Residential evictions create lasting injury to both displaced tenants and their communities. In addition to causing severe housing insecurity, evictions negatively impact the employment, educational, and physical and mental health of the people displaced, a majority of whom are Black folks (PD&R & HUD, 2024). Evictions “increase the likelihood of homelessness and hospital visits, reduce earnings, increase financial insecurity, and increase the use of public benefits and services—all of which can cost cities millions of dollars every year” (PD&R & HUD, 2024). Alternatively, as the most common cause for eviction is “the nonpayment of rent among families with precarious and unstable incomes,” simply providing renters with the time and resources they need to catch up on rent could prevent a substantial portion of these evictions (PD&R & HUD, 2024).
Preventing residential evictions is the most cost-effective method of homelessness prevention, yet tenants across the State of California continue to face unrelenting rent increases and stagnant wages. Coupled with minimal tenant protections, this leads to high rates of housing insecurity, eviction, and homelessness. Since the 2000s, the median rent price in California has increased by 38% while the median renter household income has increased by only 7% (California Housing Partnership, 2024). Housing policies that explicitly protect tenants from unjust evictions and landlord harassment are necessary to alleviate this crisis by preventing additional residents of Los Angeles from falling into housing insecurity and homelessness.
Tenants in Los Angeles are facing record numbers of evictions as they lose access to the anti-eviction protections renters received during the Coronavirus pandemic, which started expiring March 31. 2023 (DCBA, 2024). The economic crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic placed millions of households across the United States at risk of eviction (Leifheit, 2021). During this time, however, municipalities experimented with various eviction prevention measures that proved to be successful and could be utilized to combat rising levels of housing insecurity and evictions (Urban Institute, 2021). This policy brief highlights popular tenant protection policies that are utilized across the country, articulates current tenant protections that exist in Los Angeles (and other Californian municipalities), and illuminates policy gaps that pose threats to the well-being of renters of color in Los Angeles.