Last week, Groundwork Collaborative Executive Director Lindsay Owens published a new op-ed in Rolling Stone urging California state and local lawmakers to crack down on predatory landlords profiting off of the wildfires by gouging rental prices.
Yesterday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the first price gouging charges in the L.A. rental market. Owens wrote for Rolling Stone:
“Unfortunately, this type of price gouging after natural disasters is all too common. Early in the pandemic, price gouging on masks, hand sanitizer, respirators, and clorox wipes was rampant. After Hurricane Harvey, the Texas attorney general reported an instance of gougers charging a whopping $99 for a case of water.
“This is why the majority of states — including California — have price gouging laws on the books. These laws are designed to protect consumers when the markets may be impacted by natural disasters, pandemics, or other disruptions, like supply chain shocks — but they are only as good as their enforcers.”
Email press@groundworkcollaborative.org to speak with a Groundwork excerpt about price gouging.
EXCERPTS
“Tenants are inundating government and non-government agencies with complaints of price gouging, according to the Housing Rights Center. A review of Zillow listings by The New York Times found that rent prices in West Los Angeles have spiked from 15 percent to an “eye-popping 64 percent.”
“Many will have trouble finding a place to stay in a city that was already as many as 450,000 affordable units short before the fires. When there are more heads than beds, it’s a seller’s market. When there are more heads than beds in a crisis, it’s a gouger’s market.”
“The private equity vultures have also descended on the Hollywood Hills, and begun sifting through the rubble, looking to see what they might be able to acquire in a fire sale.”
“Real estate agents are calling for the city to suspend its new ‘mansion tax,’ which applies to deals over $5 million, and last year raised $375 million for affordable housing — a duck call for investors and corporate landlords looking to expand their footprint in the rental market.”
“Rent gouging after a wildfire is galling, but the hard truth is that every day, across this country, tenants are exploited by a housing system that is failing them. Even before the wildfires, our country was facing a severe housing affordability crisis, driven in part by corporate landlords working to extract as much as they can from us and our neighbors.”
“If we want to stop the vultures from circling, we must build a housing system that can not only withstand dangerous weather, but also the dangers of an economy that makes a fair price for rent increasingly elusive.”