LA considers beefing up law against tenant harassment

Los Angeles landlords allegedly continue to harass their tenants, despite a recent law meant to protect them from threats or intimidation.

In the three years since the city made it a crime to harass renters, more than 13,000 complaints alleging harassment have been filed with its Housing Department — with city officials having done little to stop them, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Of the two dozen of those cases referred by the department to the City Attorney’s Office, four fines are pending and none have been criminally prosecuted.

The city’s Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance, approved in 2021, was trumpeted as a milestone for renters’ rights.

At a time of rapidly rising housing costs, the new law was meant to protect tenants from being threatened or intimidated by landlords — a tactic advocates say can be used to push people out of rent-controlled homes, according to the Times.

But tenant advocates say the harassment has continued largely unchecked, with tenants reporting their landlords still resort to intimidation, illegal eviction notices, threats and lockouts.

Advocates say the thousands of tenant complaints and lack of prosecutions since 2021 are evidence that the law is weak and needs to be made stronger. They urge the city to pass amendments meant to tighten the rules and incentivize private attorneys to take on cases. 

The City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee is expected to consider the proposed changes to the law. 

Among the proposed changes is a new definition of harassment aimed at landlords who engage in “bad faith conduct” that harms tenants. The current definition refers to landlords who knowingly and willfully engage in bad-faith conduct that “serves no lawful purpose,” a standard advocates say can be impossible to prove.  

The changes also include requiring tenants who win in court be awarded attorney’s fees, with landlords paying a minimum civil penalty of $2,000 per violation. The amendments would put the city’s anti-harassment rules in line with Santa Monica, Oakland and San Francisco, proponents say.

“It has been really frustrating because there  have been so many examples of landlord harassment, of taking away parking, garages, bedrooms, unlawful entries into people’s homes, code violations, unlawful eviction and a lot of retaliation for organizing,” Edna Monroy, director of organizing for Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, told the Times.

But “it’s really hard to present these cases in small claims and it’s really hard for the city attorney to take these cases as well.”

Landlord advocates, however, say the lack of prosecutions shows that tenant harassment isn’t the problem advocates say it is. They’re urging the city to reject the changes.

“It was bad enough the first go-around,” Daniel Yukelson, executive director of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles, told the newspaper. “Now they’re opening the door by loosening up the language and it’s just going to open up property owners to more frivolous lawsuits.”

Yukelson said the new rules create “lots of landmines” that will cause owners to get sued. “Owners are going to have their backs put against the wall,” he said.

Sharon Sandow, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Housing Department, said that when harassment allegations are substantiated, a housing investigator will call the landlord to address the complaint and send them information about the ordinance.

If the harassment is egregious or persists, the case is referred to the Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance Task Force “for further review and analysis to determine the possibility of a pattern of behavior, and assess the enforcement mechanism,” Sandow said.

In the vast majority of cases, she said, tenants either withdraw or abandon the complaint, fail to provide evidence to substantiate the case, or the matter is resolved by the department.

The City Attorney’s Office has received 23 anti-harassment referrals from the housing department, according to Karen Richardson, a spokeswoman. Of those, four landlords have fines pending and four were referred to a diversion program.

Fifteen of the referrals were for potential criminal filings. Eight were rejected by the office and seven are pending, she said.

— Dana Bartholomew

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