Council Voids Earlier OK of Controversial Tenant Limits

The Los Angeles City Council abruptly reversed itself Tuesday, rejecting an ordinance intended to limit crowding in rental units.

Critics claimed that the measure would force many poor tenants out of their homes. The ordinance’s backers, including a large group of apartment owners, contended that the measure would actually protect tenants from exploitation by unscrupulous landlords, and said its purpose was to preserve the quality of the city’s housing stock.

In a lengthy hearing, tenant groups charged that the ordinance, which would have limited the number of people that could live in a home based on the size of the bedrooms, would mean many low-income families would be living in their units illegally.

“We’re afraid this amendment is going to be used by unscrupulous landlords against tenants who complain,” said Daniel Marquez, a tenants’ attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.

Major Problem

Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival, a tenant-rights group, said overcrowding in rental units is a major problem. However, restricting the number of people who may share a home without providing more affordable housing “will victimize the victims” and “increase hardship and homelessness,” he said.

A leading critic of the ordinance, East Los Angeles Councilman Richard Alatorre, warned that it could be “extremely discriminatory” against certain ethnic groups, as well as an invasion of privacy.

Despite objections last week by Alatorre, who argued that overcrowded housing is an economic problem that cannot be solved by rewriting an ordinance, the council voted 8 to 5 to give the ordinance preliminary approval.

After that vote, however, tenant groups that had not been aware of the measure mounted a lobbying effort that led to a 10-4 vote against the ordinance Tuesday. Among those who switched votes and argued strongly against the measure Tuesday was Westside Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who said he “must have been on the phone” when last week’s vote was taken.

Size Requirement

Specifically, the ordinance would have added a sentence to the city’s Building Code saying that when more than two people occupy a bedroom, a minimum 70-square-foot requirement shall increase by 50 square feet per person.

City building and safety officials said a virtually identical requirement was in the city’s codes until last year, when it was inadvertently omitted while building laws were being updated.

Proponents of the ordinance, including the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles and San Fernando Valley council members Ernani Bernardi and Hal Bernson, said the provision would give building inspectors a tool needed to combat unsafe living conditions. They also argued that it would help curb the exploitation of illegal aliens by landlords who reap large rents by packing their units and charging tenants by the head.

“When you’ve got that army coming across the border, that’s (the) problem,” Bernardi said. “All those illegal aliens are putty in the hands of slumlords.”

Clay Lowery, a spokesman for the apartment owners association, said the purpose of the ordinance was to help landlords maintain their property and “the living standards of tenants.”