In a Bind as Rents Go Through the Roof
The numbers may tell the story of Los Angeles’ record-high rents, but single mother Joanne Ueda is living it.
For three years, she and her 9-year-old daughter lived in a small two-bedroom apartment in West Los Angeles that cost $950 a month. Ueda studied dental hygiene at a local college and worked part time in a dental office, while Maryssa attended a nearby elementary school. But in their last 10 months at the apartment, the rent shot up $150, further straining a tight family budget.
To add insult to injury, Ueda said, the rent hike coincided with increasingly poor maintenance around the complex. Ueda knew it was time to leave. But the rental market she entered was not the same one she had left three years previously. Apartment rents have hit all-time highs in the Southland.
In Los Angeles County, the average apartment rent jumped 7.8% to $982 a month last year, according to RealFacts, a Novato real estate research firm. And on the Westside, although exact figures aren’t available, any real estate agent can tell you rents are among the highest in the county.
Ueda searched for a two-bedroom on the Westside to avoid a long commute and to keep her daughter in the same school. But after seven months of aggressive apartment hunting, she’d had little luck in finding an affordable, decent place to live. (To make things more difficult, her daughter took in a Chihuahua-mix dog midway through the search, so Ueda found herself needing a small house with a backyard.)
“It was so frustrating,” said Ueda, 30, who gained a little more budget flexibility when she started working full time as a dental hygienist. “I was making a good living, and I still couldn’t find something reasonable.”
Like thousands of other Los Angeles-area renters, Ueda scaled back her expectations and settled on a place she could afford. She found a small house in Culver City for $1,200 a month--an amount that leaves her without savings and living paycheck to paycheck. (The dog’s presence increased Ueda’s security deposit by $750, a common situation for pet owners in today’s tight housing market.)
In one sense, Ueda is lucky. Last year, she earned more than $50,000. For many working-class families in which both parents work minimum-wage jobs and take home far less than Ueda, the higher rents are exacerbating an already critical situation.
There are about 350,000 low-income families looking for housing they can’t afford in Los Angeles, according to Sister Diane Donoghue, executive director of Esperanza Community Housing Corp. Affordable rent for a family with two children and working-class parents is about $300 a month.
“Where in L.A. can you live for that?” Donoghue asked. “The higher rents are making everything worse for these struggling families.”
It’s unlikely the crunch will ease any time soon, either for middle-class or lower-income residents, analysts say. As long as the economy continues to boom and new construction serves primarily the higher-end market, rents will stay high and may go even higher, analysts say.
“Prices will continue to rise until there’s some sort of economic constriction,” said Phillip Hagar, a spokesman for the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, a trade group for apartment owners. “And that may be three or four years down the road.”
Indeed, for the first time in nearly a decade, owners are enjoying a brisk and profitable business, especially in mid-range apartments. Rosalie Flaster Klein, a Fred Sands real estate agent in the Beverly Center area, said a one-bedroom apartment in the area’s historical districts that would have rented for $900 two years ago now fetches $1,300 to $1,400. And often the only advertising needed is a sign.
“These are beautiful apartments,” Klein said. “But they have no central air, no laundry and usually no parking, and they still go so fast. It’s ridiculous.”
One tactic on the rise among single residents is apartment sharing. Many young renters who were looking forward to their first experience of living alone have been postponing those plans.
Mark Verge, owner of Westside Rental Connection, said the number of ads for rental share situations has skyrocketed. In years past, his Santa Monica agency might have 40 such ads posted at a given time. Now, they regularly have more than 200.
“This is what people are having to do in this market,” Verge said. “It hasn’t been this bad in almost a decade.”
Marilyn Amiache knows. The 19-year-old Santa Monica college student and part-time bank teller was disappointed when she couldn’t find any one-bedrooms in Palms or Mar Vista--historically lower- to middle-range rent districts--for less than $600.
“It’s been terrible. I really wanted to live by myself,” said Amiache, who is still looking for an apartment, and now a roommate. “I’ll just have to wait longer and save up more money.”
Martin Miller can be reached by e-mail at martin.miller@latimes.com.
