Slumlords, Tenants and the Fight for Affordable Housing in Los Angeles

May 8, 2023

Within the confines of the one-bedroom apartment that Abigail Hernandez resides in, the signs of decay in the small space are hard to ignore. Spots of mold and rotted wood line the crown molding throughout the apartment. The caved-in sink, and drawers that do not open, make it difficult for the mother to even complete daily tasks like cooking. Hard cement floors spread through the entire apartment, with some tiles mismatching after maintenance in the building attempted to ‘fix’ it for the third time.

During the housing crisis that arose in the pandemic, Hernandez and her young daughter were living on the street after being kicked out by her previous landlord.

“We were going through homelessness at the start of 2020, so everybody at the time was panicking,” said Hernandez. “I had found a new place that was a little out of my price range, but I also didn’t have a real alternative because everything else at the time was shut down.”

The limited options presented lead Hernandez to seek housing under the Prime West Management Inc. While the apartment had been underwhelming, Hernandez admitted that her financial situation left her feeling like she had to accept anything that was presented to her. This desperate feeling is one that most people that are not homeowners in California know well. Many are left with a choice: subpar housing conditions or homelessness.

With more than half a million renters in Los Angeles County having experienced eviction from their landlords, the issue of affordable housing continues to impact the greater community of citizens in Los Angeles. As the population in California has increased over time, so has the demand for housing, but the supply of homes is still not meeting the demands and needs of the public. Other factors like the job and housing market impact the rate of unhoused individuals in LA, though these people are left vulnerable to landlords that hold more power over the tenant.

Slumlords are landlords who own and manage substandard rental properties, often exploiting vulnerable tenants who have limited options for affordable housing. Despite the high number of displaced renters, not all landlords are slumlords. Slumlords exist in Los Angeles for a variety of reasons, including the high demand for affordable housing, the shortage of affordable housing options, and a lack of enforcement of building and safety codes.

Los Angeles, one of the largest and most populous cities in the United States, has a troubling history with slumlords, leaving ripples in many families and neighborhoods across the city. Bunker Hill was once a neighborhood filled with elegant Victorian homes and mansions, but by the 1950s, had fallen into disrepair, and many of the grand homes had been converted into overcrowded, substandard apartments, according to Stephen C. Jones in his piece, “The Bunker Hill Story: Welfare, Redevelopment, and Housing Crisis In Postwar Los Angeles”. The slumlords owned many of these developments and charged high rents for substandard housing conditions.

Additionally, the Federal Housing Act of 1945 passed, which granted cities in the U.S. money to build new housing developments for the public. In Los Angeles, while Mayor Fletcher Bowron approved a new housing project in the city to build 10,000 new units, it came at the price of displacing the Mexican-American residents already living in the Chavez Ravine.

Hundreds of residents from the neighborhood were forcibly evicted to make way for a public housing project and a new baseball stadium. Many of those evicted were poor and elderly residents who were already living in poor housing conditions and forced to live on the street. The ongoing struggles for renters in Los Angeles to access affordable and safe housing continues to persist today, specifically for renters of color.

Many tenants in Los Angeles that are financially vulnerable are forced to live in inadequate housing conditions that affect their health, safety, and well-being. The weak enforcement of these housing regulations encourages the increase in inadequate housing conditions in lower income communities.

According to a 2019 report by the University of Southern California, more than half of all renters in Los Angeles County are considered “rent-burdened,” meaning that they spend more than 30% of their income on rent. This can lead to tenants seeking out lower-cost housing options, which can put them at risk of renting from unscrupulous landlords who neglect their properties and tenants.

A lack of enforcement of building and safety codes can allow slumlords to continue operating with little consequence to them. According to a 2022 report by the Los Angeles Times, Chesapeake Apartments continued their negligent housing practices despite 2,000 citations for safety violations.

Dr. Robert Kent, Department Chair of Urban Studies and Planning at California State University, Northridge, discussed this negligence by highlighting the infrequency of city mandated inspections and the poor conditions this creates in a unit.

“Even the city of LA, which is touted as a good example, can only do [housing inspections] once every four years,” said Dr. Kent.

The volume that these inspections occur can allow some landlords to ignore their properties and tenants, until the next inspection. These repeated violations in tenant’s rights continue to persist for many LA residents that are renting out property.

A lack of affordable housing options in Los Angeles can make it difficult for tenants to find suitable living accommodations. According to a report by the California Housing Partnership, Los Angeles County has a shortfall of nearly 500,000 affordable rental units for low-income households.

“I don’t believe that even at the state level, that we’re getting anywhere near that annual production of housing,” said Dr. Kent. “There’s increasing competition for a very limited, or very slowly expanding, housing market.”

This gap in affordable housing leaves families and individuals vulnerable to an already competitive rental market that increases as the population in California increases.

In the three years following her move into the Prime West Management Inc. property, Hernandez shares how the living conditions in her unit, which are neglected by her landlord, have drastically deteriorated. With large gaping holes in the bathroom tub and mold growing on the kitchen sink, Hernandez has personally invested her own money and time into repairing the apartment herself.

“My windows can’t be opened because the screen is loose. I had to buy and install the lock on my own door,” said Hernandez. “I patched and caulked all the holes in the walls that the landlord never bothered to repair before I moved in.”

