The Los Angeles Municipal Council voted on Tuesday to ban owners from avoiding tenants from having allowed people or pets displaced by the fires of last month to live with them.
During a vote of 14-0, the members of the Council granted a preliminary approval to such an order, which, according to supporters, is necessary because certain residential leases prohibit unauthorized persons or animals.
The new rules, which should return to the council for a final vote next week, would last a year and only apply if the additional occupants and animals were moved by the Palisades, Eaton or other fires in January.
Tenants will have to inform their owners that they have brought occupants or pets uprooted by fires and provide a variety of information, including the address where the additional occupants resided before.
The protections would apply to all the properties of the city.
In addition, if a building falls under the city Rent stabilization orderOwners will not be able to impose a special increase in rent which is generally authorized when additional people move in, if the new occupants are fire refugees.
“During these emergencies, acts of kindness and compassion should not be punished,” said the member of the Traci Park council, which represents the Pacific Palisades district, to his colleagues before the vote. “Whoever has opened his home to provide shelter, peace and security should not have to worry.”
The action of the council on Tuesday comes in the middle of a larger debate on the type of protection of tenants to offer following the fires of January which destroyed or seriously damaged more than 12,000 houses in the county.
After the fires broke out on January 7, there was widespread reports illegal price priceBut we do not know how more competitive the region's rental market has become.
Housing and disaster recovery experts said they expect the rent to increase a certain measureBecause thousands of houses have been destroyed in an already tight market.
Most lost houses seem to be unified houses and because of this, some experts said they expect the rent to increase most of the larger units with burning areas, upward pressure on increasingly silent costs as units become smaller and more distant from the disaster zone.
Last week, the advice denied To approve a proposal that would have interrupted rent increases in many apartments throughout the city for a year and has also prohibited several types of evictions, including the non-payment of rent, if tenants were affected in economic or medically by fire.
In a heated debate, some members of the council, including Park, criticized the rules as too swelling. The proposal was sent to the Housing and the Sans-Abri Committee of the Council, where it should be heard on Wednesday.
