Downey denies tenant protections

Photo by Alex Dominguez

DOWNEY - An attempt to establish a moratorium on no-fault evictions went for naught on Wednesday, failing to convince a majority of the council to side with several frustrated renters.

Rising rental rates and no-fault evictions have been one of the city’s hot-button issues for the last several weeks, stemming primarily from the concerns of tenants at the Eden Roc apartment complex.

With AB 1482 – a legislative bill designed to protect renters signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October – only a few weeks away from taking effect, there have been several concerns surrounding landlords potentially hiking rental prices or evicting their tenants outright in an attempt to “get ahead” of the new law.

Specifically, residents of the local Eden Roc Apartments have pleaded that AB 1482 is too little too late, and that intervention by the Council was needed in the meantime.

This climaxed in a late-night meeting last week, where the council – unable to take any action at the time due to the number of council members available – directed staff to prepare an emergency ordinance on no-fault evictions, which was spearheaded by Councilman Sean Ashton.

It would be an up-hill battle for the proposed ordinance from the get go, needing a “super majority vote” (four out of the five councilmembers) to pass.

With Mayor Rick Rodriguez abstaining from the item due to his status as a landlord in the city, the difficulty was only compounded, as this meant the ordinance would need a unanimous “yes” from the remaining four elected officials, allowing for no wiggle room.

An almost full house came out to speak on the issue, with a majority in favor of the moratorium.

Included in that number were several of the tenants from Eden Roc, who as they had in recent weeks, made appeals to the council’s sympathy with anecdotes of poorly kept properties, stubborn landlords, and families and children facing down the barrel of what seemed to be imminent homelessness.

On the opposite end, many of those opposed to the moratorium were realtors or property owners. This group, significantly outnumbered by the former, spoke to the point of property owners’ rights, and that any kind of control on rent and evictions would be damaging to the housing market as a whole.

However, when it came time for the council’s input, it became clear almost immediately that the evening would not fall in renters’ favor, starting with comments made by Councilman Alex Saab.

“I realize this is a very emotional issue…especially one when it touches people’s hearts involving housing, children, our freedoms, whatever it may be,” said Saab. “Yes, we are in the middle of a housing crisis. Yes, there is a need for affordable housing. The experts all agree, there is a need for housing.

“However, the means by which we’re going to try and resolve that is obviously a big point of contention. Owning a property is essentially having a business, and passing an ordinance that usurps that right goes against property rights…”

Saab continued, saying that rent control had been proven “time and time again” to hurt the housing market, and that such an ordinance “would not have an effect on [fixing] homelessness.”

He also added that passing the ordinance would send the wrong message to the community.

“…That at any time the government is going to push pause when there is an issue that is going to affect one part of the community and not the other? What kind of confidence is that going to give the community,” said Saab. “That just creates havoc, it reduces the law and order we have in our community, and that just doesn’t make sense.”

“There are many rules that protect our tenants… although I’m very sympathetic to the situation, obviously we’re all sympathetic, I simply can’t support this. It has way too many unintended consequences on the tenants themselves, on the property owners, on the real estate market, and the community in general.”

Councilman Ashton took a different stance than his colleague.

“We were kind of given AB 1482 and told ‘Okay, here it is. You’ve got this, you get to deal with the ramifications of it.’ Some of those ramifications aren’t our fault, per se,” said Ashton. “We are dealing with residents who are given 60 day, no-cause evictions to correct market inequalities, and we’re being asked to help those residents to at least give them the opportunity to have some safety during this time until the law takes effect.

“I’m the one who asked for this; obviously, you kind of know where I stand on it. This is something that might not be the right law, but it’s the law that we’ve been given and it’s the ramifications that we’re dealing with. There are certain things that were considered lawful, but not necessarily right…for me, the right decision at this time is to give our residents the opportunity to have a way to deal with this in a way that gives them an opportunity to at least stay where they’re at until things can stabilize.”

Ashton made a motion to pass the moratorium but with Mayor Pro Tem Blanca Pacheco and Councilwoman Claudia Frometa aligning with Saab, the motion died without a second or a final vote.

AB 1482 takes effect Jan. 1, 2020.