Hernandez repeatedly asked her landlord for other contact numbers for supervisors, and the numbers for the maintenance worker but was either completely denied access, or could only use the landlord’s phone to make the call.

“We’re not given any numbers, names, or any contact information for anybody else that is of authority. She is our point of contact for anything we need. We have to go through her, so then she can go through the proper channels and communicate our issue,” said Hernandez. “At the end of the day, there’s never any real confirmation as to whether or not shit is actually being taken care of. It’s all based on her words.”

The inadequacy of her living conditions speaks to the main goal of many of these landlords that do not properly manage their affordable housing units, which is often to drive out certain tenants to raise the price of the unit. Many tenants describe having experienced their landlord actively trying to evict them; typically through underhanded tactics like forging documents, not giving complete information and intentionally ignoring the issues in a particular unit.

For tenants in situations like Hernandez’s, their lack of options to other affordable housing units can expose them to repeated targeting by their abusive landowners.

“If you’re late even just one day on the rent, they add another extra $50 onto your bill,” said Hernandez. “The manager’s boss told me that I had to pay up my late rent before he can come to fix anything in my house. That was in October 2022, I paid my rent already and he still hasn’t come to fix a damn thing.”

For tenants that are surviving on fixed incomes, or living pay-check to pay-check, financial tactics such as these can financially cripple some families.

In California alone, the average amount that residents pay for rent is about $1,800, according to Forbes. Citizens in Los Angeles, however, pay an average of $2,500 in rent for a one-bedroom apartment, doubling the amount of rent that the average Los Angeles citizen pays monthly.

Even other tenants in Southern California express dealing with slumlords and the impact that it has had on their living experience. Deborah Spikes has lived in her cozy one-bedroom apartment in San Bernardino for over six years and dealt with an increasing list of issues with the unit.

Spikes recalls only ever meeting her landlord once when she signed her lease, before he sold the building to another group of partners looking to buy the property.

“I mean it was crazy, the landlord didn’t tell any of the residents that they were selling. We all only found out when the new owners increased the rent in January.” said Spikes.

Following the increase in rent, Spikes spoke about the escalating issues in the apartment complex that she and other tenants dealt with, but received no aid for. As an elderly, disabled woman, Spikes also expressed her frustration with the lack of clean conditions in the entire apartment complex. Spikes also shared that the landlords failed to handle the infestation of vermin and roaches that the tenants in the building endured.

The tenant recalled the lack of proper maintenance employees hired for the building, making it nearly impossible for tenants to receive the aid they are paying for. Spikes even shared that the new owners had yet to even hire a new plumber, after the previous left.

“The plumbing here is pathetic. The maintenance man they sent to fix the water heater said that they would have to replace the entire mechanism, but instead they just keep sending the same employee to fix it whenever it breaks.”

In addition to those issues, Spikes has not been able to use her building’s mailbox following an incident where all the mail was stolen from the tenant’s mailboxes. Spikes recalled walking outside one morning to check her mail, and seeing that the entire row of mailboxes had been opened and emptied. Despite the seriousness of the matter, Spikes and other residents did not receive any help from their landlords to fix the issue. She and other tenants were forced to get P.O. boxes in order to safely receive their mail.

“We can only do so much, a lot of people have kids or sick people to take care of. I know if I had the money, I’d just move.” said Spikes. “At the end of the day, these people only care about making money.”

Within the history of Los Angeles’ struggle for tenant’s rights, strides have been made to establish more protections for people that are renting.

In the 1980s, the city of Los Angeles had established rent control for older buildings in the city. Rent control is a government ordinance that ensures a landlord does not increase or raise the rent. Later in 1990, voters in California passed the Costa Hawkins Act, allowing the state to adopt state-wide rent control. This allowed people and families that had resided in certain apartments for decades to feel safe knowing that their landlords could not drastically raise their rent. Currently, California is only one out of two states in the entire country that has implemented a state-wide rent control law, with Oregon enacting similar laws.

The issue arises, however, when noting that most cities in Los Angeles have rent control laws that vary by county. According to a July 2022 study conducted by the National Multifamily Housing Council that examined the rent control laws in each state, it found that California’s rent control laws prohibited the increase of rent in properties. The landlord in a certain building can not raise the gross rental rate over five or ten percent, over a 12-month period.

This bill’s rent control laws covers 20 counties in California, including Los Angeles County. The developments that are protected by the rent control laws in LA county, however, only comprise unincorporated areas. An unincorporated area in California is a piece of land that is governed on the county level. These areas abide by rent control laws that are specific to their county, making it difficult for the entire city of LA, and the state, to have a completely unified rent control system.

The ones most impacted by these regulations are families and those that live in lower income communities that endure the consequences of these laws.

Several agencies provide free resources for advice, legal guidance, and emergency aid, such as the Los Angeles Housing and Community Investment Department (HCIDLA), Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA), Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU), and the Fair Housing Foundation. You can reach out to these organizations to file complaints, request inspections, obtain legal representation, access educational resources, or receive support in your area.

Published Story: Slumlords, Tenants and the Fight for Affordable Housing in Los Angeles