The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday, Dec. 12, requested that the city attorney draft two ordinances to provide additional protections to renters – one that would provide qualifying tenants with legal representation in eviction cases, and another that would allow tenants to keep pets they brought home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Neither proposal will become official unless the City Council adopts the ordinances, which are expected to come before the council sometime in 2024.
The latest proposals come as tenant rights advocates point to an uptick in evictions due to the end of several COVID-era protections for renters in the past year, and other tenant protections expiring soon.
The first proposal calls on the city to provide legal representation for tenants who earn no more than 80% of the area’s median income and who are facing eviction or the loss of their housing subsidies. The second proposal instructs the city attorney to draft an ordinance requiring landlords and building managers to allow “any companion animal” brought home during the pandemic to remain there.
The request for a right-to-counsel ordinance represents the next step in an effort first introduced by Councilmember Nithya Raman in February, with several other council members signing on. The ordinance would make permanent a city eviction defense program and ensure that low-income tenants facing eviction who can’t afford an attorney will be provided legal services.
“We’ve been very supportive of implementing the right-to-counsel (ordinance) as a body these past few months, and I’m really excited to continue moving this forward … and look forward to seeing this ordinance be implemented,” Raman said before the council voted 12-0 to ask the city attorney to draft the ordinance.
The city’s housing department recommended that the right-to-counsel program be phased in over five years, with priority given to residents in zip codes identified as having the most number of “vulnerable” residents.
In a report to the City Council, the housing department estimated that the program could serve 2,500 tenants during the first year of the rollout, and that it could serve 10,000 Angelenos by year five.
The program is projected to cost $67.8 million annually once fully implemented, according to the housing department. Funding would come from Measure ULA, a tax on the sale of real estate properties valued at $5 million or more that voters passed in November 2022.
A representative for the California Apartment Association told councilmembers earlier this year that it would be better to invest money in a permanent rental subsidy program to help tenants avoid possible evictions in the first place.
“We should fund prevention, not lawyers,” Fred Sutton, of the California Apartment Association, said during a February City Council meeting. “Direct rental assistance dollars would go further, prevent the need for (legal) representation, and is the most effective tool we have to achieve our shared goals of housing in Los Angeles.”
But on Tuesday, Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, one of a handful of councilmembers who signed onto Raman’s motion, spoke in favor of the right-to-counsel program. Landlords have an attorney in 95% of eviction proceedings but tenants have a lawyer just 3% of the time, he said.
“That is not a fair fight,” he said.
Soto-Martínez noted that after New York City launched a right-to-counsel program, 84% of tenants facing evictions ended up staying put. In San Francisco, that rate was about 66%, the councilmember said.
In addition to the right-to-counsel proposal, the City Council voted 14-0 Tuesday to instruct the city attorney to draft a separate ordinance requiring landlords and building managers to let “any companion animal” to stay put that has lived in a rental unit since the pandemic.
The proposal aims to protect pet owners in rental units that do not allow pets but who, during the city’s COVID-19 state of emergency, adopted or fostered an animal — or had someone with a pet move in.
The ordinance sought by the City Council would allow the animals to stay put, even though the city ended its declared state of emergency.
In a report to the City Council earlier this year, the city’s Department of Animal Services wrote: “If an animal residing at a ‘no pet’ property hasn’t proven to be problematic for the landlord or other tenants after living in a building during the pandemic (during which time it could have been removed for creating problems), it appears likely that it would not suddenly become problematic if allowed to remain at the property.”
The report also noted that requiring landlords and building managers to let pets remain could cut the number of animals relinquished to the city’s animal shelters.
Several members of the public urged the City Council during Tuesday’s meeting to support the proposal, saying that for tenants, the pets provide emotional support and are members of the family.
Sutton, of the California Apartment Association, said last week in a letter to the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee that the association “understands the challenges, hardships and circumstances which resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“CAA supports the Animal Services’ report and city’s goal of resolving this unique situation,” he wrote, but the association requested that tenants be required to notify the landlord about the animal and register and adhere to city animal licensing requirements.
The motion that the City Council voted on Tuesday requires tenants to tell their housing provider or manager about any pets they obtained during the pandemic.