Californians need to raise ruckus about ever-rising rent

We are experiencing a housing crisis in Los Angeles that is
deeply disturbing.

Apartments in Los Angeles are becoming increasingly unaffordable
and outrageously overpriced. This trend is largely attributable to
California having no rent control on the state level and to an
increasing demand for affordable apartments from a supply that is
not increasing correspondingly. Landlords are able to charge
preposterous rents for apartments that could only be described as
dumps, dives and rat holes.

Many people are laboring under the misapprehension that we
actually have rent control in a smog capital of the world, but such
“rent control” as we have in Los Angeles is fatally
flawed by the infamous vacancy decontrol loophole ““ whenever
a tenant moves out of his apartment voluntarily the landlord can
raise the rent by almost any amount for the next tenant.

Considering the average time between moves is six or seven
years, that adds up to a lot of rent increases. The end result is a
landlord’s dream and a tenant’s nightmare. Over 50
percent of poverty-line renters in Los Angeles are paying half or
more of their income in rent, and obviously many people can’t
afford rent at all and are sleeping in their cars, in the street,
or sharing an apartment with two or three other people. All in all,
Los Angeles is one of the most expensive cities in which to live in
the nation.

As a renter, what can you do about this deplorable situation
““ short of pitching a tent, moving to Outer Mongolia or
sharing your apartment with your parents, your in-laws and your
Uncle Luigi? Not a lot.

If you find the price of caviar too high, you can boycott
caviar; if you find the cost of Rolex watches a bit excessive, you
can always do without one for the time being. But if you are
without a home and need a place to stay, you obviously cannot
boycott apartments until the price comes down. (A rent strike seems
like a good idea, but even if every tenant in Los Angeles complied,
which is inconceivable, landlords would evict everyone for
non-payment of the rent and probably find more than enough tenants
to replace them.)

What you can do, however, is make it abundantly clear to your
political representatives in Los Angeles and Sacramento that
November is never very far off, and unless they establish tough,
effective rent control, you’re not going to vote for them
again. You can demand more low cost, affordable housing to be built
““ on a scale commensurate with the need. You can emphatically
affirm that affordable housing is a right, not a privilege, and
that what Los Angeles needs is not more highways, freeways, strip
malls, parking lots and office buildings, but decent, affordable
housing in decent, safe neighborhoods. I strongly advise you to do
just that.

We should all be entitled to affordable housing. This is a
national crisis, and it needs to be addressed as expeditiously as
possible. Instead of giving tax breaks to the rich and destroying
other countries, we should be constructing affordable housing units
on a massive scale. What good is the “freedom” so
blatantly extolled by the Bush administration if a lot of the
American people can’t even afford a decent place to live?

Edelman was a UCLA Extension student and is a L.A. area
renter.

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