoused” in local parlance — because restoring them costs more than the rent regulators allow landlords to recover.”

In the end, I make a plea for reasonableness and common sense:

“Los Angeles still has time to avoid New York’s outcome, but only if the city focuses housing policy on the balance sheet rather than a press release. Rent protections must be aligned with the real cost of maintaining buildings. If L.A. continues to ignore the millions of dollars it is bleeding from the existing private market while obsessing over $1.0 million-per-unit trophy projects, it will have designed its own failure. There is no mystery here: ‘The math is simply not math-ing.’ New York learned this lesson too late; Los Angeles is approaching the same point of no return.”

To read the full editorial, you can find it at https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2026-04-22/how-to-ruin-housing-los-angeles. Please do so.

This stuff is all very hard to think about and it’s depressing, I know. But perhaps there is some hope of electing very smart officials who “get it” and want to instill, finally, some semblance of balance, fairness and a bit of the American Way. The day my editorial was published and for days after, I received many supportive comments from members and other property owners, which was great and of course I had hoped to get positive feedback.

But I also received feedback from a renter. Yes, a renter! And only just one renter. Getting a comment from a renter, I had only expected the most horrendous and mean sort of comments. But that was not what I received, I got sympathy and understanding, and views that basically aligned with my own. So, let me end my diatribe here by “playing” what that tenant shared with me – perhaps this will give us all hope that we might someday be heard and have a meeting of the minds and obtain some sort of regulatory balance.

“Mr. Yukelson:

I read with great interest your op-ed this morning in the Times, and as a tenant who has rented an apartment (vintage late-1950s) that is covered under the City’s RSO, I agree with the points you made.

The building I live in is well managed by the Beaumont Co. and in a little over three decades I have lived here, I have developed a great landlord-tenant relationship with Bruce Harrison and his staff. I respect them and I try my best to take care of my unit — after all, this is my home! — so as not to strain the budget for maintenance. (Bruce has joked with me on occasion that practically the only time he hears from me is when the aging plumbing develops a problem requiring professional intervention.)

When the amended RSO was under discussion, I communicated to my Councilmember that this was going to cause more trouble than it would solve problems. The old RSO allowed rents to rise alongside the CPI in full (not 60%, as amended). It had a more reasonable upper cap on the percentage when inflation rates spiked. It was an equitable trade off, when you consider that the older buildings under the jurisdiction of the RSO are the ones with more maintenance issues. Her staff’s response was that the Councilmember was more concerned with her lower-income constituents, for whom rent increases were onerous.

Bullsh*t. Rent is a fact of life and the RSO properly adjusted it for inflation. Taken alongside all of the other living expenses we have, rent remained in proportion to inflation. Now, as you have rightly pointed out, maintenance costs are not going to helpfully limit themselves to the same percentage as the RSO dictates, and I believe you are correct that this will lead to many landlords throwing in the towel, which creates the possibility of tenants being evicted as the owners take the buildings off the rental market. My own building is owned by a retired physician and his wife … hardly the kind of wealthy person that would be able to absorb a lot of the operating expenses that the redesigned RSO now covers less of.

Now, I freely admit that I understand this better than 98% of the renters out there, but if I had to move because my apartment was being “decommissioned” I know I would have to pay at least one-third more at a replacement unit…If there were any available to rent. What I have is affordable on an income that is at the extremely low end of middle-class, but my budget could not handle the strain of a higher percentage being allocated to rent.

I did not want the new RSO. While some may champion lower rent increases as a result, I want Beaumont to have the resources to send the plumber if the bathtub drains clog. I want them to be able to make repairs to common areas damaged by some of the more idiotic neighbors in my building. I want to continue living here. When I moved here back in 1994, I did not know how long I would stay in this apartment, but as the years have passed this has become more and more of a perfect living situation for me. Now, I have reason (ironically) to fear the RSO will eventually force me out, because it was ill-designed and passed more as a “feel good moment” for the Council than a real long-term solution… It lacks balance, and that is why it will ultimately fail.

And by the time the scenario that you correctly predict happens, it will be too late to save us poor tenants from the effects. I know this is not the kind of e-mail you expect to get from a tenant, but I am a realist and I wanted to show my individual support for the AAGLA in my own way.”

And we at the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles absolutely do thank you, Mr. “Name Withheld to Protect Your Innocence” tenant for your support and understanding. Your email made my day, and I can only hope there are other like minded tenants out there…someplace!