Santa Monica to Weigh Slow-Growth, Rent Control Initiatives : Tenants Hope to Close Law’s ‘Loopholes’
In an effort to close what they say are loopholes in Santa Monica’s tough rent control law, tenant advocates are proposing a ballot initiative that would make it more difficult for landlords to make evictions.
The measure, details of which are being fine-tuned this week, would also reduce the number of apartments exempted from rent control, according to sources involved with the initiative.
Landlords labeled the proposed initiative “outrageous” and promised to challenge it in the courts or on the political battlefield.
The fight that appeared to be shaping up over the proposed initiative is only the latest salvo fired in an ongoing war between supporters of rent control, who say it is necessary to guarantee affordable housing, and landlords, who contend they are denied a fair income while the truly needy are not protected.
Santa Monica’s rent control law, approved in a 1979 voters’ initiative, is considered one of the strictest in the country because it does not allow a landlord to raise the rent when an apartment is vacated. Rents are allowed to go up annually based on a formula.
But tenant advocates say apartment owners are abusing or skirting some of the law’s features.
Apartment buildings with three or fewer units are now exempt from rent control if the owner occupies one of the units. Supporters of the proposed initiative maintain that “upwardly mobile attorney-types” are buying these smaller buildings, living in them only long enough to exempt them from rent control and then raising the rent, forcing out many tenants.
In some cases, initiative supporters say, the new owner never moves in, but tells authorities that he has, and the claim goes unverified.
The initiative, intended for November’s ballot, would eliminate or tighten this exemption, which proponents say was originally designed to protect “mom-and-pop” building owners.
Landlord Abuses Denied
Carl Lambert, president of the landlord-advocacy group Action, denied the exemption rule is being abused and warned that rent control officials risk a severe credibility gap if, after nine years of allowing an exemption, they abolish it. First-time home buyers who hoped to supplement their mortgage payments by renting out a unit or two would be especially hurt, he said.
“This is really going to cripple those who have relied on the regulation . . . (and) based their mortgage payments on projected rental income,” Lambert said. “They (officials) give an exemption, (buyers) count and bank on it, and now they’re going to do away with it? It’s very frustrating.”
The rent control agency that administers the law could not provide figures for how many apartments are exempt from rent control.
Evictions for Relatives
Also under the rent control law, a landlord is allowed to evict a tenant so that the landlord’s relatives can occupy the apartment. The initiative would limit which relatives would fall under the law.
“These (exemptions and evictions) are the two areas individual members of the Rent Control Board were most concerned about,” board Chairwoman Susan Davis said.
Drafting of an initiative has been largely sponsored by Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights, a liberal political faction that rode the rent control wave into City Hall in 1979 and continues to dominate the Rent Control Board.
Lambert charged that the underlying motive for the initiative was to produce more money for the Rent Control Board. For every apartment under rent control, the board gets $120 in registration fees.
“This is not to protect housing stock but to pad the pockets of tenant attorneys and to pad the pocket of the Santa Monica rent control bureaucracy, a bureaucracy running wild,” Lambert said.
He said the measure would ultimately backfire because apartment owners would respond by increasingly removing their units from the rental market, a step allowed under the Ellis Act, which was passed by the California Legislature in 1986.
But tenant advocates countered that the initiative would correct alleged abuses.
“Landlords are doing very well. The trouble is they want to do even better,” said David Shniad, secretary of the Tenant Aid Project. “And that would be at a terrible cost to the community, especially older citizens. Tenants don’t want to destroy landlords; they just want a modest place to live.”
