Council panel told tenant law is not enforced

The city’s effort to protect tenants evicted because of condominium conversions hit another snag Tuesday when it was revealed that the city wasn’t enforcing a 1981 law designed to help apartment dwellers.

The revelation came at a meeting of the City Council’s housing panel. Housing activists immediately cried foul: While many of them support a city-sponsored $1-billion bond measure to create affordable housing, they also want the city to protect existing affordable units.

The 1981 law says that the city can deny a condo conversion application if vacancy rates in the area fall below 5% and a conversion’s effect on the rental housing market would be “significant.”

The city wasn’t enforcing the law because it may not be legally defensible, said Jeri Burge, a city attorney for land use.

And that left some council members chagrined at the office of City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo.

“The enforcement of city law would seem a fair way to move forward,” Council President Eric Garcetti sarcastically suggested.

Housing activist David Ewing from Venice put it another way.

“Whenever they talk about affordable housing in the city it’s always about building more housing and not about the retention of what is already there,” Ewing said. “The one constant seems to be that developers always benefit.”

The dispute over enforcement of the law was part of a larger conversation about regulations the council wants to implement to help protect tenants being forced from their homes during condo conversions.

Among those rules would be a greater relocation fee for tenants. City staff told council members Tuesday the rules are not yet ready for consideration.

Garcetti said that it was crucial that the rules are passed by the end of the year when Proposition 90 -- if it passes on Tuesday -- could prevent the city from implementing such rules because they may financially harm property owners.

steve.hymon@latimes.com