Tentative Rent Pact Would Widen Rule on Relocation Costs

The Los Angeles City Council tentatively approved Friday a compromise package of amendments to the city’s rent control law that would broaden the circumstances under which landlords would be required to pay relocation costs when they evict tenants.

Council members, in a 10-1 vote, approved the recommendations of the city’s Community Development Department that had been quietly worked out between tenant and landlord groups without the bitter debate that has marked the rent control issue in earlier years.

“There was give-and-take on both sides,” said Joan Milke Flores, chairwoman of the council’s Government Operations Committee.

Pattern of Compromise

“Neither side is completely happy with the package,” she added, “but they both recognize that in order to get some things through that are important to them they had to give up a concession for something they could live with.”

Barbara Zeidman, director of the city Rent Stabilization Division, was blunter. She told council members that the proposals were hammered out “after much discussion, some blood in the aisles and a great deal of compromise and consensus by the people involved.”

The recommendations must still return to the council to be voted on as an ordinance amending the city’s rent control law. If passed, those provisions would include:

- A requirement that landlords provide relocation assistance for tenants who are the victims of “no-fault” evictions.

- A limit on the number of times a landlord could place a relative into a unit. A landlord would be able to evict tenants only once to make room for himself and only once for each family member that moves in to the property.

- A fee of $25 for all applications seeking a rent increase for capital improvement or rehabilitation work. That fee would be waived for the first application received annually.

The council rejected a tenant proposal that would require landlords to pay interest on security deposits.

Zeidman said that the security deposit issue was dropped because it proved of little benefit for the parties and there was a concern that it may run afoul of state regulations and into “an administrative quagmire.”

Landlord Concessions

For landlords, perhaps their biggest concession was the prospect of paying additional relocation assistance.

Landlords currently must pay relocation costs only when they convert their units to condominiums or demolish them for commercial development. But under the new proposals, a landlord would have to pay those costs for tenants evicted so that the landlord or a family member can occupy the unit, or if the eviction is due to a major rehabilitation or demolishing of the unit or if the housing is to be removed from the rental market.

Those relocation payments would range from $1,000 for most tenants to $2,500 for tenants who are senior citizens, disabled or families with children.

Zeidman said there were fewer than 2,000 such evictions in 1985 but that the changes would “strengthen the ordinance’s protections and discourage false and deceptive evictions.”

“That’s one of the things that owners are going to find the least desirable in any compromise that we reach,” said Mary Ellen Hughes, executive director of the Apartment Assn. of San Fernando Valley and Ventura County. She said it was nonetheless an overall package agreement that both landlord and tenant representatives have agreed upon.