‘Rent Control Makes No Sense’

The bad thing about rent control is not that it exists, but that it is so unfair here in the Los Angeles area. Santa Monica residents benefit from rents that are held unnaturally low, Los Angeles City residents sit somewhere in the middle, and Los Angeles County residents have a rent control lawt hta tis so weak it probably actually results in higher rents than would obtain without “rent control.”

When I lived in a mobile home park in the county just outside the Los Angeles city line, my landlord raised the rent on my space 37% one year-- legally . He could do it because under the county rent control law people who moved into the county after 1979 were not subject to rent control of any kind, while those who had moved in before continued to benefit from what control there was in the county. I deeply resent this feature of the county law; it constitutes a tax on newcomers.

Some rent control is needed to prevent price gouging--but if were are going to have it, make it fair to concerned tenants, landlords, newcomers, and old timers.

MARCIA J. BATES

Van Nuys