For the past few years, Los Angeles has avoided the most catastrophic predictions about how pandemic-related unemployment could lead to mass evictions and homelessness. But now, with evictions surging across the county, local officials say that could change.
“I'm very, very worried that this is going to contribute to the inflow of people on our streets,” says LA Mayor Karen Bass. “Though I was completely expecting it.”
The number of monthly evictions has crept upwards as tenant supports have fallen away. With COVID-19-related rental assistance programs now closed, and LA County’s pandemic-era eviction protections expired as of March 31, Bass said, “We knew this was going to happen.”
To that point, city and county officials joined with community and legal service providers for an effort called Stay Housed LA to inform tenants at risk of losing housing about resources are still available. And this week the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee is scheduled to consider a spending proposal using money from the voter-approved Measure ULA (the so-called “mansion tax”) to, among other things, set up new rental assistance fund for certain low-income households who owe back rent.
But still, says Amy Tannenbaum, a supervising staff attorney with the nonprofit Public Counsel who works with tenants in eviction court, “We’ve talked about a tsunami of evictions eventually hitting, and I think we’re starting to see that play out.”
The number of eviction cases filed in Los Angeles Superior Court is at a recent high after the expiration of renter assistance programs and eviction moratoriums. In June, 4,480 cases were filed. Graphic by KCRW from data compiled by Kyle Nelson of SAJE.
During the COVID-19 lockdown in May 2020, when city and county officials had declared a state of emergency due to COVID-19 and enacted eviction protections for tenants financially harmed by the virus, 278 unlawful detainer cases were filed in LA Superior Court, according to data compiled by Kyle Nelson, a research and policy analyst at the tenant rights organization Strategic Actions For a Just Economy.
In April of this year, after LA County ended its eviction moratorium, 3,852 cases were filed. Evictions had been on the rise even before then, however, with more than 3,000 per month in the past year.
By last month, 4,480 eviction cases had been filed in LA Superior Court – the highest monthly total in the past six years, even more than before the pandemic.
“Not only have filing volumes returned to pre-pandemic levels, they're all the way back to where filings had been in 2015 and 2016,” says Nelson.
Two upcoming deadlines could push the numbers even higher. On August 1, tenants in the City of LA who fell behind on rent payments during the first 18 months of the pandemic will have those debts come due. For debt accumulated between October 1, 2021 and January 31, 2023, tenants have until February 2024 to pay landlords for back rent or face eviction.
Tony Grutman, 76, and his wife, fall into the latter category. Grutman says they owe about $58,000 in back rent on their two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit at the Park La Brea apartment complex.
Right before the pandemic, Grutman says, he was just scraping by. A swimming program he’d run had ended, and he’d picked up work as a driver to make ends meet. That ended when COVID-19 hit. Despite receiving rental assistance through the state that covered nearly 18 months rent, he says they still couldn’t afford the approximately $3,300 a month for their apartment after the aid ran out.
“We’re at the end of the road, just about, in terms of our savings,” he says.
In July 2022, he received a three-day notice to pay rent or leave, he says – even though eviction moratoriums for renters impacted by COVID-19 were still in place. Management withdrew it after Grutman involved his son, an attorney, Grutman says.
The owner of Park La Brea, Prime Residential, didn’t respond to emails or a message left with the leasing office.
Grutman says he still hopes to restart his swim coaching gig and negotiate to stay in his apartment. He’s decided to stay put this long, despite his mounting debt, partly because the prospects for finding a similar, affordable apartment in LA are slim.
It’s a dilemma that Tennenbaum, the attorney for Public Counsel, says is common.
“People who are facing eviction and having to leave their apartments are not going to be able to find replacement housing that is affordable and safe for them in LA County,” she says. “Whether that plays out in the homeless count, or whether that results in people having to leave LA, I don’t know.”
Landlords with tenants who owe significant debt say they’re struggling too.
Daniel Tenenbaum runs Pacific Crest Real Estate, which operates about a dozen buildings with 522 apartments in and around the City of LA. He says his company is currently evicting around two dozen tenants, the majority of whom owe more than $20,000 in rent.
“We’ve never evicted this number of people before,” he says. “Part of it is — it's built up over almost a period of three years. But also, normally you wouldn't have people having that huge of a balance, either.”
He says that while his rental income has taken a hit, his expenses — including LA city trash fees — have grown, and rising interest rates rule out refinancing.
“I'm personally having to put money back into properties just to keep things afloat in some of our buildings,” he says.
Fred Sutton, a spokesperson for the California Apartment Association, blames city and county officials for setting up the current wave of evictions by extending eviction moratoriums even after state funding for rental assistance ended.
“Locally, they made it worse,” he says. “They told individuals they didn’t have to pay rent but didn’t provide a way to help those individuals.”
The City of LA and unincorporated parts of the county still have some rules protecting tenants from being evicted for owing less than one month of “fair market rent,” as defined by federal guidelines. And small landlords who own one to four units can apply for mortgage relief through LA County’s Department of Business and Consumer Affairs.
“This wave of post-pandemic evictions should scare the hell out of every Angeleno as we collectively work to address the humanitarian crisis of homelessness,” LA County Supervisor Lindsay Horvath said in a statement. “Keeping people housed is far more important than corporate rental businesses churning out tenants to increase profits.”