Emotions Run High During Rent Debate

The overflow crowd of more than 400 who packed City Council chambers Tuesday told much about the dynamics of rent control in Los Angeles. The crowd contained an abundance of white hair belonging to elderly landlords and aging tenants--all complaining that the city’s rent control ordinance had thrust them into economic binds.

Their message was that rent control cuts both ways.

As the lawmakers moved toward their decision to reduce the city’s 7% rent control lid, Sol Cohen, 66, a North Hollywood apartment house owner, griped in an interview that even the current law was not enough to generate a decent retirement income for small property owners, like himself, who are facing soaring overhead costs.

Landlord Also a Senior Citizen

“I’m a senior citizen, too,” he said in a reference to tenant arguments that the elderly on fixed incomes need a break in the form of a lower rent ceiling.

But Ronnie Gatker, 65, a Woodland Hills renter, shook her head while leaning against a pillar and said she did not know why landlords were taking full advantage of the law by giving tenants 7% rent increases while inflation is only 4%.

“Landlords have been raising rents like crazy,” said Gatker, part of the standing-room-only crowd listening to the debate. “I don’t know why they’re taking such advantage of seniors. It’s been like a kick in the butt.”

As the debate ebbed and flowed, spectators reacted by booing and clapping, generally ignoring an admonition from City Council President Pat Russell that the council chamber should not be confused with Dodger Stadium.

‘Controlled State of War’

Emotions ran particularly high when Councilman Ernani Bernardi, a rent control champion, declared with a flourish that the city’s tight housing situation--with vacancy rates that may be 2% or less--amounted to “a controlled state of war.” Without rent control, he said, “we’d really have had a state of war.”

Bernardi’s rhetoric triggered a near fistfight at the front of the chamber between a landlord and Harold Lurie, 74, a Sherman Oaks renter. “It takes one to know one,” the diminutive Lurie yelled at the landlord before being escorted to the back of the hall by a beefed-up City Hall security force.

Alex Silver, 79, said he could see the emotional issue from both sides since he owns apartment units in Philadelphia but rents in Los Angeles. Silver said he understands that landlords need to make ends meet. But, he said, the real losers under the city’s 7% formula were elderly renters dependent on monthly Social Security checks.

“You can only bleed the people so much,” he said in urging a lower ceiling.

But some “mom-and-pop” landlords were bitter that the cumulative effects of a law that has not allowed them to raise rents to market levels until a tenant moves out.

‘Not a Charitable Person’

John Cooney, 49, who owns mid-Wilshire District units, complained about one woman who had remained in one of his buildings since rent control began and who was paying, he said, only $189 monthly for her apartment while other tenants were in the $400 range. “I’m not a charitable person,” he said. “If I could raise her rent, I would.”

On the other hand, Lou Zimmerman, 77, a Woodland Hills renter, complained that the 7%-a-year increase factor might not seem like much, but quickly adds up. Zimmerman recalled that when the rent control law went on the books in 1979, he was paying $365 a month for his apartment. Now, a succession of increases has boosted it to $550, he said.