West Hollywood Adopts Tough Rent Control Law

Delivering on promises made to tenants after last year’s incorporation campaign, the West Hollywood City Council adopted a strong rent control law Thursday which may set the stage for legal and political strife between landlords and the new city.

“We kept our promise,” said Mayor Valerie Terrigno after the council voted unanimously to adopt the rent measure.

Tenant activists hailed the vote as the end of a long drive to stabilize apartment rents in West Hollywood, where 88% of the population consists of tenants. Last year, the lack of a strong rent law for the unincorporated portions of Los Angeles County helped fuel the West Hollywood cityhood campaign and led to the election of a council composed of staunch rent control advocates.

Rents to Be Rolled Back

The new law in the city of 35,000 will roll back rents to levels of May, 1984, allow yearly rent increases at a rate pegged to 75% of the Consumer Price Index, and provide stringent standards for apartment maintenance. The law will take full effect in September.

“We think the long fight of West Hollywood renters is finally paying off,” said Larry Gross, coordinator of the Coalition for Economic Survival, a tenant group that lobbied strongly for a tough ordinance.

Tenants and landlords differ over the severity of the new law, but both sides agree that it is more akin to strong rent measures adopted in recent years by Santa Monica and Berkeley than it is to less restrictive laws passed by the City of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County.

In Santa Monica and Berkeley, rent controls remain in effect even when an apartment becomes vacant. But in Los Angeles, landlords can raise rents to market levels when apartments are vacated.

Falls Between Two Poles

West Hollywood’s law falls between those two poles, allowing 10% rent increases after apartments are vacated, but only once every two years.

Council members described the vacancy control section of the law, and some others, as attempts to ease landlords’ economic plight.

“We think we listened to everyone and I hope all sides can find something they like in the law,” said Councilman Steve Schulte.

But apartment owners contend that any concessions granted them have been outweighed by the complex law’s more severe provisions.

“For every concession they made in one area, they zapped us in another area,” said Sol Genuth, public affairs director for the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles. “It’s a wash. This law is clearly punitive and discriminatory.”

Genuth and other apartment owners present at the council session said they expect landlords to react in anger, perhaps by filing lawsuits against the new city.

Grafton Tanquary, president of West Hollywood Concerned Citizens, a civic group dominated by landlords, has threatened to sue the city because an environmental impact study was not prepared before the law was passed.

Council members also expect apartment owners to fund attempts to defeat them during the next election in March, 1986. But Tanquary said he doubted that would happen.

Genuth said one alternative to waging political battle might be for landlords to convince other West Hollywood developers and merchants that the council had created an “anti-business climate” with its strong rent law, and urge them to bring pressure on the council to change it.

Other landlords, like Budd Kopps, who manages 16 apartment units in West Hollywood, say they might use the law itself to fight back. City officials have warned that some landlords might flood a new rent control board, authorized to administer the law, with appeals. And some might search for loopholes in the law. “This law is full of loopholes,” Kopps said. “There are certain things we can do to make it hard on them.” But when asked what he meant, Kopps smiled and declined to say.

The finality of Thursday’s vote ended four months of methodical deliberations and repeated rewrites by council members and city officials, a process complicated by intense lobbying by tenant and landlord advocates.

That intensity was most apparent during the bill’s public hearings, which quickly turned into seething debates between landlords and tenants, replete with taunts comparing renters to communists and landlords to ogres. One landlord was ejected so often by sheriff’s deputies that he showed up for several meetings wearing a red, white and blue gag over his mouth.

The intensity finally gave way to weariness, as City Atty. Michael Jenkins noted while introducing the final version of the document to the council Thursday. “Now we come to the adoption of Ordinance 59u,” he said, adding with a sigh, “finally.”

But even if landlords comply with the law, administration of the 43-page ordinance may not go smoothly. Described by both critics and supporters as one of the most detailed--and perhaps complex --rent measures in the nation, West Hollywood’s new law may be reworked over the coming year.

“I think we’ll see some fine-tuning,” Terrigno said. “I think everyone on the council sees parts they’d like to change. After we’ve seen how it’s working, we may want to come back and tinker with it a bit.”